L’Engle tops list of Top 10 Authors Who got “Rejected 26 Times”

I read a piece about L’Engle today that said Wrinkle in Time was rejected 26 times before it was published.
Why does that number ring a bell? Wasn’t Seuss rejected 26 time, too? To the Google-box, Robin!

Holy self addressed stamped envelopes, Batman! It’s not just L’Engle and Seuss! Everybody who’s anybody got rejected 26 times…

1. Here’s a page citing 26 for L’Engle: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-melcher/what-i-learned-from-madel_b_63612.html

2. Here’s a page citing 26 for Seuss: http://www.smart-writers.com/childrens-book-authors.html

3. Here’s one for Kinky Friedman: http://www.dailytexanonline.com/news/2004/11/09/Focus/Kinky.Enough.To.Be.Texas.Governor-797935.shtml

4. As God as my witness, I’ll never be rejected 26 times again, said Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind: http://twilight-sky.com/viewthread.php?tid=22499

5. Here’s one that puts Grisham at 26: http://havecoffeewillwrite.com/?p=2503

6. Here’s one for Olivia Goldsmith: http://www.sacbee.com/static/live/lifestyle/bookclub/archives/goldsmith.html

7. Oh no, not Blackadder, too: http://www.indietalk.com/archive/index.php/t-4326.html

8. What about the author of Elmer the Headless Chicken? 26 times: http://cyberfair.msc.edu.ph/cyberfair_07/arts/aleng/history.html

9. What about Karen Jay Fowler, author of the Jane Austen Book Club? One score and six. http://therem.net/blog/index.php?itemid=84

10. Watership Down? That’s a 26 Clickity-clicks. http://sexyhamster.tribe.net/thread/8bf3a2ce-1906-48e1-b635-fbe764b647ae

Twenty-six makes for a good story, I guess, but I wonder which of these are really true?

Today, I think you’d have a really difficult time getting rejected 26 times.

For one thing: If those were non-simultaneous submissions, using the “industry standard” 3 months each (good luck with that) it would take 6 1/2 years to get 26 rejections.

But that’s preposterous, because you often don’t hear back in 3 months or ever. Now, getting ignored 26 times? Yes, you could do that pretty easily. I might even have 26 or maybe 526 of those myself.

But to actually get 26 replies? To actually have 26 SASEs come back to you with an answer? That just sounds impossible.

Unless…

ALFRED, prepare the BAT-SASE!