How to Publish a Book - Rejection

 (Excerpt from How to Publish a Book by Timothy L. Marx, 1928)

I recently received a rejection from a notorious literary agent who I won't name because they are also very litigious. This is of course fine. Not everybody is going to love your book and there are many reasons for rejection beyond quality. It could be that they are about to publish something similar, or that they currently have as many clients as they can manage, or that they are a vindictive so-and-so who, unbeknownst to me, has been involved in a vicious feud with Cuthers' father since they were at Eton together.

Even so, it is important not to take rejection personally, even if it is entirely personal. I had intended to keep the news of this particular rejection from Cuthers, but somehow word reached him via the gossip vine that this tiresomely grudgeful agent has been going around saying the novel is the worst thing to happen to English literature since Thomas Chatterton visited the chemists. Cuthers became so enraged by this that Barrington had to advise him that such language was against club membership rules.

The rage has continued to burn all week, very literally in one instance which required me to form a one-man fire brigade. Dogger Davidson tipped me off that he had just seen Cuthers leave the club with a box of matches and arsonous intent. After quickly finding the intended victim's address from the telephone directory, I hailed a cab and made my way there post-haste. I had hoped to arrive before the dangerous fool, but on arrival I found Cuthers lighting strips of newspaper and attempting to push them through the letterbox. Fortunately he was as incompetent an arsonist as he was a writer, and he was doing more damage to himself than his critic's residence.

I gave him a royal dressing-down and sent him packing. He acquiesced with an indecent rapidity. I didn't want him to burn the house down, but if one feels that strongly about something one shouldn't just give up at the first obstacle. There was still a smell of burning in the air following his departure, possibly from the sheer amount of newspaper he had worked his way through. There was a nagging fear in the back of my mind that he may have been more successful before my arrival. That fear nagged its way to the front of my mind. I put my nose to the letterbox and smelled smoke. I couldn't risk walking away if there was a chance that something was burning within, so I rang the bell vigorously, but nobody came. It would have to be up to me to deal with the emergency.

The doorway was sheltered, and so with no ready alternative I unbuttoned my trousers and poked my chap through the letterbox. It was an unpleasant means of extinguishing a fire, but on the whole I thought it less of a problem than the whole house burning down. There were only two problems. The first was that nothing was immediately forthcoming. The second was that as soon as things had taken a turn for the productive, the butler answered the door. There we both stood, me with my chap hanging out like a Blackpool sunbather and him with wet trouser legs. 

"I can explain everything," I said, although I had no desire to explain any of it. He stared at me with the sort of benign malignance his class thrive on. I imagined how explaining everything would go, and so hoping that all my publicity work was as hopeless as my sales figures indicate, I turned and bolted away, with my tail literally between my legs.