Unless an author has a colossal ego, they feel a little down after receiving a rejection letter from a literary agent or publisher. I was not the exception. In responding to or internalizing rejection, the author needs to tap into those same reserves of tenacity and resilience that enabled him to complete the book.

I never approached publishers with the book, but sold it to approximately forty-five literary agents. I received many rejection letters. To my pleasant surprise, I also received a letter of interest from a prominent Los Angeles agent. The performance depended on him making the novel entirely non-fiction, something he was unwilling to do. A first-time author is highly unlikely to get a literary agent. It rarely happens. If an agent hires a neophyte author, it is very likely that concessions will be demanded of that author. Having an agent certainly helps open doors, but it’s not essential. More and more authors are getting by on their own without an agent and they are having a lot of success.

The ultimatum from the literary agent made me even more determined to see the book reach an audience on my terms. To retain creative control, I opted to use a print-on-demand publisher. In addition to offering the book on Amazon and through four other e-retailers, I’ve released the work as an audiobook. In May 2009, it was the second most popular download on Podiobooks.com, with 8,000 downloads in 4 days, and it stayed in their top ten list for six weeks, so it seems the book is finding that audience.

The point of sharing this experience is to underscore the fact that the best way to deal with rejection is to minimize the risk of rejection. If you’re a first-time author and the first publishers you approach are the conglomerate publishers, you’re setting yourself up for rejection. If you are a first-time author and send inquiry letters to the literary agents at CAA and William Morris, you are setting yourself up for rejection. If you’re a first-time author and you submit your galley to the New York Times or Atlantic Weekly for a book review, you’re setting yourself up for rejection. It’s nice to be confident in your skill set as an author and your final product, but when it comes to the first dance at the cotillion, don’t start with the heirs of the Fortune 500. Show off your grace and prowess on the ballroom with a lesser suitor and allow the titans of the industry to take notice and go after you. Bat those eyes and work those hips. It is much more desirable to be wooed than to woo in this business. Be patient and build a reputation for your book and yourself as an author. Create a buzz and allow for the ripple effect. If you can generate enough interest at the grassroots level for a book that has merit and commercial potential, the larger publishers and agents will come to you.

Reviews are more of a wild card. Even a commercial success can be criticized by critics. As an English Literature student, I had to work hard to break convention and write honestly and from the heart. I am not suggesting that you forget the rules of grammar or the three-act construction. What I am suggesting is that traditional and limited “literary merit” can be distinguished from contemporary and broader substantive merit. A book may not be considered a classic, but if it’s a good story well told, it will reach its intended audience and do more to establish your reputation as an author than critical acclaim. The critic who writes a negative review often focuses on the literary merit of a work, and not on whether it is simply a well-crafted and entertaining book. The focus is often on whether the work qualifies as a “great book” using the classics as the criteria. This is not realistic, nor is it particularly relevant to anyone other than newspaper and magazine publishers who know that negative reviews sell more copies than positive reviews. Regardless of how neutral or altruistic you think the critic is, they are, like the rest of us, fatally flawed humans with prejudices. And those biases taint their reviews. At the end of the day, the old adage, “any press is good press” holds true here, as long as there’s some positive talk to make up for the hatchet jobs.

For me personally, rejection or a critical review strengthens my resolve to achieve my goals for the book. It helps motivate me to be more creative in coming up with alternative alternatives to the main marketing and distribution channels. If a particular agent, editor, or reviewer responded negatively to the work, how do I contact an agent, editor, or reviewer who might be more receptive to my story and its submission? Always keep in mind that publishing is a business. A rejection is not necessarily a comment on the quality of your story or the telling of your story; often it is nothing more than a comment on its perceived commerciality.