For the majority who received a rejection letter, we offer the following:
Author's Name
Rejection Statistic
Success Results
L.M. Montgomery
5 rejections for "Anne of Green Gables"
50+ million copies sold.
Yann Martel
5 rejections for "The Life of Pi"
3+ million copies sold.
J.K. Rowling
12 rejections for "Harry Potter" (12 is considered extremely low in the industry)
Book was "accepted" by an 8-year-old daughter of the acquisition editor who agreed to publish but told Rowling to "get a day job". Rowling's estimated net worth is just less than $1 billion, enough to make her the world's richest author, and 'richer than the queen' (Queen Elizabeth) according to The Sunday Times.
Stephenie Meyer
14 rejections for "Twilight"
17+ million copies sold, 91 weeks on the New York Times Bestsellers.
Anne Frank
16 rejections for "The Diary of Anne Frank"
25+ million copies sold. "The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the ‘curiosity’ level," wrote one rejection.
WM Paul Young
20 rejections for "The Shack"
15+ million copies sold.
Frank Herbert
23 rejections for "Dune"
Best-selling science-fiction novel of all time. 20+ million copies sold.
Audrey Niffenegger
25 rejections for "The Time Traveler's Wife"
7+ million copies sold.
Dr. Seuss
27 rejections for "Mulberry Street" (author almost burned book)
$300+ million in sales. The 9th best-selling fiction author of all time.
John Grisham
28 rejections for "A Time to Kill"
$250+ million in sales.
James Patterson
31 rejections for "The Thomas Berryman Number"
$220+ million in sales.
Margaret Mitchell
38 rejections for "Gone with the Wind"
30+ million copies sold.
Kathryn Stockett
60 rejections for "The Help"
10+ million copies sold.
Jack Canfield & Mark Victor Hansen
140 rejections for "Chicken Soup for the Soul"
$125+ million in sales.
Alex Haley
200 consecutive rejections for "Roots"
8+ million copies sold.
Louis L’Amour
200+ rejections
$330 million in sales.
Jack London
600 rejections before selling a single short story.
The "House Of Happy Walls" is a published collection of some of the 600 rejections he received.
Undefinable number of rejections:
Meg Cabot
3 years of continual rejection for "The Princess Diaries". Rejection letter pile becomes so large that "it cannot be lifted".
15+ million copies sold.
Agatha Christie
5 years of continual rejection.
Book sales in excess of $2 billion.
Try again everyone. Try try again.
"I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalms 139:4).