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Why Don't They Say What They Mean?

Decoding the Language of Agents & Editors

by Nina L. Diamond

“The editor wrote that my book was great, and that she thought it would sell a lot of copies,” Patricia recalls. “But that she wouldn’t publish it because it didn’t address her particular personal problems! Silly me, I thought that a publisher’s goal was to sell a lot of books. I guess it’s really to publish only books that, in the case of self-help, fix the neuroses of their editors.”

In one way, Patricia’s experience isn’t rare in publishing: other editors have also accepted or rejected books based on personal quirks. In another way, though, Patricia’s experience is rare: a rejection letter that gives the real reason for the thumbs down. In this case, that reason was mighty absurd, of course, as are many of the other reasons authors are given. But, hey, at least the editor was honest.

Which is more than you can say for the agent who rejected Joe’s historical memoir.

“He wrote me that there’s no market for my book,” says Joe, who has already had one non-fiction book published, as well as numerous magazine and newspaper articles.

By anybody’s standards, Joe is a gifted writer who did, indeed, write a book that plenty of people would want to read.

As it turns out, the agent who rejected Joe didn’t really mean that Joe’s book has no market. It’s just one of the handy rejection phrases the agent uses whether they’re true or not.

So, why did the agent, whom we’ll call Fred, really reject Joe’s book? Because he didn’t think it would bring an advance of $50,000 or more, and Fred doesn’t consider representing books that will sell for less than that. Fred routinely tells authors he can’t represent their books for a variety of reasons – some about content, others about marketing—when he’s really rejecting them purely for monetary reasons. He just doesn’t tell them that. Perhaps he thinks it’ll make him sound too mercenary.

The irony is that agents are wrong about advances all the time: books they expect to bring big advances don’t; and books they expect to bring in modest advances are chosen to be large advance, lead titles.

“Are agents book lovers or business people?” I ask Fred.

“They try to be both,” he says, but choosing books to represent comes down to “allocating time and making choices” that must be ultimately based on money. After all, agents have bills to pay, and since most are based in New York, that overhead is pretty steep.

Fred says only under limited circumstances would he agree to represent a book that he thought would be likely to bring an advance of $50,000 or less.

“If I already represent the author and they’ve brought in more in the past,” he explains. “Or if I thought that the royalties would be high. In rare cases, I’d agree to represent it if I thought the book was of great quality.”

In rare cases?

Yeah, digest that one for a moment. It’s the foundation upon which our modern publishing industry is based. A shoddy foundation upon which all of publishing’s problems rest…with a wobble.

Who represents books that bring less than $50,000 advances?

“New agents, or those who think they’ll get more but don’t, or those who think the author’s future books will bring more money,” says Fred, adding that he hasn’t represented a book that he knew wouldn’t bring in a large advance. “I can’t think of any case where I’ve done it, where I didn’t think it also had a financial potential.”

Keep in mind that Fred doesn’t work for one of the Top 20 agencies, those you’d expect to turn down anything that they believe would sell for less than six figures. Fred is just a good agent who represents some mid-list clients and a few well-known lead title authors.

Fred is not an exception to the rule. When you pitch a book to an agent, odds are it’s an agent who thinks and acts just as Fred does. And the rejections you’ll get shouldn’t be taken literally, pun intended. Most of the time, you’re being rejected not for the reasons in the letter, but for money reasons.

Since most books sell for less than a $50,000 advance, most authors end up with agents who are on the lower end of the B-list, or on the C-list, so to speak: agents who cobble together a living by representing a lot of authors who sell to the major houses for $20,000 to $50,000 and the independents for under $20,000, most of the time well under.

And, these agents usually don’t have the sales skills, negotiating ability or clout to get their authors great contracts.

“Writers work very hard to learn their craft,” says a veteran editor we’ll call Ralph, who has his own imprint at a large independent publishing house. “What they don’t always understand is that they have to work just as hard to learn the business of publishing.”

When Ralph rejects a book, it’s because the book isn’t “written specifically for our target market,” he explains. His rejections are often misleading because they can lead the author to believe that content, style or quality is a problem when, in fact, those are fine, but simply don’t fit the extremely narrow target market of readers the publishing house relies on for almost all of their sales.

Even when agents and editors say what they mean, that doesn’t mean they’re right.

While it may appear that an agent’s job is to sell your book, and an editor’s job is to buy it on the publisher’s behalf, agents and editors have a priority that comes before selling and buying.

It’s long been said that an agent’s first job is to think of every reason, real or imagined, to say no to representing you, and that an editor’s first job is to think of every reason, real or imagined, not to buy your book.

Every literary agency receives from hundreds to thousands of queries every year. Agents can’t possibly say “Yes” to every author, or even every author with a great book. One New York literary agency, for example, reported that the agency receives 25,000 requests for representation per year. They say “Yes” to only twelve.

Editors also can’t buy every book that’s pitched to them.

How inaccurate and crazy do rejections get?

Bob recently received a rejection that said little other than that his novel “had too many adverbs,” he laughs. His novel actually had so few you could hardly find them. A few weeks after the Adverb Affair, Bob got the good news he’d been waiting for: a publisher fell in love with his book. And not a mention of adverbs, one way or the other.

Janet’s book, a professional memoir, was carefully written: Whenever she wrote about anything even remotely “dishy,” she left out names and identifying details.

“Most of the editors turned down my book because they said that since it didn’t dish dirt, they didn’t want to publish it,” Janet recalls. “And then, a few said just the opposite – that the book was a ‘tell all’ that was too hot to handle. Clearly, those editors hadn’t read the proposal and sample chapters. They probably just skimmed it.”

Janet hopes that the next round of editors will read, not just skim, her proposal, so they can make an informed decision.

Good luck. Most editors and agents don’t thoroughly read proposals, and misunderstand what little they are reading, and often, ultimately rejecting. That, in and of itself, is one of the best reasons why authors should pay little attention to what editors and agents say in their rejection letters, whether they say what they mean, or not.

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Nina L. Diamond is a journalist, essayist, and the author of Voices of Truth: Conversations with Scientists, Thinkers & Healers. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Omni, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and The Miami Herald.

Ms. Diamond was a writer and performer on Pandemonium, the National Public Radio (NPR) satirical humor program, for its entire run in Miami and select markets nationwide from 1984-1998. As an editor, she works frequently with other authors and journalists on both fiction and non-fiction.