Writing Blog

20220202 A New Form Of Rejection

February 2, 2022, 1:00pm

So... Rejection.

For a writer who aims for traditional publishing (which is all I do - I don't self-publish), rejection is unfortunately par for the course. You need to keep putting your work out there in order to get the greatest chance of acceptances and so sales.

I stopped counting rejections many years ago; my son a few years back looked through my paperwork and he reckons I have more than 500 for short stories and novels/novellas; he didn't count poetry, essays or art.

I have kept pretty detailed submission-rejection/acceptance notes since 2019 so I don't submit the same piece twice to the same open call (which I did a few times in 2018) and I can tell you that I have pretty close to a 1 in 6 acceptance rate at the moment (18.7%). That's normal for some-one with my experience, if not a little low for horror writers, although high for an Australian.

So what?

Well, rejections can come in all shapes and sizes. Most of mine are a standard "is not for us at this time". I've had a few where the readers' comments were given to me, so I know what turned them off. I had one where the editor just lambasted my style (4 years later he approached me after one of my books was released to give him a short story for an anthology - I responded with a "why" and added a copy of the email he'd sent me... and he abused me, told my publisher, and my publisher no longer works with him).

But I had a new rejection this week. Last year I had a children's work accepted - explaining atheism to children (based on a series of books that explained facets of Christianity to children our school library was forced to accept). The publisher found me an illustrator and she did a wonderful job, making the narrators and everything else cute rabbits. Everything was going well.

Last week the illustrator and I got a rejection from the company. The illustrator (a Canadian) threatened a lawsuit and we got paid a small amount to buy us out of our contracts. I've given the illustrator permission to on-sell the work. Normally writer-illustrator is a 60-40 split, but I've offered her 50-50 and she's cool with that.

So... why the change of mind? The man in charge quit because of ill health and the woman who took over is a devout Christian and found our work offensive and disgusting and refused to enter into talk about freedom of speech because, according to her, that only exists for Christians. This is not a slam on Christians - just this woman's version of her religion.

So, this was a new rejection - a cancellation based on belief!

Just thought I'd share.