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I know. Rejections hurt.

But they're also a necessary part of your career as an author. So when you get your first one, give yourself time to feel the pain, then do something to celebrate. Maybe even print it out and frame it.

Yup. You read that right. Congratulations!

You now have the one thing that all professional writers have in common. Every single professional writer gets a boatload of rejections.

But you know what's worse than rejections?

No rejections.

The rejection system is part of your education in the publishing industry. Getting your work accepted before you've had time to learn about the business can backfire. Big time. You can get scammed or talked into signing a bad contract, or you can bumble into a comedy of errors the way I did.

The first agent I queried accepted me as a client. Great, right?

Not so much.

I'd sent out my query to one of the top agencies in L.A., got a request for a full manuscript, and a week later I heard from her assistant—a man about to become an agent in his own right—who was in love with my manuscript.  In a delightful British accent, he pronounced my story "hilarious" and said he'd "show it around to a few people."

So—since I'd heard you should  never phone an agent—I sat around and waited. And waited. Six months. Nothing. No contract. No word of anything. Finally I sent off a letter (no email in those days) asking if anything was happening. No word. So I waited some more. A month later, I finally phoned the agency.

Seems "my agent" had left the business a couple of weeks after we'd talked and gone back to England.

Thunk.

So I queried another agent. (No, I hadn't thought to keep querying during that eight months. I was naive enough to think that phone call meant what I had was a done deal.)

So did I finally get a rejection? Nope—acceptance, but again, no contract. My book went out to a dozen editors over six months, with no takers—so the agent dropped me.

Double thunk.

But I soldiered on. I bought Jeff Herman's Guide to Literary Agents and sent well-researched, targeted queries to dozens of agents. I was sure if I got two agents right off the bat, I could get my pick of others.

Ha! That's when I got the rejections. Hundreds of them. And they hurt worse because I'd set myself up to think I'd be easily accepted.

I'd search every one for clues to what was "wrong" with the book and go into a frenzy of rewriting.

• When an agent said, "I just can't connect with these characters," I'd make every character a little more bland.
• When an agent said "this plot is confusing," I'd eliminate the subplots. 
• When an agent said "humorous fiction is a hard sell," I'd remove the jokes. 
• When an agent said she was no longer taking adult fiction; she only wanted YA, I'd try to rewrite the story as YA.

So after years of rejections and rewrites, did I have a gorgeous, perfect book every agent would love?

No. I had an unreadable mess.

I wrote other books and went through the submission process with a few more agents and finally got my big break with a small UK publisher.

But that poor, much-rejected, over-edited book sat in a drawer, unloved.

I figured it was that practice novel that would never see print, even though my beta readers kept asking why I hadn't published it because it was their favorite.

Then about a year ago an old friend who had been cleaning out his garage came by with the manuscript of that abandoned book. He had one of the earliest versions, in printout and on a CD.

I looked over that old, unedited version and realized it was a pretty good story. It needed a polish, but it was 100% better than the Frankenbook I'd created while editing it to death—trying to please all the people all the time.

Recently I sent that ancient ms. to my publisher.

He loved it.

He wants a ton of edits, of course, and a new title.

The title we've decided on is The Lady of the Lakewood Diner. It will be #3 in my Boomer trilogy together with Food of Love and The Gatsby Game.

It's a fun, breezy romp through the last six decades, as a sixty-something small-town grandma tries to figure out who's trying to kill her childhood best friend—an aging rock star who calls herself Morgan le Fay. Think Beaches meets Mama Mia! at the Whistle Stop Cafe.

While I get to work on the edits, my friend and mentor, the phenomenal Catherine Ryan Hyde will tell you why you should never, ever do what I did.

Catherine is not only the author of the iconic novel that gave us the phrase Pay it Forward  but her three newest titles Walk Me Home, When I Found You, and Where We Belong rocketed her to the top of Amazon's bestseller list this summer.

She even knocked J.K.Rowling off her perch as the #1 top selling author on Amazon.

And now you're going to see why Catherine's career has been so successful: she never doubts her muse.
                                                                                                                                                        ...Anne
Between the time I wrote my first novel (my critique group didn’t much like it) and the time I wrote my third novel (ditto) I was unable to interest an agent in my work. Sound like anybody you know?

I sent out about 25 queries with synopses and sample materials, just like they asked me to do. And I waited. And not one single one of those agents wanted to know anything more about me or my novels. They either were not accepting new clients (or claimed they were not), or were “unable to give my work the enthusiasm it so obviously deserved.”

Right, I know. It’s incomprehensible. It’s not just you.

In an effort to batter down that brick wall, I decided I would market my own short fiction. Much easier. Right?

Over the next year or so, I received 122 rejections on about a dozen short stories. And no acceptances.

How did I keep going? A little bit of mentorship. A couple of authors in my critique group were much better published, and they said things like, “This happens to all authors,” and, “It’s right around the corner for you.”

Finally…finally, finally (did I mention that it was after a bit of a wait?) I received my first short story acceptance.

Five days later I received my second.

Nine days after that I received my third.

So, a year of nothing but rejection. Followed by three story acceptances in the span of two weeks. What does this say about the pattern of acceptance and rejection? So far as I know, nothing. There’s not much to be said, because there really is no pattern. A lot of it is just the luck of the draw. Getting the right story to the right editor on the right day.

Here’s the most important thing I want to tell you about my short story rejections: every one of those stories went on to find a home. And I did not rewrite them based on what each editor said.

