Writing Blog

20230324 Another Rejection

March 24, 2023, 10:00am

So...

Another rejection.

Okay, back-story. I sent a novel I am really happy with to a publisher in 2020, and we signed a contract. All good. Then COVID hit. Not good. Especially not good was that this was one of two publishers I had book contracts with that were killed by the coronavirus (plus one publisher that had a short story of mine earmarked for an anthology). Unfortunately, there was a signed contract, and due to the state laws of California, I had to wait until the end of the exclusivity clause before rights returned to me. The company wanted to waive it, but the law is the law, so I waited. Therefore, come 2022, I had my book back.

I made a few tweaks to clarify that the book was set pre-COVID (2015, to be precise), and sent it off to another publisher, one I have a good relationship with. The response was pretty quick - too much gore for them. That's cool; I get it. So I sent it to another company. That was August, 2022. In November, I received an email asking what I thought of the edits they had made. I sent back saying I would go with whatever they suggested, except when it came to Australian slang in direct speech. I heard nothing. They had gone through and edited an entire 88k word story, and I had rejected only a dozen of their edits, all concerning Australianisms.

Well, on Monday morning, waiting in my email inbox, was a rejection stating that they really liked the story, but I was proving to be impossible to work with. I had rejected 12 out of well over 100 edits, and had sent them two emails - the initial one submitting the work, and the one saying I liked the edits, except those direct speech things.

I sent everything to the publisher I am working with the most. He replied this morning (3 days! That's pretty quick) and told me I had been more than professional and that, as an author, he would have rejected every edit suggested on page one!

So, sometimes rejection is an interesting beast and you just don't know what's what.

So... what next for the tale?

I'll spend this afternoon looking for a new publisher (my regular publisher is the one who said it's too gory for him, and that's cool) and re-submit.