Popular Authors/Books that got Rejected

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by crich70

Conversely I wonder how many 'great' authors of the past were told that they had no skill for writing and still went on to have many books published later.

Here are some answers to your wonder.

http://www.litrejections.com/best-se...ally-rejected/

Rejection is an imperative test of one’s character

Some writers continually submit the same manuscript until it is accepted. Others chose to do a more polished draft before sending it out again. A select few learn from the lessons of submissions, to write a completely new book.

What they all have in common is a persistence to never give up on their dream; a dream that has elevated them from writer, to best-selling author.

They have written some of the most critically praised and commercially successful books of all time. In some cases their enormous sales were so consistent that they even kept their publishers afloat.

Yet in spite of this phenomenal success, every single one of these best-selling authors was initially rejected. Literary agents and publishers informed them in an endless stream of rejection letters that nobody would be interested in reading their book.

Here is an extenstive collection of the some of the biggest errors of judgement in publishing history.

[ZodWallop]

Those sorts of things are fun to read, but of course hindsight is 20/20.

I remember Entertainment Weekly did a similar article about major mistakes made by network executives. In the same article they mentioned that the executive producer of The Sopranos had a new series that was repeatedly rejected until a desperate AMC took the gamble. The show was Mad Men.

Then they listed another example: The creator of Arrested Development created two further series, both hyped by Fox: Sit Down, Shut Up and Running Wilde. Both were bombs.

What, if anything is the lesson? There's no formula to success. It's just a bunch of dumb luck.

[theducks]

How many of those were submitted to houses that did not specialize in that Genre?

(and how many heads rolled , because they had rejected a blockbuster?)

[fjtorres]

The problem is gatekeepers know what sold not what *will* sell.

DUNE took years to find a publisher even though Herbert was a veteran writer by then. It took an auto parts catalog publisher venturing outside its niche to get it to market. Because none of the genre establishment houses wanted anything to do with what turned out to be one of the five best SF novels of the century. Which sold so much it spa w ned an "insta-sequel" to milk fan interest and has since spawned a horde of sequels, prequels, "side-quels" and derivatives. And that is just from its author and his family. Nevermind the imitators that found quick acceptance.

It is easy to list dozens of good to go money makers from established authors that had no appeal to their respective industry gatekeepers who were backwards-looking instead of forward looking.

History is littered with tales of writers, both genre and literary, that had to go beyond the establishment to get their visions to market. In fact, that is the same of arguably the most important SF anthology ever, Harlan Ellison's DANGEROUS VISIONS. By today's standards some of the stories are tame, some are still unacceptable to the establishment, but all are great stories by established authors stiffled by the gatekeepers.

For years and years, the mantra at the corporate publishers is "similar to xxx but different".
Similar to Star Wars.
Similar to Tolkien.
Similar to Harry Potter.
Similar to Twilight.
Similar to seven shades.
Similar to Song of Ice and Fire.
Similar to whatever sold last year, even if what sold last year was adult coloring books.

[gmw]

Of course, depending on your tastes, you might think that some those early publisher rejections got it right. Moby Dick is one off that link in the OP that springs to mind.

More practically, it might also be argued that had one of these publishers decided to take on a book they were not enthusiastic about then things may have turned out quite differently. In this case Twilight springs to mind, where a different marketing strategy may have given a very different result.