Near Literary Abortions – Books and writers that almost were not published

Publishers and literary agents do not always know better. Here are some books / writers that almost did not become published:

“Not only does this bog down in the middle, but the author tends to stay too long with non essentials. He seems to have little idea of pace, and is enchanted with his words, his tough style, and that puts me off badly.” Re: The Ipcress File, by Len Deighton.

“Things improve a bit with the rebuilding of the village but then go to hell in a hack at the end. Perhaps there is a public that can take all this with a straight face but I’m not one of them.” Re: Welcome to Hard Times, by E.L. Doctorow

“It does not seem to us that you have been wholly successful in working out an admittedly promissing idea.” Re: Lord of the Flies, by William Golding.

“A duller story I have never read. It wanders a deep mire of affected writing and gets nowhere, tells no tale, stirs no emotion but weariness.” Re: In the Cage, by Henry James.

The novel is “… rather discursive and the point of view is not an attractive one.” Re: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.” Re: Untitled work by Rudyard Kipling.

“You’re welcome to le Carre – he hasn’t got any future.” Re: The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, by John le Carre.

“… superficial and unconvincing. I do not see this book as a very well told story on any level.” Re: The Assistant, by Bernard Malamud.

“It is impossible to sell animal stories in the U.S.A.” Re: Animal Farm, by George Orwell.

“A long, dull novel about an artist.” Re: Lust for Life, by Irving Stone.

“It is not interesting enough for the general reader and not thorough enough for the scientific reader.” Re: The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells.

“It contain unpleasant elements.” Re: The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde.

Frederic Forsyth‘s The Day of the Jackal was rejected by nearly 50 publishers.

Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles was rejected by six publishers.

Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October was rejected by over two dozen publishers.

Jack King’s The Fifth Internationale was rejected almost 500 times.

John Grisham’s A Time to Kill was turned down by 28 publishers.

Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was rejected 121 times.

Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind was rejected 38 times.

The list goes on… As George Bernard Shaw said: “I object to publishers: the one service they have done me is to teach me to do without them. They combine commercial rascality with artistic touchiness and pettishness, without being either good business men or fine judges of literature. All that is necessary in the production of a book is an author and a bookseller, without the intermediate parasite.”

What do Pimps and Literary Agents have in common?

According to this Nobel Prize recipient: "Agents have strong nerves and stamina. To them the term  'sensitive soul of an artist' means the same as DAB beer, and any attempt at serious conversation with them about art and artists would be a waste of time. They well know that even an artist without a conscience has a thousand times more of it than the hardest working agent. Their weapon lies in understanding that an artist cannot do anything but create, whether paint pictures, perform, sing songs, or carve in stone, or granite. An artist resembles a woman who cannot do anything else but love and falls with every kind of male donkey that falls in her ​​sight. Artists and women are particularly well suited to be exploited, and each agent is ninety-nine per cent a pimp."
Heinrich Böll

Like pimps, literary agents are on the way out. The Internet has changed everything:

"the use of the Internet for prostitution as well as other changes in the sex industry have resulted in the disintermediation of prostitution, allowing prostitutes to deal with clients directly. This has rendered pimps largely superfluous, at least in the United States." Source: WikiPedia

The use of the Internet has allowed writers to bypass the pimps literary agents and reach readers directly, via e-books...

How to Persuade a Literary Agent or an Editor to reply to your Query Letter

So, you wrote a book, and want it published. You follow the established path: query literary agents, only to find, and likely to great perplexity, that most don't bother to reply. You may be puzzled, or angry, and wonder what to do next.

Turn to psychology. Randy Garner presents details of an interesting study, published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology (2005).

Researchers studied the art of persuasion based on similarity. They mailed surveys of varying information on the cover letter: one set of surveys where the name of participants matched the name of the scientist, and the other set where the names did not match.

In the matching surveys, the name of the researcher was Fred Jones, and the participants' names were Fred Smith, Fred Something-or-Other, etc. On the non-matching surveys the names of researches were different from the participants'.

"Four studies examine the influence of attaching a seemingly insignificant Post-it note to a survey packet on the likelihood of completing the survey. Participants who received a packet with an affixed Post-it note request had significantly higher return rates than participants who received the identical survey with (a) no sticky note, (b) the same message written on the cover sheet but without a Post-it or (c) a blank Post-it with no message provided. Furthermore, they returned the materials more promptly with higher quality responses. A more personalized Post-it appeal increased returns when the survey was long and time consuming but was no more effective than a nonpersonalized Post-it when the survey was easy to complete. Results suggest that the Post-it leads the request to be interpreted as a solicitation for a personal favor, facilitating a normative compliance response."

Findings:

• Surveys sent to non-matching names resulted in a 30% return rate


• Name-Matching surveys were returned by 56% of participants

What's behind it? Another study concluded that we like people who share certain similarities with us, such as name, dress, habits, political preference, background, etc.

Thus, one may conclude that by finding literary agents, or editors, who share your name may result in higher response to your query letters. Adopting a pen-name makes the list virtually limitless...

The point: Never address your queries to "To Whom it May Concern", or "Dear Agent". Always address your recipients by their name. It's not just common courtesy. There's basic psychology in it, too.

More tips in:

DITCH THE AGENT

Are literary agents 'Gods'?

"Having finished your first novel, you have polished it to the best of your abilities, got rave reviews from your peer group of ‘wanna be' authors, and you think the most difficult part of your journey, of becoming an internationally published author is over. But, it is not. Before you seek an international publisher in mature markets like London or New York, you have to find a literary agent. ‘Finding a literary agent is akin to finding God [...]

