Ask a Publisher: What to Do with Rejection

You’ve finished your manuscript, edited it to the best of your ability, sent out some queries, and have been anxiously waiting for a reply from publishers. Then, your email pings with a new notification, and you see that it’s in response to your query…but it isn’t the news you were hoping for at all. 

It’s a rejection. 

As dismaying as a rejection email can be—and those feelings are valid—we want to take some time today to review the assorted reasons why your manuscript may have been rejected and give you some suggestions for what to do in each scenario. 

Revise & Resubmit 

Perhaps the form of rejection with the most potential for encouragement, a suggestion to revise and resubmit your manuscript is a positive sign. It means that an industry professional is interested in your manuscript, but not necessarily in its current form—that additional work needs to be completed for it to be truly ready for consideration. 

For example, an acquisitions editor may review your manuscript and see that the story is strong and well-told, but your document is full of typos. Proofreading is a cost that a publishing house need not incur—it is something you, the author, can do. Or perhaps your manuscript seems like it is headed in a great direction, but it still needs some developmental editing. It’s also possible that a publisher may instruct you to make specific revisions per the current market. These may include adjustments to your content based on your intended genre (ex., if you are writing a YA novel, they may tell you to remove sexual content and instead only imply the activity) or what the market is currently seeking to publish. Whatever the case may be, if the response you receive from a publisher is to revise and resubmit, it is worth considering why the industry professional made this suggestion as it pertains to the quality and current state of your manuscript.  

Additionally, sometimes an industry professional will read a manuscript and make recommendations that deviate from your vision as the author. About five years ago, I worked with an author who had written a novel that featured romance, but the main plot line was focused on the female main character’s healing journey. This author worked with a different editor at first, one who made multiple suggestions to eliminate the details about the healing journey and instead add more romance, which was not in line with the author’s vision. Although her first editor had industry experience and made suggestions based on her experience, the author chose to ignore the feedback she didn’t agree with and went on to publish her book with the plot she had intended. Later, she won an award for her book. From her example, we can see that just because someone in the publishing industry has experience, that does not mean their experience or suggestions are right for every book. 

If the response you’ve received is to revise and resubmit your manuscript, our suggestion is to carefully consider the revisions suggested, assuming the industry professional took the time to specify. Recommendations to revise editorial issues are likely made in good faith—after all, the people who work in publishing want authors to be successful—and should probably be followed. If, however, you have received feedback that encourages revisions that majorly deviate from what your original vision was, it’s okay to ignore those suggestions and instead query someone else.  

Ask Again Later 

Sometimes, you may receive a rejection letter that states a publisher would prefer to consider your manuscript at another time. This very well may mean that they are interested in your manuscript, but they cannot currently consider it due to a variety of factors, many of which may have nothing to do with your manuscript at all. 

Earlier this year, Josha received a query for a memoir. After reviewing the initial query, I was intrigued by the premise and content the author described was within it, but we were not considering submissions at that time; our submissions were closed. Thus, I had to decline the query at the time, but in my email, I told the author that we would be happy to consider their work when our submissions reopen in their genre. 

Across the publishing industry, it is common for a publisher to open their submissions, but only to specific genres. This is why it’s important to carefully read a publisher’s submission guidelines prior to querying them, because some publishers may ignore your query or outright reject it if it doesn’t match the genres they’re open to at the time. 

If the response to your query encourages you to try again at another time, our recommendation is to make a note of when you received that email and from whom, then wait. After some time, when their submissions status matches your manuscript, resubmit your query. However, remember that just because you were encouraged to try again later, that does not mean you’re guaranteed to receive a contractual offer that time; you may still receive a suggestion to revise and resubmit your manuscript, or it may still be rejected. 

A Firm “No” 

Unfortunately, sometimes the response you may receive will be a firm “no.” If that is the case, it’s imperative for you to remember a rejection of your manuscript is not a rejection of you. A manuscript is a product, and publishing is a business—decisions are made for logistical, creative, and financial reasons, not personal ones. 

Several years ago, I worked with a freelance client who had written a YA horror novel. They went through the query process with several agents and acquisitions editors, and eventually, one requested their full manuscript, citing in the request email that they were eager to read more. However, after reading the whole manuscript, they replied that although they had loved the story and saw immense potential in the book’s success, they weren’t passionate enough about the book to be able to successfully pitch it to their publishing house’s acquisitions board and thus offer the author a contract. As dismaying as that was for the author to know, they later told me they were grateful for the honesty of the acquisitions editor; the author told me it was encouraging to know an industry professional saw such potential in their manuscript, even though it wasn’t right for them. 

Of course, not every rejection email contains such detailed feedback. That may be due to a variety of factors, including how many other rejection emails the acquisitions editor must write each week as well as market trends. 

As an example regarding market trends, following the sensational reception of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight in 2005, vampire lore became the hottest topic for YA readers. However, in the wake of Twilight—in print, on film, and as a cultural phenomenon—the trend of vampire fiction eventually flamed out. Broadly, the publishing industry veered away from vampire YA; from a business standpoint, it didn’t make a lot of sense to publish books that would have to compete with Twilight, which had sold more than 100 million copies. This meant that many authors who had been inspired by Twilight wrote vampire novels of their own, only to have them rejected by publishers because of the market’s saturation with one vampire series already. According to a 2020 article from Publisher’s Weekly, it wasn’t until fifteen years after Twilight was released that a new generation of authors had finally developed a fresh take on vampire lore and such novels re-entered the market. 

With this in mind, it’s also important to remember that a rejection can sometimes be the result of a matter of opinion. If an acquisitions editor has a dozen different manuscripts to consider, each one featuring a common factor, such as a dystopian society or natural disaster or mythological creature, they will likely have to pick only one manuscript to pitch to their house’s acquisitions board. Their choice will be a matter of their opinion of which manuscript is the “best,” but even with all their experience, their opinion is still subjective. If another industry professional were presented with the exact same manuscripts and circumstances, they very well may pick a different one to pitch. This is why it is important to query multiple publishers, because what one publisher rejects, another may accept. 

No matter the type of rejection you receive—and if you are looking to publish your manuscript traditionally, it’s probable you will receive a rejection at some point—we encourage you to keep writing and querying. If you need to, it’s okay to put a manuscript away and take a break from querying it for a while, or to draft another story in the meantime. Just because one manuscript was rejected does not mean all your writing will be, and a rejection is never a sign that you should abandon your dream of writing or being published. Rather, a rejection is always a business decision and, as with all professional pursuits, it’s important to take some personal time to regroup and take care of yourself, just like you would if you had a negative experience at work in any other career field.