Everyone passed on your book. Now what?

Did you flame out on submission? Did your publisher pass on your option? Did both of those things happen in a row? Here's my counsel for dealing with big rejection.

What if everyone passes on my book?

Everyone passed or ghosted. What now?

My publisher passed on my option proposal. Is this the end of my career?

My publisher passed on my option proposal—AND my agent took it out widely, and everyone else passed too. This is DEFINITELY the end of my career, isn’t it?

I’m going to answer all these questions in this week’s newsletter.

I’m pretty sure every author who’s ever gone on submission has asked the first, and as major publishers grow ever more conservative with acquisitions—particularly in nonfiction—more and more are asking the latter.

But first, let me give you a little anxiety-inoculant lecture I like to give my clients.

Remember that a book deal is a freelance gig, not a summary judgment of one’s value as a person or even a writer.

Yes: book pitches require more speculative effort than whatever you’d send to a magazine or newspaper.

Yes: if you’re writing fiction, they require a LOT more.

And yes: if you get the gig, the pay’s generally much better than what passes for compensation elsewhere. (Big 5 advances generally amount to at least $1/word, if not more—AND you don’t have to chase them for checks.)

Still: a book deal is just a freelance gig. Nothing more, nothing less. You pitch your work to editors and then they say yes or no. Most of them say no. Sometimes all of them say no.

For many authors, all of them say no. It might happen to you. And if it happens, it’ll have no bearing on the independent odds of whatever project(s) you pitch to publishers in the future. All it’ll mean is that you’ve made a business pitch to a small group of potential partners, and in turn, they’ve made the subjective decision that your pitch isn’t a match for them or their market at this time.

This is a professional frustration comparable to an unsuccessful application for a(n admittedly exciting) temp job or fellowship. If a setback like that wouldn’t send you to bed for days, this one shouldn’t.

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^I’ve been saying things like this to clients for at least a decade—and I’m surprised that to this day, not one of them’s laughed in my face.

I mean, it’s all true. Book deals are just freelance gigs. You shouldn’t fall apart if your pitch(es) don’t work out; rejection isn’t some kind of professional scarlet letter.

Still: oh my God, that I would have the unmitigated gall to lecture anyone about rejection anxiety when it is the FOUNDATIONAL IMPULSE OF MY ENTIRE PERSONALITY. Do you think I’m this funny because I’m comfortable being known?

…Anyway:

As a literary agent, I want to reassure you that professional rejection is not as big a deal as you think, no matter how far along you are in your career.

I’m going to reassure you in detail shortly.

Before I do, though, I just wanted to say that wow oh wow do I get it as a human being: the unhinged longing, the loneliness, the desperation and fear to be seen; the years of climbing and hoping and querying; the lunatic shame of handing your heart and effort—ugh, effort—to another, only to watch them go silent or say “no thanks.”

Rejection sucks. It sucks even if you are the healthiest emotional specimen on Earth. If you have open attachment wounds, however, it sucks like someone pressure-washing those wounds with salted sewage.

And also: in an objective, professional sense, it’s okay.

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OK, so: What if everyone passes on my book?