What was the most amount of rejection slips you received?

Question

Hi! I was simply curious, for all published authors out there, what was the quantity of rejection slips that you received before your novel finally got published? I've heard of some authors that got hundreds of slips, while others only got about 15 or so. I'm just wondering what the average is. Thank you so much for any answers!

Answer 1

I don't think averages mean too much. A writer friend of mine says everyone has a cosmic number of rejections they must receive. That's as good a theory as any!

John Grisham gave up submitting his first novel "A Time To Kill" and self-published it. Only after he published several subsequent novels did his publisher decide to issue "A Time to Kill" which went on to be a mega-seller and was successfully made into a movie.

The story goes, that Dr. Seuss submitted his first book "To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street" to every publishing house in New York and they all rejected it. But eventually someone changed their mind.

My own personal experience is that I'm still collecting rejections on one book (over 40), but my debut novel sold to the very first editor who requested it from my query letter. It was, however, rejected by about 20 agents while I was waiting to hear back from that editor.

Good luck to you on reaching your cosmic number!