Find Your Bliss by J.P. Hansen

Author:J.P. Hansen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser
Published: 2016-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Other Authors Who Turned Rejection into Success

It’s easy to pick up a best-selling book either online or, God forbid, off the bookshelf, and think every author swims in a money pool of Benjamins and enjoys ridiculous success. Some do—especially the best sellers—but most do not. The percentage of authors who earn more than $50,000 per year is in single digits. You just heard my story, and full disclosure, I’m partial to writers who found success against tremendous odds—and limitations. The following are some inspiring success stories that almost didn’t happen. When you finish, you’ll agree that literary agents and publishers can be notorious chattering monkeys (not mine, of course).

Gone with the Wind was turned down by 38 publishers before breezing onto the bestseller list.

Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen wrote the first Chicken Soup for the Soul book and were turned down by 33 publishers in New York and another 90 at the American Booksellers Association convention in Anaheim, California, before Health Communications finally agreed to publish it. The major New York publishers said, “It is too nicey-nice,” and, “Nobody wants to read a book of short little stories.”2 To date, more than 250 Chicken Soup titles are in print with over 500 million copies sold worldwide. Chicken Soup for the Soul is now one of the world’s best brands.

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies was rejected by 20 publishers. One denounced the future classic with these words: “An absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull.”3 This rubbish apparently is valuable to readers (more than 15 million copies sold), educators (the book has been required reading in high schools for nearly 50 years), and movie-goers (it has been adapted for film twice).

Dr. Seuss’s first children’s book, And to Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street, was rejected by 27 publishers. The 28th publisher, Vanguard Press, sold 6 million copies of the book.

The Diary of Anne Frank was rejected by 15 publishers. One bliss-blocking publisher actually responded, “The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the ‘curiosity’ level.”4

Jonathan Livingston Seagull went 0 for 18 for Richard Bach before Macmillan finally published it in 1970. By 1975 it had sold more than 7 million copies in the United States alone.

Richard Hooker spent over 7 years writing his novel entitled M*A*S*H, then was rejected by 21 publishers before Morrow decided to publish it. Morrow laughed all the way to the bank—even more than viewers when the show became a monster TV series, best-selling book, and a blockbuster movie.

Gertrude Stein, one of Nobel Prize–recipient Ernest Hemingway’s most trusted and primary editors, submitted poems to editors for nearly 20 years before one was finally accepted.

Nobel Prize-winner William Faulkner received the following rejection for his classic Sanctuary from one publisher: “Good God, I can’t publish this!”5

John Grisham’s first novel, A Time to Kill, was rejected by a dozen publishers and 18 literary agents before he finally sold it 5 years after writing it.

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