Thursday, Jun 19, 2014

All writers agree: Rejection letters ain't no fun. "Moby Dick" was rejected by one publisher who dismissed it with, "Very, very long, over-long, and rather old-fashioned." George Orwell's "Animal Farm" was rejected by one American publisher with the note, "It is impossible to sell animal stories in the U.S." H.G. Wells had one publisher say his "War of the Worlds" "…will never take. The verdict would be, 'Oh, don't read that horrid novel.'" Ayn Rand had "Atlas Shrugged" rejected by one publisher who said it was "unsalable and unpublishable". Even William Faulkner got his "Sanctuary" rejected by an editor who wrote him saying, "I can't publish this -- we'd both be in jail." And Walt Whitman read in the "Boston Intelligencer" that as a poet "He must be some escaped lunatic raving in pitiable delirium".