Rejection of Authors: Part Three - Reasons for Rejection

Last time, we established that an unsuccessful submission results from a publishing house rejecting your writing, not you as a person. So what kind of reasons could an editor possibly have for not wishing to publish your masterpiece? Well, perhaps they just accepted a similar story to yours or they might even have just published one. You weren’t to know this, of course, but this will mean that they aren’t going to look favourably on your story right now, no matter how good it is. 

Your project could even feature a topic that this particular editor finds intensely irritating, a personal preference you couldn’t have anticipated, but something which certainly prevents your work getting any further with that particular publisher. You could also be guilty of not doing your homework. Maybe you didn’t study the publisher’s guidelines closely enough and submitted something that was the wrong length or in a genre which they specifically state on their website that they have no interest in publishing. Your delightful tale of an adorable dog who gets lost in the forest and has adventures with various woodland creatures is hardly going to appeal to a publishing house dealing exclusively with non-fiction topics such about earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis. 

And naturally, the editor could even just be having a bad day, which again is impossible for you to plan for, but is something which does nothing to improve your chances. Whatever the reason however, its important to realize that there is a reason and it’s usually a business decision based purely on whether your work is a fit for them at that moment in time. 

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