It’s a good thing I didn’t, too.

That first acceptance was from a magazine called South Dakota Review, for my short story Earthquake Weather. South Dakota Review was a pretty darned good magazine for my first time out. Based in a reputable university, they’d been publishing stories for over 20 years.


Just before I sent Earthquake Weather to South Dakota Review, I got it back rejected from a magazine of much smaller reputation. It was called the Belletrist Review, may it rest in peace. They said they liked the story as a whole but felt there was a “hollowness” to the characters.

The editor at South Dakota Review was one of a very few who was nice enough to write an actual acceptance letter, telling me why he chose the story. He said I showed poise in the way I depicted the characters with brief brush strokes.

Hear what just happened?

• The characters have a hollowness. 
• The characters are depicted with brief brush strokes.

One editor took it for the same reason the other editor rejected it.

Now picture me getting it back from Belletrist Review and revising it. After all, I don’t want the characters to be hollow. Then I send it to South Dakota Review, and the editor shakes his head. Because I’ve shown no poise in the way I depict the characters. Because I used far too many brush strokes.

Yes, I do mean to say you should not revise based on rejection. 


If you had a first date with someone who didn’t fall madly in love with you, would you just keep changing yourself until they did? And, as a follow-up question, do you think they ever would?

You should fix a story if you agree that it’s broken, but for no other reason.

In the meantime, just keep looking for someone who loves it for what it is.

Even if you have to weather 122 editors who don’t.

Self-publishing has lost its stigma, and it’s the publishing path of choice for a lot of writers these days.

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

Or that everybody who self-publishes will succeed.

Unfortunately, I’m seeing a lot of writers dive in head first without having a clue what they’re doing. Even long-time trad-pubbed authors who think they know the ropes can make fatal errors because self-publishing has a different set of rules. One of them lamented his fate in an article in Salon recently.  

But the poor guy had an amateurish cover (not-to-do #3)  and a dismal Amazon buy page (#4). He also tried to market an ebook like a trad-pubbed book (#7). Most of all he seems to think self-publishing means “second-class,” so he presented his book as a second-class product.

Full disclosure here: I'm not self-published. I'm "indie" in the old fashioned sense—I publish with a small, independent press. But I belong to lots of indie groups where the vast majority of authors are self-published. Quite a few are doing very well for themselves—better than the average mid-lister with a big publisher—but many more aren't.

Unlike Tolstoy's happy families, most happy indies are not alike. Successful indies seem to follow quirky, personal paths. But the less successful ones seem to make similar mistakes.

If you want to launch a career as a professional, self-published author, here are some things it's better not to do.

1) Publish your first novel before you’ve written a second. 

The most popular way of marketing a self-published book right now is giving away a lot of free copies. But this only works if you have other books for the customer to actually pay for.

You should write at least two novels before you try to publish—whether you’re hopping on the query-go-round or self-publishing. Marketing takes a whole lot of time, and once you’re doing it, writing novel #2 is going to be really tough. Give yourself at least two novels worth of time before you jump into becoming an author-publisher.

2) Think you don’t have to follow “writing rules” because you’re not dealing with agents and publishers. 

A lot of those "agent rules" are based on stuff that’s hardwired to the human brain. If you’re boring or self-indulgent, you’ll get bad reviews, disgruntled customers and dismal sales.

Some agent rules can be ignored, like "no prologues", "never use the word 'was',"  and “if you’re not writing YA Steampunk Zombiepocalyptic dystopian romance, go die."

But things like, “start with an inciting incident, not 49 pages of musing”…that’s going to be a good rule no matter how you publish.

And yeah, you need a plot. Successful self-publishers are almost all genre writers. Literary musings probably aren't going to sell to an online audience—and successful indies make most of their sales online.

Also, you still have to learn basic spelling and grammar rules. They are the tools of your trade.

3) DYI editing, cover design and formatting 

Some of the early Kindle pioneers got away with amateurish presentation. There weren’t so many ebooks to choose from in 2009 and 2010. Now, there are 1000s of new indie titles coming out every day. You gotta have a professional-looking product or you’re not going to sell.

4) Amateurish buy page 

Lots of indies neglect their buy pages on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, etc. Make sure you take advantage of the "editorial reviews" section if it's offered, and include quotes from good blog reviews. Check to see if the “peek inside” feature is working, and write a snappy product description.

Here's some great advice on how to write a compelling product description in a guest blogpost from indie superstar Mark Edwards.

5) Market exclusively to other authors

Unless you have a nonfic book for authors like HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE (had to get a plug in there), other authors aren't your market.

Bloghops are a fun way to get to know other authors, but they don't sell a lot of books

And guilt-tripping and spamming author sites that are meant for mutual support and exchange of information is going to backfire. There are some authors I'm much LESS likely to read because they’ve hijacked author info sites with “tweet and share and make my book the most successful in history and screw you if you have a book to sell too because I’m going to bump my posts up the thread every 15 minutes…it's all about me, me, ME!!”

You want to make FRIENDS with other authors, not get to the top of their list of "A**hats to Avoid."

Successful indie authors know their audience and market to that niche. As indie publishing guru Orna Ross said, "to succeed as an indie you need to go where your readers are, which means understanding your place within the reading ecosystem."

"A family saga I could not put down. Ms. Allen has written a fascinating tale of real people, full of danger and tension, in prose that flows easily and pulls the reader along."--Susan Tuttle