3 More Clear Reasons Publishing’s Hard

Last week, I wrote about three reasons publishing is its own challenging animal. Now, here are three more reasons (with apologies to James Carville):

It’s the book, stupid

In simple terms, the manuscript sucks. The difficult part sometimes lies in why. 

Not every publisher states the reasons for rejecting your work. The larger the publisher, the less likely you will get anything beyond a form letter when you submit that says, “Thank you for your submission. We receive a large volume of manuscripts and cannot personally respond to every query. If you do not hear from us within (set time period) or by set date, please assume we will not be accepting your manuscript.”

You might get lucky and have a publisher give you this type of rejection, coming courtesy of writer Melinda Johnson: “Thank you for your submission. Unfortunately, at the moment we do not have room in our publishing schedule for it.”

However, some publishers are nice enough to give you some details. If they do, the reasons will probably be because of any (or many) of the following:

• Your story is unoriginal, or written in an unimaginative way, doesn’t flow smoothly, has no depth to it, or has no or not enough conflict.
• Your characters are perfect—that is, they don’t have any foibles, faults, inconsistencies, or flaws that characters have; or their reasons for existing and behaving the way they do aren’t clear.
• Your opening chapter doesn’t grab readers and make them want to keep reading.
• Your manuscript is full or spelling and grammatical errors.

Once you know the problems, fix them. If you can’t yourself, for whatever reasons, hire a ghostwriter or editor.

It’s the query letter, stupid

You might have a manuscript worthy of all the accolades and awards, but if you can’t write a query letter, the masses might never realize your brilliance. 

A query letter might be aimed at a publisher or an agent. The agent, being one person, is more likely to explain the rejection, and the reasons might be any (or many) of the following:

• There are submission guidelines. You didn’t follow them. Enough said.
• It’s unprofessionally written. There’s a template. You didn’t follow it. Enough said.
• Your letter is well written, but it’s in a genre that doesn’t interest the agent.
• The plot summary fails to inspire, excite, intrigue, or evoke any emotion.
• Your accompanying sample pages are either not well-enough written or fail to inspire, excite, intrigue, or evoke any emotion.
• You fail to include any marketing plan.

A query letter is a little like the description on a book jacket. While an actual query letter has more components, the plot summary on the jacket usually is exciting and compelling. Does your query letter match?

Again, there is an easy solution: If you can’t do it yourself, hire a ghostwriter who specializes in query letters.

It’s the publisher, stupid

This may or might not be your fault. It is your fault if you submit to a publisher that doesn’t release books in that genre. It’s also your fault if you don’t follow the submission guidelines or any of other the above-mentioned reasons the query letter could have been rejected.

And it’s your fault if you exceed the word count. Some publishers have a set amount, and you’ll be rejected if you exceed it by even one word. Others have a word-count range, say 80,000-100,00 words, but beware if you submit a 75,000- or 110,000-word manuscript. 

Finally, it’s your fault if you fail to understand the publisher wants a particular niche within a genre. For example, cyberpunk within science fiction, paranormal romance within romance, and historical fantasy within fantasy.

However, it’s not your fault if a publisher is looking for something specific at that specific time and your manuscript, which would have been a fit at a different time, isn’t now. Nor is it your fault if they’re pausing accepting certain genres because of market saturation, liability, or profit margin.

Do your research before you query. As I’ve outlined, publishing is tough. Don’t despair, keep trying. And hire a ghostwriter if you need to.

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