This is perhaps the most stupid thing I believed but it is also the one most beginner writers think it’s the absolute truth. Perhaps not consciously, but at the back of their minds, it’s how they operate.
I used to believe that writing was like those amusement rides that have a stick with “you must be this tall to ride.” I thought there was a bar that said “You must be this good to be published.”
So I worked really hard and I got mad when I wasn’t accepted.
Do I mean that there aren’t any standards, that they accept just about anything. Well, listen here, chum, there are days… But mostly, yeah, they have standards. Mostly you have to be above a certain bar before you can get published.
The difference is this… Just because you clear the bar doesn’t mean you’ll be published. You have to hit the editor on the right day, with the right thing. He/she has to have the right opening for it. Your book might be the most brilliant thing since the lightbulb. It might be the most commercial thing since someone started a lively trade in stone axes. BUT if the editor doesn’t think so, you still won’t sell. And editors are only great gods of perception in their own minds. In the real world they’re human like everyone else. I know. I used to be an editor, for a while, and I didn’t get handed any superpowers.
When you get rejected, the reason could be as trivial as the editor feeling women who wear red dresses are disgusting, and your character wears a red dress in the first scene. Or it could be as complex as their publishing schedule. Or it could be you didn’t make the mark. But it rarely is JUST that last.
Publishing is not an exam. It’s not “pass, you’re in.” Being accepted by publishers means their vote of confidence that you’ll make them money.
How does that make you feel better? It probably doesn’t. Now you know you need craft AND luck, and if you’re like me and started making baby bonnets babies would mutate to have no heads. BUT all the same, it’s good to be aware of how things work. And maybe it will prevent you sending letters to editors saying “How dare you not accept my story? It fits your guidelines and it’s good enough.”
(No, I never sent a letter like that. But I got some when I was a small press editor. A few dozen.)
According To Hoyt 
I think we start out with a classroom outlook. We study, work hard, do well on the midterm and ace the final. That book deserves an “A” d***it. Where’s the report card, I mean, contract?
Instead we need to look at the ability to produce a publishable work as the diploma. We still have to job hunt. And even though we think we’d be a great fit at Boeing, if they aren’t hiring, we’d best send the manuscript off to Cesna.
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Now funnily enough I never had this one. I always had grasped that some utter drekk got published, and from somewhere I had picked up that many good books never did get published. But I believed, absolutely, that once published, quality would triumph, and that once published the books that really did well would be the ones taller than the bar… oh boy. That one could only work if distribution, marketing and covers were all equal – and that’s without factoring in name recognition (which makes a little more financial sense than the others). I am afraid that one – even if the figures you get from the publisher are reliable – is 99% false.
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Publisher figures… Speaking of the odds of a coin turning into a pink fluffy duck, middair. What would you say the chances were of two books in the same series (not Baen) selling over three times the amount in ebooks they supposedly sold in paper books for latest reporting period? And what would you think if I told you both of those books sold a precise round number? Not one of them, both of them? And what if I told you they both sold the same exact number?
And what would you think of a book (one of those above) that’s still in all bookstores a year after publication having a laydown of 5k copies, no reprints, and about 2/3 returns? (For the uninitiated, these days the average time on shelves, if you get on them at all is about 4 to six weeks. After that, if you haven’t sold and restocked once already and aren’t keeping selling, they send you back. And paperbacks that are returned are pulped.) Who knew the multiplications of the loaves and the fishes was applicable to books, eh?
Yeah, I thought so. Quack, quack, quack. And I don’t think that thing on the back of my neck is rain.
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So, do the odds change at all once you have gotten published a couple of times? In other words, does having something already published improve the outlook for the one you will try to sell next?
(Provided of course – at least when talking about novels – that the one you did sell didn’t hit the bestseller lists right away, I suppose that would help. Or, for the other alternative, if the published novel has already been out a few weeks and hasn’t sold at all, which I presume would mean nobody will by anything from you ever again. Unless you chance your name or something.)
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I’ve never had anything be out a few weeks and not sell at all. I’ve also never had anything hit the bestseller list. So, I’m your ideal test subject. And my answer would be “unfortunately no.” Not even with the same publishing house. Oh, if one of your novels does a brisk business, you’ll have an easier time selling the sequel. But an unrelated novel? Nope. the only advantage of your published status is that it MIGHT (emphasis on might) get you an answer faster because at least theoretically you circumvent the slush pile.
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Okay. That’s what I sort of thought.
I write slow, and so far I seem to drift either to fantasy or to sf no matter where I start so even if I do get published I’m probably never going to need multiple names for different types of series like you do. But perhaps I should make up a list of different pen names in case that so far hypothetical first published novel won’t sell. :)
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