The problem with using much-rejected classics … is that they disprove the argument.

Except that most authors don’t submit their manuscript 88 times. These stories demonstrate that great manuscripts can get rejected, repeatedly.

Your basic thesis is sound – it’s a lot less random than people usually think; and great manuscripts are far, far more likely to make it to print than middling manuscripts. But surely you don’t want to take your own metaphor literally and argue that there’s no random element at all; that editors might misjudge a manuscript’s saleability. Clearly, it’s possible for an overworked slush reader to pass over something that, given a lazy afternoon and little to do, might have proved to be a very entertaining piece. There are numerous bestsellers that I found unreadable, and would have rejected, had I been in the editor’s shoes.

Meanwhile, there is more information than ever on the internet concerning the formula, some magic set of rules and steps it takes to get published. There isn’t any formula. Good writers that spend most of their time writing and submitting instead of worrying about getting published will eventually succeed.

William Saroyan was rejected over 7,000 times before getting his first short story printed. Imagine that.

You need a marketable manuscript (which is absolutely the biggest “if” for any writer). You need to be smart about submission (do your research, and do it BEFORE you submit). You need to be persistent (perhaps even insanely persistent). If you are or do all those things, your chances really are pretty decent.

Antares – 12 rejection is *nothing*. If any author received a $750,000 offer after 12 rejections like J.K.Rowling did, they’d be dancing on the ceiling. Her story is one of phenominal success in an extraordinary short amount of time. I’m not sure how citing her case supports your arguement. 88 rejections for Dune? Sure, that’s a alot. But 12? Jesus, some writers get 12 rejections in a DAY.

So what are we left with?
–NO ONE is good at detecting freak publishing events in advance, despite the hype and publicity. One huge problem that will never go away is that classics are black swans in the technical sense: they are not detectable in advance, by anyone, including the author. Antares rightly points out a bunch of famous examples. When an unknown rockets to bestseller status, the editor was lucky, not talented, whatever they say.
–Editors ARE good at negative evaluations, so if they say it sucks, it probably sucks. Personally, I’m enormously glad that editors play this role. Thank you!
–Unfortunately, editors do suffer from two statistical problems:
a) A high false positive rate, at least in financial terms. This is Sturgeon’s law (“90% of everything published is crap”). Here I’m not talking about quality (because tastes do differ), but about revenue. Most books don’t earn a lot.
b) A medium false negative rate. Editors can detect real crap, but they also reject a number of reasonable works, including the classics mentioned above. Again, this is a matter of luck.

Grind all this through the mill, and unsophisticated authors will think it looks random. The problem is, it’s neither random nor predictable. It’s a mess. Randomness has knowable statistical properties, and I don’t think this is true for the publishing industry. The best strategy for authors is still to write the best they can and find their audience, whether it’s the staff at their publisher or a large group through the internet. Good luck to all!

Dune: 88 rejections before it was published by a little-known press. None of the big SF publishers bought it.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: 12 rejections before Nigel Newton, Bloomsbury’s chairman, had the good luck to give the manuscript to his 8-year-old daughter to read. Still, the first printing was only 500 copies.

The Left Hand of Darkness: Ursula LeGuin’s rejection letter is famous. The novel won the Hugo and Nebula.

Lord of the Flies: 20 rejections.

Okay, the majority of the submissions are unpublishable crap. But even the good stuff (Dune), the brilliant stuff (The Left Hand of Darkness), the game-changing stuff (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) gets tossed aside time and time again unless 1) the writer persists with submissions until 2) the right editor reads the MSS at the right time.

Publishing is a crap shoot, because the publishers are lazy. They do not do their homework to discover what their readers want. Instead, they stick with known writers and known formulas. Why? Because the market went that way last year, and they bet will go that way again. Publishers believe readers will want tomorrow what they wanted yesterday.

Plus the fact that none of them — NOT ONE — runs his slush pile in anything that approaches an organized fashion. And, yeah, I can do better.

I think these people look at some of the admittedly far-from-brilliant novels that do happen to get published, and assume that their even-less-brilliant novel deserves exactly the same breaks – or there must be a conspiracy to keep them out. But I can promise them, publishing is not some secret society or old boys’ network that’s closed to outsiders – in fact, the SF&F scene here in the UK is very friendly and welcoming to anyone who genuinely loves the genre. Of course you need to actually write well in order to wow the editors, but that’s always been the case. In my experience, a little networking backed up by a pleasant, professional manner can get you a surprisingly long way…

Had I believed any of the “crap shoot” ideas when I started querying agents back in 2003 I think I wouldn’t have dared. I knew no one in the book business. No one at all. I’d never been to a writer’s convention or a genre convention, I didn’t read PW or Writer’s Digest or do any of the things people seem to think you “must” do to get a book contract. I just worked very hard and pursued the queries in the most professional manner I could. I persevered.

The writer must have talent, they must work hard, they must approach the search for publication/representation with a businesslike and professional attitude and they must stick with it.