Discarded Beginnings: My Journey to Publication

2. Rejectomancy

Committed fiction writers use the term "rejectomancy" because rejection letters almost never offer an explanation.  We're left to guess why the editor didn't want to buy our work of staggering genius, or why the literary agent isn't interested in investing in our promising author career.  

Is it because they don't like my name or gender?  Is it because they just bought something vaguely similar?  Is it because they confused my manuscript with someone else's?  Or ... is it possible that they really didn't like what I wrote?  Can I have written the first page better? 

My Book 1 has gathered enough rejections for some seriously in-depth rejectomancy.  I don't have an exact count, but it's around 100 official rejections from Big Five editors and literary agents, and possibly another 150 from professional SFF authors who agreed to give it a look and never read past the first few chapters. 

That's in stark contrast to wonderful praise from beta readers.  I've had readers who said they stayed up all night reading, including several readers who breezed through all five books (about 600,000 words) in a week, and asked for more.  Some readers have read everything I've written.  Some still check in with me, even after all these years, to see if I've gotten published.  Granted, my number of beta readers is small, but those are the reactions I want.  It's clear that my novels do work well for certain people.  (Smart people, as I like to think of them!)  

Due to the consolidation of the publishing industry--it's down to five big conglomerates--there are far fewer markets for far more competitors.  NaNoWriMo and other author-positive encouragement groups are making fiction writing almost a normal activity for normal people.  Literary agents and pro authors are inundated with manuscripts, and they are the de facto industry gatekeepers.  They won't give a problematic beginning much of a chance.  They look for marketable angles that they can grasp, and if they don't see them, then there's a million more where that came from.  Their inboxes are always overflowing.

I think that's why authors such as Michael J. Sullivan and Hugh Howey found success as indie authors, rather than as traditionally published authors.  I suspect that Robert Jordan and J.R.R. Tolkien would not have gotten their first novels published in today's traditional marketplace, either.  They would have had to go indie. 

Yet there are still breakout novelists published by Tor and Daw and Orbit and Baen so forth.  A lot of my peers are celebrating victories there.  It's hard for me to watch, when some of them haven't tried for nearly as long as I have.  I've had to ask myself hard questions, trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong.  I tried my hardest.  I tried my best.  I kept at it for more than a decade.  Readers really like my work.  I'm more driven and ambitious than anyone I know.  Why didn't I land a six-book-contract with a major publisher?

In my analysis, there are a few reasons. 

1) Gimmicks and trends sell.  Unusual stuff is harder to sell. 

If it's easy to pitch in a sentence, then it's more likely to sell.  If it has a gimmicky title, such as "Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies" or "The Hunger Games," it's more likely to sell.  If it catches the upswell of a trend, then it's more likely to sell. 

My work does none of those things.  I like to think it has potential to start a trend, but that makes it hard to pitch, and hard to sell to marketing-minded people, such as SFF publishing industry gatekeepers. 

2) My main characters look like tropes. I need to signal that the tropes will be subverted.

The main character in Book 1, Thomas, is a child genius telepath in a wheelchair. Most people wrongly assume that he's a version of Ender Wiggin, Professor X, or Artemis Fowl.  I've also got a giant character who may look like a trope. 

When I first conceived of these characters, I thought I would play with the Brawn and Brain tropes, and subvert them, making Brawn the wise one and Brain the one who needs to learn.  Thomas starts out the way readers expect--competent and self-reliant--but he becomes a very flawed and needy character, edging into dark antihero territory.  By the end of Book 1, he needs to be saved as much, if not more so, than the other characters, and it's clear that the giant is going to take on the heroic role.

Beta readers said that Thomas's flaws make him easy to relate to.  Most beta readers really love that character.  

That's in direct contrast to professional feedback from pro authors who only read the first chapter.  They see a trope and assume that's all it will ever be.  I suspect that's a large part of the reason for most of the rejections. 

3) Stylistic expectations

If you read recent books from the major SFF publishing imprints, you might be aware that they have a certain style.  They tend to be dense, and the reader is often thrown into a weird world with almost no introduction or easing.  There can be a lot of unfamiliar terminology up front.  The prose is dense in comparison to Technothrillers and Young Adult novels.

I have a sparse style that's more in keeping with Technothrillers and YA.   Several beta readers have complimented me on this, saying that it's a wonderful relief to read something that's not dense with description, and that's clear and easy to understand.

The professionals, on the other hand, sometimes say that my work needs a lot more visceral description.  Or they say that it reads like YA , but the subject matter is adult, which sends confusing signals and makes it hard to market. 

After years of rejectomancy, those are my best guesses about the rejections. 

I have one more suspicion, but I'm less certain about it.  

4) Male authors sell better to a SFF audience

This worries me, if it's true.  I'd rather publish under my female name.  But I'll do whatever it takes to give my series a chance, so if I ever learn that it will do better under a pseudonym, then that's the route I'll take.

Thanks for reading.  I welcome your thoughts.