How To Deal With Rejection From Publications.
I turned a no into a yes with two emails and 15 minutes.
Better Marketing rejected my article; following two emails and 15 minutes of editing, my article was published and it’s since earned more than all my other articles combined — ‘Think Small. Get a Mac. Just Do It.’
I’ve faced countless rejections — prior to this I would simply brush it off and publish it myself.
I’m here to say you shouldn’t do that — your writing will not get better by doing that. You could be so close to getting published and you’d never know!
Getting rejected isn’t the end, it’s the start.
The Email.
This brings us to the first thing you must-do if you wish to turn a no into a yes — ask!
I encourage you to use this email as a template. Brittany, the editor of Better Marketing explained that while she doesn’t have time to respond to everyone’s requests, she appreciated the polite ask.
Hi Brittany,
Let me begin by saying that I’m sorry to be a pain.
My recent submission, ‘Think small. Get a Mac. Just do it.’ has been rejected.
I’m very passionate about my writing and your publication in particular and therefore would love to know where I can improve.
While I understand how pushed for time you and your team must be — if you could possibly provide me with a few comments to work on just so I can provide a better article for submission next time I’d really appreciate that.
I’m keen to progress my writing and get it up to the quality needed for your publication.
I understand if you don’t have the time, nevertheless, I appreciate the time you’ve already invested by considering my work.
Thank you.
INCLUDE A LINK TO YOUR DRAFT.
Kind regards,
Kieran.
The Response.
Hey Kieran,
Thanks for reaching out! Happy to provide feedback.
This one was an almost-yes. It’s well-written and outlines some good rules. But I’ve heard those examples lots of times. I added a line to our submission guidelines under “topic areas to avoid” a few months ago — “Stories about brands that we hear over and over again (Apple, Coca-Cola, Tesla…)”. You have no idea how many articles I get about Apple’s branding strategies or Steve Jobs’ secrets to success ;)
If your story had more unique examples, it would have been a better fit. The advice is also a little vague, so I’d suggest zooming in whenever you can. For example, your subtitle says that you “may need to rethink your marketing strategies” — that’s super broad, all the strategies?? Which ones?? — whereas maybe refining this to focus on slogans or brand statements, in particular, would be a more compelling read, with more tangible takeaways for the reader.
Hope that helps, keep writing!
Cheers,
Brittany
This was invaluable. I now knew, from the person who rejected my article, exactly why it was rejected. What better information could you want?
If you are lucky enough to get a response then the second thing you must do to turn the no into a yes is, listen. Really listen.
Don’t get too precious about your article — be prepared to scrap it completely. Listen to what you are being told. They are telling you exactly what they want.
This also embarrassingly showcases an obvious thing you must do if you want to get published — read the submission guidelines. They are there for a reason and publications will not make exceptions just for your article.
This was largely my downfall. The submission guidelines for Better Marketing clearly state not to use examples of brands that are constantly used again and again — I used three of the most popular marketing case studies ever. Nice one.
In further discussions, I actually found that this is one of the most common reasons why articles are rejected…
I definitely get more comments (i.e., private notes on articles) than emails (not saying either has a better/worse chance of getting a response, not a huge difference).
I try to send a quick reply to all of them, but often my reply is just this standard one: Due to the volume of submissions we receive, we are unable to reply to every feedback request. Our submission guidelines: https://medium.com/better-marketing/write-for-better-marketing-fc7eb4a3346a
I would say I send that one to 70% of the requests or more, because I can look at the article and easily see that the reason I rejected it is something that’s covered in our submission guidelines, and that the author either didn’t read or didn’t follow our guidelines! For the other requests, I’ll reply to them mostly with something concrete I can point to about why it was rejected (like “This isn’t about marketing”, for example!).
Hope that helps!
Read the submission guidelines. Seems obvious, but clearly writers are falling at this hurdle.
I knew that my article failed the guidelines simply because I listened to what I was being told. I listened that my article didn’t have a strong focus, I listened that I needed to use more unique examples that could translate into a deeper and more tangible takeaway for the reader. I knew where I was going wrong.
I said there were two emails, right?
So far we’ve covered two of the steps I did to turn my no into a yes; ask and listen. The third is to ask again.
Do not be afraid to ask again — if you’ve got one response from them then it is highly likely you can get a second. But you have to ask.
