{"id":959334,"date":"2026-05-15T09:47:27","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T08:47:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/?p=959334"},"modified":"2026-05-15T09:47:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T08:47:30","slug":"what-taste-means-in-publishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/what-taste-means-in-publishing\/","title":{"rendered":"What taste means in publishing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The best and worst kind of rejection in publishing is always the same. It\u2019s any variation on, \u201cI thought this was really impressive, but it\u2019s just not for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the best possible rejection: you were close!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the worst possible rejection: you have absolutely no idea of what you need to fix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it\u2019s worth laying out a couple of things here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first is that there are meaningful and broadly objective standards of excellence.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those standards look different as applied to, say, historical romance than to literary fiction, but the standards are pretty clear, nevertheless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you give the same manuscript to any two Jericho editors (and it\u2019s happened now and again, either by accident or because a client has specifically asked for it), the two editors will say broadly the same thing. Yes, there\u2019ll be a roughly 20% margin of variance. Yes, there will be some different emphases or ways of explaining things. But you could look at each report and realise that it wouldn\u2019t be all that hard to create a single unified document on which both editors would basically agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the same at the agency level. It\u2019s not that hard for agents to weed out the \u2018definitely not\u2019 manuscripts (some of which may be Really Pretty Good, but this is a world where RPG is not enough.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s also not that hard for agents to pick out the blindingly good manuscripts. Yes, there are famous exceptions, but they\u2019re famous precisely because they\u2019re relatively rare. It\u2019s also true that agents can reject a book for a million totally innocuous reasons (\u201cI\u2019m just too busy\u201d, \u201cI\u2019m trying to move away from this kind of fiction\u201d \u201cI represent an author who\u2019s just too similar.\u201d, etc)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the whole, it\u2019s fair to say that if you produce a really excellent manuscript, in line with what the market for that kind of book is at the time, agents will generally (and subject to the kind of reasons just noted) grab the book with both hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Same too at the publisher level. Here the reasons for rejection can be more complex. Does the proposed new title fit on the list? Have they already made an acquisition which would fill that hole? Does the editor have the level of authority and persuasion to build in-house support for a title?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the reasons for rejection are worrying, not innocuous. In the good old days, editors had a fair amount of autonomy in terms of which books to acquire. The marketing folk were there to sell the books the editors had bought. These days, and for good reasons, it\u2019s not like that. Everyone chips in. Marketers are more inclined to play safe. If a book looks risky, they\u2019ll maybe prefer something else. It doesn\u2019t help that, while the editor will have read the whole book, others on the acquisition committee may have read no more than 50 pages (plus the editor\u2019s summary, setting out the case.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in summary:<\/p>\n\n\n\n