When in doubt, persist

WHEN Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen put together their first Chicken Soup for the Soul book, they were turned down no fewer than 33 consecutive times by publishers.

The total number of rejections was 140.

They were told—among other things—that “anthologies don’t sell” and that the book was “too positive” (!).

Instead of giving up, they stayed focused on their goal.

“We did three or four newspaper or magazine interviews a day, five days a week, for a whole year”, Canfield recalls.

In every interview they talked about why the country—they could have said the world—needed this book more than ever.

Eventually a small publisher called Health Communications Inc. decided to take a chance and published the book. 

It became a number one bestseller and hatched an entire series of Chicken Soup books  that cumulatively have sold more than 80 million copies in 37 languages.

When my partner last heard Mark speak on the subject, at a seminar in California some years ago, he said the goal was to sell 100 million. 

And once they got there . . .

Note: As of 2012, there were over 225 books in print with total sales of over 500 million copies worldwide in 47 languages. Total retail sales have topped over $2 billion.

Or consider these:

Best-selling author John Grisham’s first book was rejected by 12 publishing houses and 16 agents.

The Beatles were turned down by Decca Records on the grounds that “groups are on the way out” and “The Beatles have no future in show business”.

Enrico Caruso was told that “he couldn’t sing at all”.

Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper on the grounds that he “lacked imagination and had no original ideas”.

A movie producer told Marilyn Monroe she was “unattractive” and couldn’t act.

Elvis Presley was fired after just one performance at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville in October 1954—a major setback in the 19-year old’s early career.

The manager, Jimmy Denny, told him: “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, son. You ought to go back to drivin’ a truck”.

After his first screen test Harrison Ford was told by the studio: “Kid, you have no future in this business”. Ford asked why.

The studio boss said: “When Tony Curtis first walked on screen carrying a bag of groceries—a bag of groceries!—you took one look at him and said ‘THAT’s a movie star!’”

 “Weren’t you supposed to say “That’s a grocery delivery boy?” replied Ford.

JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books have outsold everything other than The Bible, but eight (some sources say 12) publishers turned down the first one—Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

At the time Rowling was virtually broke, severely depressed, recently divorced and trying to raise a child on her own.

Eventually Nigel Newton, CEO of Bloomsbury, a small London publisher, took a set of pages home and showed them to his eight-year old daughter.

Interviewed by Business Week magazine, Newton says that “she came down from her room an hour later saying ‘Dad, this is so much better than anything else’.

She nagged and nagged me for the following months, just to see what happened next in the story.” 

The Harry Potter books have now sold more than 260 million copies, and in just five years JK Rowling went from living on state support to being one of the wealthiest women in the world. 

Stephen Spielberg was rejected three times by the University of Southern California School of  Theater, Film and Television. He went to school elsewhere, but dropped out to start working as a director.

He returned to UCLA school in 2002 (35 years later) to complete his course and get his BA.

The game of Monopoly was almost never made. Parker Brothers rejected it in 1931 as “too complex”, but later relented. Monopoly is the best-selling board game ever devised.

There are countless other examples of the now rich and famous who suffered put-downs in their early careers. The moral is clear: don’t accept other people’s negative opinions if you believe deep inside that there’s something you really want to do. 

You may or may not succeed, but you’ll never find out unless you try. And, following the messages implicit in the stories related above, don’t just try once. 

Keep on trying until you get the answer you want.