How much rejection is too much?

I know someone who got 120 rejections before she got a book deal. I think when I start submitting I'll try for at least 100 before I give up.

Literary agents change houses and new ones arise. I believe that is a sign that infinite tries are appropriate as long as you edit along the way.

I never give up.

Dr. Seuss was rejected by 27 publishers, and things were a lot easier then.

This really depends on your personal threshold more than anything else, and how attached you are to that one book. We can talk all we want about the rare person who got rejected 200 times and then got an offer, but I think if you added up all the people who got 200 rejections and then didn't get the offer, that's a negligible outlier. If you have a strong query, you *should* be getting requests, and if you have a strong book, you *should* be getting offers. If you aren't, you need to change something up.

That's not to be pessimistic; honestly, I think it's optimistic. The best thing you can do when you're querying is to keep writing, keep revising, keep improving, and get that next book ready if the first book doesn't bite; keep in mind that for 99% of new authors, your second book is better than your first, and so on. The worst thing you can do is keep pushing that same button over and over, hoping for different results.

Just to offer some tangible numbers, my personal system was:

- Send 12 queries
- If I have less than 3 requests, rework the query heavily before sending 12 more
- Once I hit 60 queries OR 5 rejections on full, trunk the book and start another

In my opinion, as long as you have confidence in your book, it's worth persevering. You can always rework your query and keep improving the book as you submit if you feel there's room for it.

First off, you might want to think of submitting queries to agents first, instead of publishers. If/when you do get a contract with a publisher, you'd be grateful for a good agent fighting your corner and negotiating to get the best possible agreement on your behalf.

As for how many rejections is too many, that depends on how confident you are with your book and how many rejections you're willing to get. With my last book, it had already gone through so many rounds of beta revisions I couldn't possibly see myself giving up. I would've queried every agent who represents that genre before I gave up. I queried over 70 agents before I received an offer. I would've continued to 200, if that was what it took. But with the book before that, I wasn't confident at all and I gave up after about...hmmm, 40-ish agents. I knew the book had issues, but I just couldn't be bothered to gut it and stitch it back together, which was what it needed.

Oh, and Donokharms is right about sending queries out in batches. If you keep getting rejections, the problem could be the query, not the book. It's best to cover all your bases and make sure your query is as amazing as it can be before you actually send it out.

One is too much. Two is twice too much. Three is thrice too much. Continue the math from there.

caw

Ugh. I am sick of rejections. Each one is corrosive, at least to me. I am aware I need to toughen up.

Think the advice about approaching agents before publishers is right - they are (usually) well connected and (usually) able to give an overview of your work, edits, changes etc.

Keep going? I don't know. I've had about seventeen so far, not sure I am brutal enough to keep going.

ErezMA said:

- How many times should I hear 'No' before I move on and try again with a new book from scratch?

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This is not a one or the other proposition. You should keep submitting until there is no decent place remaining to submit. But you should also have a new book ready to go long, long, long before the first one has received very many rejections at all. Otherwise, your chances of being successful are hugely reduced.

You don't stop writing because you start submitting. You just don't. Submitting si not that time-consuming, and shouldn't occupy very much of your time, or your mind. It's continually writing new books while previous books are making the rounds that make the great majority of writers successful.

Never stop submitting, and never stop writing ne books as fast as you can.

Follow Heinlein's Rules to the letter, and you stand an excellent chance of being successful at some level. Refuse to follow them for any reason, and you become one of the failures.
http://www.sfwriter.com/ow05.htm

You haven't even made your first submission yet, and you're already wondering how many rejections are enough? Man up, my friend! (Or woman up.)

It's true that most published writers have an unsold early book or two tucked away in their drawers. A friend of mine, Edward (Ted) Whittemore, wrote seven books before selling one--an extreme example, but according to him, that's how long it took him to learn to write well enough to sell his work. Another friend, Diana Gabaldon, wrote her first book with no expectation of selling it, and it (OUTLANDER) not only sold but became a huge hit.

It's really hard to gauge your own work. And unfortunately, unless it's already good enough to sell, you're not likely to get the professional feedback that would help you improve it. Agents and editors read until they decide a book isn't for them, and then it's on to the next. All you can do (assuming you've had some beta readers) is make a smart list of potential agents and/or publishers, write a great query letter, and put it out there. If you get requests for full or partial mss, you're doing something right. If you get nothing at all, check your query letter--that could be the problem. You can get smart feedback on this forum--in fact, best to do that before submitting.

of course it's also possible that the book just isn't that good. If you submitt to 50 or so appropriate venues and get back nothing but silence or rejection, I think at that point you either take another run at this book or shelf it and move onto the next. You might also consider writing classes. Selling one's book to a major publisher is to writers what playing pro is to athletes: you need talent, but you also have to be at the top of your game.

