A Few Bad Books

Here's a few quotes (as reported in Andre Bernard's Rotten Rejections, Pushcart Press, 1990) from rejection letters received by writers with whom you may be familiar (heh!) :


“It is interesting and has several good points, but it is not quite suitable for our list.”

---from a letter to Agatha Christie, 1920,

for The Mysterious Affair at Styles

(The first of many cases featuring the fastidious

Belgian private investigator, Hercule Poirot)

.

“...Neither long enough for a serial nor short enough for a single short story”

---from a letter to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1887,

for A Study in Scarlet

“It is not at all probable, we think, that we can make use of the story of a Virginia soldier of fortune miraculously transported to Mars…”

---from a letter to Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1912,

for Under the Moons of Mars

(serialized in All Story; later published in book form as

A Princess of Mars, the first title in an eleven-book series)

.

“A very bad book” ---from a letter to Pierre Boulle, 1954, for The Bridge on the River Kwai


Wise Words:

“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”

---Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
Life (1932)

.