Authors like to assume that their book proposal was rejected by mistake, due to the idiocy or lack of foresight of the publisher. Mistakes are a real problem, partly due to the mass of material that flows through a publisher’s offices. It’s hard for them to track and evaluate the piles of submissions and ideas fairly and evenly. Some proposals get more attention than others.
Some proposals fall off the back of the desk and get discovered many months later when an editor happens to be on the floor looking for dropped chocolates.
Without looking at it the editor might throw it away assuming someone else had already contacted the author.
The top people in all but the smallest publishing companies have too many pressures on their time to be able to look at every submission that is received. They have to employ editors to look at the proposals and filter them so that only the best ones come their way (perhaps 5% of the total). It wouldn’t be possible to publish books if senior publishers did nothing but read manuscripts. A side effect of this inescapable reality is that the most junior people are making rejection decisions. Sometimes work experience staff make rejection decisions in order to clear slushpile backlogs. It’s inevitable that occasional mistakes are going to be made and potential bestsellers overlooked by inexperienced staff.
What an author can actually do
As an author there are only limited things you can do to minimise the effect of mistakes. Firstly, you can send your proposal to as many publishers as your research indicates could be interested. Secondly, you can attempt to leapfrog the most junior editorial assistants by phoning each publishing company and asking for the name of the commissioning editor or other editors and addressing your proposal directly to a named individual. They may pass it on to a junior editor, but if they glance at it and the title grabs their attention they may ask for the submission to be given careful consideration.
I’ve done this many times: when books are submitted to me directly I don’t read them because that’s the job of my editors and I don’t have time to read them all, but I might glance at the concept and title and will sometimes write a comment on a Post-It note such as ‘please reject’ or ‘sounds interesting’.
Re-submitting to the same publisher
A final option open to an author who thinks they may have been rejected by mistake is to re-submit to the same publisher. Larger publishers keep databases of authors and book titles, so they’ll know if something comes back again. So if you do re-submit, be honest about it and say so in your letter. It doesn’t impress a publisher to see an author sending a proposal back that they’ve already rejected so you have to work extra hard to win them over, otherwise they’ll think you’re wasting their time. So how can you avoid annoying them?
01
Rewrite from the criticism
Rewrite the book in accordance with any constructive criticism you may have received in the original rejection.
02
Tell them the market moved
Inform the publisher that some external factors have changed since you first submitted your proposal. Perhaps a similar book to yours has become a hit and you think the publisher could compete by taking on your book.
03
Your profile has changed
Inform the publisher that your public profile has increased or is about to increase due to publicity you have achieved.