Celebrities

Some of the world's most successful authors were initially rejected

Some of the world's most successful authors were initially rejected

(Picture: Getty)
Eimear McBride, a first-time novelist who failed to get her book published for almost a decade has been named the surprise winner of the £30,000 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction.A Girl Is a Half-formed ThingLord of the Flies - by William Golding

In 1953, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies manuscript was perused for seven months by assorted publishers, who all returned it.

Faber’s reader rejected the submission as “absurd & uninteresting... rubbish & dull”.

Charles Monteith, hired as an editor by Faber a month before, plucked the book from the bin and persuaded colleagues to buy it for £60.

As a set text for schools, Lord of the Flies went on to sell millions of copies.

Harry Potter - by JK Rowling

(Picture: Reuters)

JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone as a struggling single mother on benefits and faced 12 rejections, eventually selling the book for £1,500 to Bloomsbury.

The series went on to break sales records and was turned into the blockbuster films. Rowling is now worth an estimated £570million.

Carrie - by Stephen King

(Picture: David Sandison)

While trying to persuade publishers to accept Carrie, 20-year-old Stephen King was told by one it wasn’t interested in sci-fi concerning negative utopias because it didn’t sell.

Thirty publishers rejected Carrie before Doubleday took it on. King has now sold 350million books globally.

The Conversation (0)