Vanessa

I have received a number of rejection letters from publishers and agents which all stated either '...they read it with interest but...' or '...found it an entertaining read, but...'.

Is this their standard letter?

eleutheromaniac

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Spudley

Firstly, well done for having the courage to actually submit your work, as well as the perseverance to finish it in the first place -- you've already got further than a lot of hopeful writers ever manage.


For an editor who has to reject loads of pieces every day, it can be very easy to slip into a habit of sending loads of very similar rejection slips. In the end, there's only so many ways of saying 'no'.

The busier editors will definitely have standard rejection slips - they are simply too busy for it to be otherwise. Editors of smaller publications will have more time to actually read and consider your work, and make a helpful response, but even the smaller publishers get a lot of submissions, so you can't count on anything.

So if an editor does include comments about your work in their reply, you should take them on board - all editors are genuinely looking for the gems hidden in among the piles of work they get through, so if they take the time to give you a personal comment on your work, it means they have taken the time to read it, and they do think you have potential. It's perfectly possible to be rejected even if you work is good enough, maybe because the editor already had enough material to publish, or because it wasn't quite the right subject matter...

Don't let it worry you. All writers get rejection slips, and most get a lot of them before they get published. And there are a lot of books that went on to be best sellers had previously been rejected by a whole load of publishers.

Hope that helps

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Vanessa

Thanks to all.

But I am not worried. I felt there was something missing, but after receiving a good deal of advice from this site and some of its members, the cobwebs have been brushed aside and I feel as fresh as a daisy and ready to start on the next part of my journey.

Wyndham

As someone who has received many, many rejections, I can tell you that , no, they are definitely not all the same. Some are extremely polite. Glimmer Train is one everyone mentions. They don't just say that you should submit again; they say that they would like to see more of your work. You stop buying into it after the first ten times, however.

Then there are the downright rude ones. The worst I got was a "Thank you, no" scribbled at the top of my cover letter. Another one that really got me was a page with "SORRY" printed all over it in big, bold letters.

With some practice, you can learn to read between the lines. For example, a specific or detailed comment probably means that they really did like your submission, but it just didn't make the final cut. On the other hand, one general comment about your good ending or great characters probably means they just comment on every story they get. Also keep track of the time element. If you get a rejection before the estimated response time, assume they hated it right off. If you have to wait up to or past the response time, it often means that your story was seriously considered. At a good magazine, that can mean something.

sully474

The funniest one that I ever got was one that some guy sent back that said that told me to give up writing and made fun of my entire story and stuff. I wrote back to him and said that I was going to sue him for emotional damage or something like that. Then the guy went and wrote me that he was so sorry, and he was having a bad day, so he accidently took it out on me. He also said that he changed his mind and wanted to put it in the magazine. I didn't let hm though. It felt too much like blackmail if I had. I just wrote the guy back as a joke. I didn't really care what he said about my writing, because I'm sure that every writer has had something they wrote criticized once or twice. Like Dickens was for Hard Times.

So to answer your question, no they are not all the same. Most of them are fairly similar though.

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Vanessa

Well, I have received 5 rejections back from the 12 I sent off, within the first week and am still waiting for the rest, so I am assuming the ones I have received back they didn't like it straight off - although I am slightly confused in that all of them said '...they read it with interest but...' or '...found it an entertaining read, but...'.

But I'll just have to wait and see what the rest say.