Quote:
Originally Posted by DixieGal
Just try to remember that the clerk who sent it back is probably jealous and bitter because they dont have the talent for writing that you were blessed with.
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That is very likely
not true.
Aside from the fact that rejections aren't sent out by clerks, and that "clerk" is not a title of shame, anyway, it just doesn't work that way.
No publisher would employ a "jealous and bitter" reader who rejects stories out of spite. That would be like a grocer employing someone who breaks eggs and squishes bananas for fun. Someone who, in other words, maliciously destroys their employer's stock in trade. A publisher's entire success depends on their ability (which equates to that of their employees) to find the best material for their market. If they guess right, they have the next
Harry Potter; if they guess wrong, they have the next ... well, I don't know what it was because it died unread in the remainder bin. But they're all trying to pick the very best they can,
not reject it because they're "jealous" of how much better it is than their own writing. That would be cutting their own throats, and neither the employee nor the employer would last in the business for long that way.
Many of the people I have seen claim that others, from fanfic reviewers to big-name publishers, dislike their writing out of "jealousy" simply
suck. Sorry, but there's no less harsh way to put it. So many, in fact, that when someone says "I can't get this published because everyone is so jealous of my talent" my first thought is they're probably one of that group. If they claim their talent is divinely bestowed, I can almost guarantee it. People who are good
do get published. That's what publishers do for a living. They may guess wrong about what their market wants to buy, or whether a particular story is right for it ("nobody reads books about talking animals"), but their motives are mercenary, not emotional. In other words, they don't think a story is too good, they think it's not good enough. And in my experience, for all the famous counter-examples we can all point to, 99% of the time they're right.
Publishing is a viciously competitive business. If publishers were in the habit of rejecting good work (that is, work that would sell -- in a commercial endeavor, there is no valid definition of "good" aside from "what customers will pay for") then some publisher would spring up who bought all those good stories and cleaned their collective clocks. I find
xkcd 808 very telling. Basically, we have to agree that either companies make rational decisions or that capitalism isn't ruthlessly profit-focused, because there is no alternative involving profit-seeking companies deliberately making decisions counter to their own best interests. And that's at least as true of publishers as it is of anyone else.