Gold19:

Golden Rule No 19:

How to handle the

inevitable rejections

There are few authors who get through a career without receiving a rejection of their work. I have had 66 books published, and ideas for nearly as many turned down. You must try, try and try again if you are convinced your book is worthy of publication.

Be careful not to send out tired-looking manuscripts that have obviously been read and re-read. If it keeps coming back, read the book (or synopsis) pretending you are a publisher and try to see where you can make edits and improvements.

There are scores of instances of books turned down that eventually became best sellers. Frederick Forsyth's Day of the Jackal is a classic example. It kept coming back to him as being unpublishable. But he knew in his heart that it was a winner, and persevered until he found a publisher who shared his view and was prepared to take the chance with what was a daring and controversial storyline.

Joseph Conrad had twenty years of rejections before his genius was at last recognised. Arthur Conan Doyle had to hawk his stories around before Sherlock Holmes became one of the world's best-known fictional sleuths.

One more lesson in perseverance comes from New Yorker J.P. Donleavy. His classic The Ginger Man came back from 45 publishers before it was finally accepted. Don't give up. Somewhere there is a publisher for you (provided you have got your book properly prepared).

Take on board the fact that a rejection may not necessarily be because your book is not good enough for publication but because you sent it to the wrong type of publisher.

If you are determined to have your work published and cannot find a publisher who shares your confidence in the project you may want to consider going down the self-publishing road.

My personal view is that you should never give a publisher money. But there are plenty of "vanity" publishers who will accept a fat fee to print off and publish an agreed number of copies of your book.

Then you have the little matter of selling the books, remembering that you are several thousand pounds out of pocket before you start.

If you have got a deep pocket and are desperate to get your book published then put it in the hands of a "vanity" publisher. But, please, make that a last resort.

Better than putting money into the hands of a publisher, why not try publishing the book yourself? As you are here on the Internet reading this means that you are almost certain to have word-processing facilities. So that's the typesetting part settled. Look in the Yellow Pages for a small local printer, and get a quote from him for the number of books you are confident that you can sell, and hand over your computer disk to him.

Obviously you will discuss design and pagination with the printer. An extra outlay will be for a colour jacket. You should be able to find a local illustrator who will help for a fee of around £100. There are freelance editors around who will edit your book for in the region of £200, depending on the number of words.

If you are not going to enlist the assistance of an editor, pay extra attention to the legal side and double check every sentence. If possible, get somebody who is literate to read the manuscript for you before you go to print because once an error has passed your eye it is often the case that you will never spot it. I speak from painful experience (see how I lost £30,000 in the courtroom because of a typing mistake, Golden Rule 18).

Assuming you are going to try to get your book on to the orthodox route with the main book shops, you will need to get an ISBN code from the Standard Book Numbering Agency. They cost just £50 plus VAT for ten.

Let me tug on your reins before you go racing off to publish your own book. Back in the 1970s I had an idea for a small book called TVIQ, which challenged people's knowledge of television programmes and personalities. I had 5,000 printed, and then spent what was then the considerable sum of £2,000 advertising it in two national newspapers. I needed to sell 2,000 to break even, the rest would be clear profit. My total sales were 138 (see a Feast of Failures).

So be warned. Self publishing can hurt you in the pocket as well as the pride. But it is a lot of fun (and hard though satisfying work) doing it.

Have I done enough yet to earn the price of that meal? And now on to the final Golden Rule which I hope will help you get that book published.

Golden Rule 19 is to keep trying when the rejections start coming in. Never send out a tired-looking manuscript and re-read your work to see if it will benefit from some editing and improvements.