Following the response I got, I knew that my use of brands wasn’t the right fit. But my entire article was just those brands! Do I scrap the whole article? Do I keep the brands I’ve got and just add a few unique ones? Would that be okay? I had questions.
Ask again. It’s alright.
I can imagine! I really do appreciate the time you’ve given me. If possible, I do have just one more quick question if that’s okay. I’m going to follow exactly what you’ve said regarding honing in and making the article more focused on unique examples. However, do you feel I should scrap using big brands as examples in this case?
I knew I had to ask again. If I wanted this article published then I knew I needed the direction to be as clear as possible.
Thankfully, I got another reply!
I think keeping some of them is fine — it’s helpful because big brands are usually brands that people know and understand, and I think that helps readers grasp what you’re saying quickly. But, focusing only on big brands can also feel inaccessible — if you’re a marketer or running your own small biz, you might think okay, cool, but I’m not Nike, so that doesn’t really help me. So, I think framing with some big brands to start or introduce the idea, and then using smaller or more unique examples can help highlight how your advice applies to companies that aren’t marketing giants. And help readers make the leap from okay, here’s how Nike does it into okay, and here’s how I could do it.
Hope that makes sense! And there’s absolutely no one “right” answer here, it’s all pretty subjective.
Cheers,
Brittany
Invaluable advice for a second time! The more help you can get the better. Asking again, in a polite way, can be instrumental in getting your article published. It was for myself at least!
Following this further advice, I listened again. Now the direction I needed to take the article was clear to me. The lightbulb over my head flashed on!
I realised that the best thing for my article would be to tailor it to the small business owner with minimal budgets trying to maximise their reach using the teachings of those big brands. That gave my article the focus it needed.
I knew I could keep my big brands, all it needed was a change in focus. This brings us to the final thing you need to do to turn that rejected article into a published article.
15 minutes.
We’ve covered the two emails I sent. Now we move onto the 15 minutes I spent re-working my article. If you hadn’t guessed it the last thing you need to do is, act. Once you’ve gathered all the advice you need through asking and listening intently then you can move onto execution.
My article was fairly close. I knew I needed to change my subtitle from the first response to give the article the focus it needed. That was simple enough — I just leaned into the idea of statement branding, easy.
Following the second piece of advice, I knew that my article needed an example of a smaller business following those same rules and achieving success from it.
I found my example, wrote a section about it (see below) which took about 15 minutes and then resubmitted my article. Waited and waited. And then it was published!
To say I was over the moon was an understatement — this was the first major publication I’d ever gotten into. My relentless badgering had paid off and it felt good.
The section I added:
Will It Blend?
Don’t be mistaken thinking that this level of marketing is only available to those big brands. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The reason I see it as quite the opposite is that this approach to marketing is actually more cost-effective — it’s much easier to present a million people with a simple message rather than a complicated one.
Thus it is better suited to smaller businesses with smaller budgets. The perfect example of a small business achieving incredible success by following this style of branding is Blendtec.
They gave us a minimal message, using a few monosyllabic words that broke the internet; ‘Will it Blend?’ Their most popular video has 19 million views.
They followed all the rules. They kept it concise. They didn’t try to sell me a product. They certainly commanded attention.
Blendtec CEO Tom Dickson specifically approached his marketing this way because he only had a minimal marketing budget! But nonetheless, he saw the potential. And it worked.
This shows the true heights that small businesses can achieve with small marketing budgets. Big brands have spent millions trying to get the kind of traction Blendtec achieved.
If you have a minimal marketing budget, then try using a minimal marketing message. This approach to marketing is perfect for small businesses to take advantage of.
From this, you can see how little was really needed to get my yes.
I believe there are lots of writers giving up after rejection when that is exactly where your opportunity is to grow!
Don’t let silly mistakes be your downfall. Like not reading the submission guidelines (as shown this is a common occurrence) or grammatical/spelling errors.
If you want your rejection turned into a published article then you need to:
Ask
Listen
Ask.
Listen.
Act.
I truly believe that they are many great articles failing over little things that can be fixed almost instantly. Two emails and 15 minutes was the difference between rejected and published. I don’t think I’m an outlier.
You never know how close your articles are to being accepted! Keep working for it.
Thank you again to Brittany, Better Marketing’s fantastic editor! You advanced my writing better than I ever could alone.