I agree with the advice to keep submitting/querying as long as you have full confidence. I'd also say this: do not wait until you've heard either way on your current manuscript to write your next one. That makes the waiting less painful, you'll probably learn something along the way, and you can dive in again with something new if this one doesn't work out.

When I first started out querying agents, realizing that sometimes it would take hundreds of rejections and/or several manuscripts was absolutely horrifying. I'm not on my fourth manuscript (which is a thorough rewrite of my first) and I've learned two things: 1) my writing was not that great and needed to be improved and 2) I can take a lot more rejection than I think. I feel like rejection had a learning curve or something for me. The first fifty or so were brutal. Same with manuscript rejections. Now, given all of the rejection I've experienced, I can put each one in context and it's a lot easier to take.

ErezMA said:

I assure you, my stones are in tact. I do thank you all for your input. It seems the majority of the consensus is never stop submitting, but never stop making it better. I do thank you all for your wisdom. I guess it gets a little bit easier after the first yes, yes?

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My experience is that rejections hurt more later on. Because then I was more confident in my work, and I kept getting really close (personalized rejections).
Actually, I got more rejections after I sold something than when I was unpublished...

I have finished having the first book of my series edited and am in the process of sending queries to agents. I have gotten some rejection and will more than likely continue to get them. All known authors have gotten rejections at some point. The key is to believe in yourself and what you have written, never give up. I believe in my books so much that even if nobody picks me up, I will go the self publishing route. I am that determined.

Good luck to you.

ErezMA said:

It seems that the bigger you are, the harder you fall. Wouldn't the same publisher want you though? The way I see it in their perspective is, "Oh, here's this guy who proved that he can produce high quality work. Why wouldn't I not want him?

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Well, I am not very big...

The same publisher will publish my work. My sales are abysmal, however, so I want to try other publishers. But just because a publisher bought one thing you wrote doesn't necessarily mean they will keep buying. They might not like your next work, or if your sales keep being terrible, they might not see the point. If all this publisher's books sold as poorly as mine, I don't see how they could stay in business, to be honest.

Sometimes people see publishing as the end goal, and once you get there, everything is great! You're life is changed! But...not so much.

ETA: Forgot to mention that I got a rejection like RIGHT AFTER my last post.

Jamesaritchie said:

Submitting si not that time-consuming, and shouldn't occupy very much of your time, or your mind. It's continually writing new books while previous books are making the rounds that make the great majority of writers successful.

Never stop submitting, and never stop writing ne books as fast as you can.

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Submitting sucks. In the context of writing, it's the most soul-destroying experience I've ever experienced. I . . . I just can't describe it any further.

caw

blacbird said:

Submitting sucks. In the context of writing, it's the most soul-destroying experience I've ever experienced. I . . . I just can't describe it any further.

caw

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How does submitting suck? I can understand rejection sucking, but submitting? It's easy, takes very little time, and is a normal part of the process. Submit and forget.

ErezMA said:

It seems that the bigger you are, the harder you fall. Wouldn't the same publisher want you though? The way I see it in their perspective is, "Oh, here's this guy who proved that he can produce high quality work. Why wouldn't I not want him?

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It's about sales. Publishers drop writers every week. Getting published is far easier than staying published. If your sales numbers drop too low, you get dropped along with them.

This is a bad thing for the writer who gets dropped, but a very good thing for new writers who want to be published. It's how publishers make room for new writers who show high potential.

I say "Don't borrow trouble."

Work on your query until it's the best you can do. Polish up your synopsis and first ten pages so you have them ready to meet the agents' guidelines. Then submit and let it go. Just as you shouldn't count the money from your lucrative publishing deal until it's in your hand, you can't start counting the rejections until you get some.

Ask this question again when you've tried a few agents, revised your query and tried again a few times.

I guess it gets a little bit easier after the first yes, yes?

The first yes is huge, because it means someone other than yourself and your mother thinks you're the real thing. Rejection always stings, but in my experience, one's skin gets thicker over time. I think that of all the characteristics writers need to succeed, resilience is probably the most vital. They knock you down, you get up. Repeat.

I also think there are some hidden benefits to rejection, counterintuitive though that is. I expand on that here, if you're interested.

ErezMA said:

So I'm almost at the point with my first WIP where I'll consider myself ready to sent to publishers. I've read the books and I've advice.

I know that rejection will come. I've gone through the 12-step process for the grave news.

Now I've also read news from people saying that sometimes the story isn't good. Sometimes, it takes people their sixth or seventh book in order to get the deal. This begs the question - How many times should I hear 'No' before I move on and try again with a new book from scratch?

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I'm pretty forgiving of grammatical errors on forum posts, so if you'd just made one or two understandable mistakes I wouldn't have said anything, but this post of yours is full of significant errors and awkwardness. If your novel has even a fraction of these issues I'd say you're in for a very tough slog. I strongly suggest you read books or take some courses on grammar before you consider your manuscript ready.