Many first-time writers, especially those not familiar with the ‘behind the scenes' of publishing industry, would ask: Why do we need a literary agent in the first place? To answer this question, we need to understand what exactly an agent does. An agent, for an author, is an editorial consultant, a writing coach and a critic rolled into one. She markets your work to the right publishers. She also takes care of your financial interest. Above all, she understands the nitty-gritties of publishing, everything from e-book royalties and permission forms, to movie option agreements." source

Are literary agents Gods of the industry? Do you need a literary agent to publish a book with a 'traditional' publisher? The title says it all:

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Literary Agent, the oracle of literary taste

Toronto Star: "Once upon a time, when you finished that book you’d either take it to an agent or simply send it to a publisher and pray someone might read — and like —it. Today, that’s not enough.

There are now fewer publishers and they have fewer employees. There aren’t as many people around to read manuscripts on spec — those works are usually relegated to that heap of unsolicited manuscripts called “the slush pile” — and people in the book business are more bottom-line oriented than ever.

For the most part, manuscripts today will only be considered if they’re polished, promising, and endorsed by a reliable agent, from a respected (and commercially successful) writer, or an impressive prior track record. [...]

“In some cases, agents are very important. We rely on them, because that’s all they do.” says Pepper [publisher]. “They go out there and find stuff, and they cut a lot of the dross out. There’s agents I know, they have fabulous taste and they’ve backed it up with success. When they tell me to read a book, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to agree with them, but I’ll read it. It will mean a lot to me that that agent says that.”

You can  dream, or you can wake up and take charge.

Who is a literary agent?

Made numerous additions and corrections to my literary agents and book publishers directory.

Who are agents? Well, let Raymond Chandler enlighten you:

Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.

The agent never receipts his bill, puts his hat on and bows himself out. He stays around forever, not only for as long as you can write anything that anyone will buy, but as long as anyone will buy any portion of any right to anything that you ever did write. He just takes ten per cent of your life.

Enter the Agent

The rise of the Literary Agent, in France:

"In the Anglo-Saxon literary world if you want to publish a book, you look for an agent first. So I never thought to do anything else. This French notion of sending your manuscript direct to a publishing house is foreign to me. I do understand that it worries some people in France, where a delicate balancing act ensures that certain books are published which would never be elsewhere."

"There’s less resistance to agents on the part of publishers. The new generation of editors has had more marketing experience and is not purely literary.”

Publisher "Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens, director of Editions POL, [...] has publicly said that he will not consider a manuscript that has been submitted by an agent, SOURCE

Querying and submitting manuscripts

Spent 2 hrs replying to aspiring authors, all confused and frustrated by the process of querying and submissions; most are p'd off by literary agents. Sample concern: the time it takes for a literary agent to review submitted material, whether partial or full.

It can take well over a year for an agent to review a submitted manuscript; some will not reply / reject AT ALL. Reports I receive from writers suggest that the latter is a growing trend, and agents' silence is the answer: rejected.

It reiterates the importance of querying and submitting, or what the industry refers to as -- simultaneous submission. Writers who want to be published have no choice but to disregard the 'no simultaneous submissions' stipulations that so many agents add to their submissions policies. Waiting a year only to hear 'no thank you', or not to hear anything, means no book deal in a writer's lifetime.

The process of querying and submissions is potentially disastrous -- writers become so fixated on the reasons why agents aren't responding that everything else gets thrown aside. Big mistake! It is important to realize that ALL writers receive rejections, even the already published ones.

My advice is to find a way to steer your mind from the dark thoughts, and one of the best ways is to write your next book while you await responses. The creative process will take over, with querying and submitting the previous book being only incidental, or the business side of being a writer.

Find more answers in:

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How to find a literary agent

Several hundred people visit my literary agent list every day. Many ask me how to find an agent when all they get are standard rejections of the kind: Sorry, too busy... or Sorry, not for me...

Thank you all who write, and I apologize for not being able to reply to everyone individually. Even though I am not the obvious person to be asked (given that with my three novels I am still un-represented) I think that after hundreds and hundreds of queries and countless conversations with other writers I can offer some general insight to agent hunting.

The process of (not)finding an agent can be very depressing, one that new writers may find easier to bear if they know up front that most agents will not reply to queries at all, whether emailed or snail-mailed (yes, even those with an SASE). Of the replies you will receive, most will be copy-pasted standard notes - No, thank you... Often you will receive a rude bugger off, or even a threat for... It is truly a bizarre world you will enter, in which a potential employee, rather than to thank you for offering them employment will spit at you (to be fare - of those agents who do reply - most will thank you for thinking of them). So, what is one to do but sit down and grind their teeth?

Be sure to keep a database of queried agents, complete with dates and the query letter version sent out (more about it below).

When you go through the full list of agents and still can’t find one to take you on... start over. Query again those who did not reply, as well as those who did - many agents do not read submissions - their assistants do, and assistants change frequently, so there’s a good chance that the second, or third time around you will reach an agent, and those who read queries may find yours appealing on the second try (yep, it happened to me several times).

Query other agents from the same house - few are those who will pass your query on to their colleague.

Change your query letter - concentrate on a different aspect of your story or characters.

Change your synopsis (as with the query letter).

Personalize your communication with agents - do not make it obvious that your are querying hundreds all at once (yeah, even I get those queries from writers!)

Start your query much as you would a thriller - with a bang, something that will catch the agent’s eye and interest right away. The letter should include a paragraph about the novel, a paragraph about you - particularly when your bio can be commercialized upon, as well as any publishing history.

If you think you’ve queried enough... see query statistics for my first novel.

Remember - most writers are not represented. You too can try publishers directly.

And last but not least... "Never give up, never surrender."

Good luck!