What Are The Odds Of Getting Published?
by Wendy Keller Today’s issue is about that bane of authorship: rejection. Rejection is always part of the sales cycle, but many people are not prepared for the numbers of rejections they will receive as they begin their publishing career. The facts below will probably help you understand the odds. Then we’ll talk about how to beat them: 1) Agencies like mine typically reject 99.5 of everything they see. Out of close to 500 queries a month (electronic and surface mail) we receive, we invite perhaps 50 proposals for review. Out of that fifty, perhaps one or sometimes two is ready to be delivered to publishers. 2) Editors take projects from agents. There are about 1600 agents in the USA , and only about 25% of us are actually actively selling books. There are only about 20 editors tops for any particular subject in the major new york houses – all totaled! These same 20 people receive projects from hundreds of agents. Do the math and consider how many they see in a year! 3) An average, ov
