On Rejection of Your Work

Note: This piece is an orphaned bit of writing that’s never found a home. So here goes.

If you are going to work for yourself, you have to make peace with massive amounts of rejection. Both formal and informal.

Author Kurt Vonnegut kept the rejection slips he received from publishers as he tried to sell his first short stories and novels. He used the rejection letters as scratch paper. He had so many of them that his museum and library still has a massive pile of rejection slips that Vonnegut never got around to using.

I aspire to that level of cool.

The first three things to understand about rejection are this.

1. Rejection is not a statement about your worth as a builder, artist, writer or bed bug enthusiast. It’s a far more complex equation than, “Do you like me? Circle YES or NO.”

2. Rejection is not forever – just for now. When you are rejected from a show or publication or baby shower, it’s about one moment. Tomorrow, next week or next year are still on the table. And that is if – if – you can be gracious and show a little humanity toward the person who just rejected you.

3. Sometimes a rejection is a question: “Are you serious?”

Here at Lost Art Press, we reject people all the time. In fact, we rarely accept unsolicited queries. Why is that? Because publishing companies that take unsolicited manuscripts or queries are:

1. … giant corporate behemoths that can hire thousands of 1099 goons to read manuscripts and flag them for the salaried editors above them to consider.

2. … bereft of ideas and capital and hoping that someone will throw a bone over the fence that will put them in the black.

3. … companies that want to charge you money to edit, publish and promote your “great idea.”

We are none of those. We have enough ideas for books to last another 100 years. The craft is endless, and when we start thinking about book ideas, we produce them by the dozens. We have so many ideas that we actually forget about some of them, even when they’re written down.

So how do authors find us? Or how do we find authors?

Consider three scenarios:

1. Hi! I’d like to write a book about paint. Maybe I’ll look into historical and modern commercial methods of making the paint and write a book exploring those. Is that something you would publish?

2. Hi! I think that making milk paint from fresh milk might be a better way to go than using dried milk paint. If I research this idea, would you publish my book?

3. Hi! I’ve spent the last two years making hundreds of batches of milk paint using inexpensive fresh ingredients and household tools. I’ve written this book about it. I also printed it out, bound it by hand and made a cover painted with the milk paint. If you reject it, that’s cool. I’ll probably give it away or self-publish it.

About 99 percent of the queries we receive sound like Nos. 1 and 2. Yes, there might be a book there. But you need to venture on a journey of self-discovery first to find out.

When someone comes at us with a No. 3, we will read it. And we will give it some real thought. Why? Because this person is serious, dedicated to the topic and fanatical enough about their idea to write it all down – whether or not it has commercial value.

Sometimes we reject these fully realized/edited/illustrated/designed ideas. We are not going to publish a book on building fireplace mantles using a table saw and a shaper. I mean: Hell, it’s probably a great book, but it won’t sell well with our readers.

So when we get ill-begotten submissions of completed books that are fully realized and written by people who are batshit crazy like us, what do we do? We help them find a home for their crazy. We’ll recommend a publisher who is looking for this particular brand of nutjobbery. Or we’ll help you find a way to get it published independently.

If you can prove you are serious, you will get serious help. Not just from us, but from the world at large.

The bottom line is that most queries from people are “fishing expeditions.” The queries are: Maybe I can get Tree Structure Name Publishing Co. to bite on this book about fasteners. Or charcuterie boards. Or router jigs. Or whatever the hell it is they need right now to fill up their publishing schedule.

These “fishing expeditions” are how woodworking publishing worked for about 100 years. It’s why woodworking books have sucked ass for the last 50 years.

And it’s why we’re not having it.

So what makes us say “yes?” This is going to make me sound like an a-hole, but here goes. Yes, you have to have a compelling idea. Yes, you have to have enough personality to make it interesting (note that I didn’t say you had to be a good writer). And yes, we have to be reasonably sure that you won’t flake out on us (we have flushed away so much time and money on people who simply vanished or lost interest in their manuscript).

But there’s one more factor, and it sounds unkind, I know. We have to want to work with you. Would you get into a multi-year relationship that will cost you at least $50,000 and 500 hours of your life with someone who sent you a quick note over the internet?

I won’t.

So this advice goes out to anyone who has an idea for a piece of furniture, a class, a book or a tool. If you really love it, then build it, teach it, write it, make it. If you get some recognition for it, or encounter someone along the way to help, then count yourself as lucky.

And if you don’t, well, welcome to the world of working for yourself.