I suppose it's hard, but by the amount of books that use derivative themes from other books it's hard to imagine. 4 or 5 sure, but 10 seems a little ridiculous.

I suppose it's hard, but by the amount of books that use derivative themes from other books it's hard to imagine. 4 or 5 sure, but 10 seems a little ridiculous. He says he got 500 rejections, which seems a little low for 10 books. That's 50 rejections per book, which seems absurdly low given the number of publishers and the vast number of agents. I mean as a last ditch when you've got 50 rejections you might as well spend a weekend and write an email or letter to every agent in the AAR(US) and AAA(UK) directories to begin with. That'll land you a 100+ rejections if you only do the AAR. I know a lot of authors have problems doing other things than writing, but if you can't sell yourself then why do you expect others to? Obviously this guy didn't figure out how to sell himself until way late into the game. Did he not try short stories or even getting a side job in a newspaper in that decade that could have at least lent him credibility as having publishable talent? Honestly, FTA, it looks like he has a problem dealing with people. He rejected his publishers suggestions and got denied because of it - after he had his foot through the door. If the person paying my bills says "agree or you're fired and may never work again" I'll say sure, whatever, fuck it pay my god damn bills and I'll sell my next book elsewhere. I'm wondering why he changed his name multiple times, did he breach multi-book contracts? I'm sorry, but this sounds an awful lot like the music artists who said "fuck you man, that's not how we roll" to their label and got black listed for a decade because they forgot they had a 5 disc deal and broke contract.