If you ever want a good laugh get a bunch of authors together to talk about rejection letters. Over the past few weeks we have encountered other authors at various functions and heard rejection stories so silly, we just have to share them.

One author related that an editor told her that the genre her book fell into was saturated. We giggled when we heard this. Did it mean the genre needed no more books? Was it simply too full? Did he honestly believe that no one anywhere, ever would buy another book in this genre? For that matter, we wondered just how full does a genre have to be before it is considered saturated? How many titles? And just who decides that a genre can hold no more?

And then there was the author who spoke on the phone to an editor who ripped the author’s book to pieces. It was too long, it was badly written, the plot was weak, it was simply the worst mystery story ever written. The author was puzzled. He had submitted a fantasy story.

Another author, who happened to be attending a book conference, was told during the course of the day by various editors that his book was too long, too short, too edgy, not edgy enough, too dark, too light, too slow, too fast-paced, not original enough, and (you guessed it), so different that it defied genres and would, in consequence, be too hard to sell. Apparently, that plain old genre known as “fiction” wasn’t good enough.

We, too, have had our share of silly rejections, but the best was the editor who read three pages of our book and encountered a description of a planet that had two moons. He immediately ceased reading and wrote us a letter stating that he NEVER published books with planets that had two moons. As soon as he saw the two moons, he knew he would dislike the rest of the story. To this day, we fondly relate this tale as the time an editor rejected us because we mooned him.