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JK Rowling posts letters of rejection on Twitter to help budding authors JK Rowling posts letters of rejection on Twitter to help budding authors
(about 4 hours later)
Harry Potter author JK Rowling has shared two rejection letters she received from publishers while writing under her pen name, Robert Galbraith. The Harry Potter author JK Rowling has shared some withering rebuffs publishers sent to her alter ego Robert Galbraith, in an effort to comfort aspiring authors.
The famous author posted them on Twitter to encourage other writers. Rowling posted the rejection letters on Twitter after a request from a fan. They related to The Cuckoo’s Calling, her first novel as Galbraith. But Rowling also saw Harry Potter turned down several times before the boy wizard became one of the greatest phenomenons in children’s literature, with sales of more than 400m copies worldwide.
She posted the letters relating to her first post-Potter novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling, after a fan asked for a picture of a rejection letter. Asked how she kept motivated, she tweeted: “I had nothing to lose and sometimes that makes you brave enough to try.”
She said: “The Potter ones are now in a box in my attic, but I could show you RGalbraith’s?”. When she pitched under the name Galbraith without revealing her true identity, she faced many more snubs. Since then, Galbraith has published three successful novels but the first was rejected by several publishers, and Rowling was even advised to take a writing course.
By popular request, 2 of @RGalbrath's rejection letters! (For inspiration, not revenge, so I've removed signatures.) pic.twitter.com/vVoc0x6r8WBy popular request, 2 of @RGalbrath's rejection letters! (For inspiration, not revenge, so I've removed signatures.) pic.twitter.com/vVoc0x6r8W
One of the letters, from publishing house Constable & Robinson, said: “I regret that we have reluctantly come to the conclusion that we could not publish it [your book] with commercial success.” Rowling erased the signatures when she posted the letters online, saying her motive was “inspiration not revenge”. However, she did not reveal the full text of the most brutal brush-off, which came by email from one of the publishers who had also rejected Harry Potter.
The letter also suggested she “double-check in a helpful bookshop” or in the biannual “buyer’s guide of Bookseller magazine” about who the current publishers of her fiction genre were. Rowling said she could not share the Potter rejections because they “are now in a box in my attack” before offering the Galbraith letters. The kindest and most detailed rejection came from Constable & Robinson, who – despite the advice about a writing course – included helpful tips on how to pitch to a publisher (“as on book jackets – don’t give away the ending!”). The publisher added: “I regret that we have reluctantly come to the conclusion that we could not publish it with commercial success.”
The second letter, from Creme de la Crime, explained that the publisher had become part of Severn House Publishers and was “unable to accept new submissions at the moment”. The short note from publishers Crème de la Crime said the firm had become part of another publishing group and was not accepting new submissions.
Related: JK Rowling tells story of alter ego Robert GalbraithRelated: JK Rowling tells story of alter ego Robert Galbraith
The author Joanne Harris joined the Twitter discussion, saying she got so many rejections for her popular 1999 novel Chocolat that she “made a sculpture ...”. When The Cuckoo’s Calling eventually found a publisher in 2013, it was achieving respectable sales before the secret of its authorship broke, and it then shot to the top of the bestseller lists.
In reply to a fan who asked if any of the publishers who had rejected her had turned down Harry Potter, she said: “Yes, the publisher who first turned down Harry also sent RGalbraith his rudest rejection (by email)!”. Joanne Harris, author of a string of hit novels, joined the Twitter discussion to say she had so many rejections for her 1999 Chocolat, later adapted as a Hollywood movie, that she had piled them up and “made a sculpture”.
She ended the conversation by giving a fan advice on getting the courage to “risk it all”, telling them: “I had nothing to lose and sometimes that makes you brave enough to try.” Rowling, Harris, and their literary disciples are in excellent company. Eimear McBride, the 2014 Bailey’s prize winner for her first novel A Girl is a half formed Thing, accumulated a drawer full of rejection letters before a chance conversation led to her book being published by Galley Beggar, a tiny independent publisher in Norwich.
The Harry Potter series has sold more than 400m books and Rowling has won multiple awards. The eight film adaptations of the novels have been named as the second-highest grossing franchise and film series of all time. James Joyce’s epic masterpiece Ulysses, regarded as one of the greatest Irish novels, was repeatedly rejected by baffled publishers before finally being published in a tiny edition in Paris in 1922 by his friend Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare & Co bookshop: a copy of the first edition sold a few years ago for £275,000.
T S Eliot, in his role as an editor at Faber and Faber, turned down George Orwell’s Animal Farm as “unconvincing”. Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 was rejected as “not funny on any intellectual level”, and John le Carré ‘s first spy novel, The Spy who came in from the Cold, was passed from one publisher to another with the withering comment “You’re welcome to le Carré – he hasn’t got any future”. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick attracted the memorable response “First, we must ask, does it have to be a whale?”: it did.