It’s happened ladies and gentlemen my rejection cherry has been popped and vastly sooner than I anticipated hearing back from the publisher.
What did she say?
Despite the engaging read, I am sorry to say that I have to pass on your series. The majority of readers in this category are looking for a murder that can be solved within the space of one book, and I don’t know that it would be possible for us to find commercial success by breaking out of that formula and requiring the reader to invest in three books to discover the serial killer.
Ok. Sure.
Except when I pitched the series to her, I made it clear that despite murders being solved in books one and two, the Dismember Killer would not be caught until book 3 and she still asked to see the manuscript of book 1.
Reading between the lines?
The book sucks and she wanted to be kind or maybe avoid any drama from would be authors. LOL.
Which brings me back to that same old grind. Maybe the reason all the things I do for marketing don’t work for me when they work for other people is I’m just not starting with a good book.
Sigh.
T.A. Henry 
Wow, where did you get ‘not good book’ from ‘despite the engaging read’? Editors and Agents don’t have time to let you down easy. I would take every word in that at face value. She was engaged and liked the read and therefore your writing. I would even take from it that she liked Book I. But, it doesn’t fit the formula that markets well. Mysteries, like romances, have a very tight formula that readers expect. That’s what she told you. She also, apparently, read the whole thing since she knows it wasn’t solved. If it sucked or even was mediocre, she would not have spent her time to read to the end. This is what I’d call a greatly successful rejection. Approval and validation with suggestions of an overall paradigm change if you want that market. She’s telling you that you have an engaging toolbox if you want to tinker with content. Congrats! I think it’s amazing progress. 🙂
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Thank you
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Ah, I’ve had feelings like this about all my books when things don’t seem to be going well. As Sheri says in her comment, I think the problem is more with not fitting a formula for commercial success than “the book sucks.”
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“all the things I do for marketing don’t work for me when they work for other people” – a sweeping statement there! I’d say there are a lot of people who do a lot of things that don’t work. Patience, perseverance, trial and error, progress tiny step by tiny step – that’s the only attitude that keeps me going. And publishers, of course, are notoriously averse to any form of risk.
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Indeed. and if she hadn’t been warned going in, I might accept her rejection at face value. I think she was being kind.
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Hmm… Probably not worth pondering what goes on in agents’/publishers’ minds. I’ve got excited on a number of occasions (well, three), only for it to fall through eventually.
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I haven’t really chased trad pub. But i have failed spectacularly in getting the world to find my previous indie published novels, so I thought I would give it a whirl.
That said, I’ll publish all three this year, indie.
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