There’s a myth that drifts around the publishing world like a low morning mist in the autumn.
Familiar, comfortable, even reliable.
In the way you don’t even look out for it anymore. It’s just…there.
‘If a book is good enough, it will always find a publisher’.
It sounds equally comfortable, doesn’t it?
I used to say it myself.
Merit prevails.
Talent rises.
Quality wins.
But I’ve worked in this industry for too long now. I know how it works.
And that saying isn’t true-and it never has been.
Behind the romantic idea of the lone genius being ‘discovered’ lies a far messier, very human reality.
Books aren’t chosen by an all-knowing, objective panel of literary sages.
Not anymore.
They’re chosen by overstretched teams juggling impossible workloads, tight budgets, shifting trends, internal politics, and marketing pressures.
Or maybe even the intern.
Who gets a pile of twenty manuscripts to look through, decides his or her lunch is more important and dumps the lot in the recycling bin.
It happens.
Decisions are made in crowded inboxes, in twenty-minute meetings, in hurried glances at submissions piles that would frighten even the keenest reader.
Good books slip through those cracks every single day.
That’s right. Every. Single. Day.
Which means, as an absolute bare minimum, 365 books that might have changed a persons life or even changed the world, never see the light of day.
They're lost in that mist instead.
Forever.
And when I say ‘good,’ I mean the books that linger in the mind, the books with heart and bite and honesty, the books written by people who’ve lived lives worth reading about.
So-called ‘ordinary people’ but those with extraordinary voices.
Not all of them polished, perhaps, but full of spark. These books are rejected not because they lack merit, but because the system wasn’t looking their way when they arrived.
Sometimes a submission is declined because the publisher has just filled their list.
For 2027.
Again, it happens. It has already happened.
Sometimes because the sales team doesn’t believe a story will ‘perform’-and by that, they mean it won’t dance on the bottom line for them, even though it may make its readers want to.
Sometimes because it doesn’t fit a trend they’re trying to follow.
And sometimes because it simply lands on the wrong desk on the wrong day.
That interns maybe.
Timing and chance carry a weight that talent alone cannot counterbalance.
What really troubles me is what this myth does to writers.
It leaves them believing the rejection must mean something intrinsic:
My book wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t good enough.
And that’s heartbreakingly unfair. The truth is far more complicated, and far kinder.
A rejection letter is usually an administrative outcome, not a literary judgement.
Harry Potter & The Philosophers Stone was rejected by twelve publishers before Bloomsbury finally took it on-and even then, only because the chairman’s eight-year-old daughter loved the opening chapters.
What if he hadn’t given them to her to read?
Simple. No-one would have ever heard of Potter, JK Rowling and Hogwarts School.
Then there’s The Catcher In The Rye.
Before it became a defining voice of post-war American literature, Salinger’s novel faced multiple rejections from publishers who felt Holden Caulfield’s tone was ‘immoral’, ‘negative’, or simply ‘unappealing’.
Some editors didn’t like the voice.
Others didn’t think readers would respond to a disaffected teenager’s inner monologue. Yet once published, it became a classic taught in schools, was translated worldwide, and is loved precisely for the qualities that made publishers nervous.
How about memoirs?
If you haven’t yet read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig, you will almost certainly have heard of it.
Part memoir, part philosophical exploration, Pirsig’s book holds the record for one of the most rejected bestselling autobiographical manuscripts ever: it was turned down 121 times before finally being accepted.
Publishers thought it was too odd, too intellectual, too unclassifiable-‘not marketable’ was the general refrain.
And yet, once released, it became a worldwide phenomenon, selling millions and speaking to generations of readers who found comfort, challenge, and companionship in Pirsig’s voice.
A perfect example of how a deeply personal, thoughtful memoir can be dismissed not because it lacks quality, but because it doesn’t fit any neat commercial category.
Exactly the sort of story I will always champion.
You’d be astonished by how many other books now hailed as modern classics were turned away dozens of times.
How many brilliant writers were told their work was ‘unsellable’, ‘ too unusual’, ‘too niche’ or, my personal favourite, ‘…not what readers want’.
Words fail me. Who are they to decide ‘what readers want’.
Readers decide what readers want. Not publishers.
Period.
So what do readers want?
The answer is, of course, hugely subjective.
But I’d say they, WE, are looking for sincerity, voice, truth, imagination.
What readers don’t care about is whether a committee felt brave enough to take a punt.
This is why I feel so strongly about the role of independent publishing today, and why Couzens-Lake Media exists in the first place.
Because the myth isn’t just incorrect-it’s harmful.
It keeps writers doubting themselves and keeps publishers pretending they’re operating a perfect meritocracy, when in reality they’re doing their best inside a system built on bottlenecks.
I believe there are countless worthwhile manuscripts sitting in drawers, on laptops, and in half-forgotten folders because someone, somewhere, once said no.
And those no’s weren’t about quality.
They were about risk, money, or simply lack of ‘bandwidth’.
So let’s puncture the myth for good.
Good books don’t always find a home.
They need help finding one.
And sometimes that help comes from people willing to listen, to champion a story, and to take a chance where others didn’t.
That’s what I want Couzens-Lake Media to be.
A place where stories are read with openness, not suspicion; where writers aren’t penalised for not fitting a particular mould, where ‘good enough’ isn’t determined by market forecasts but by the power of the words on the page.
Because the myth is wrong.
Books don’t find homes on their own.
People give them one.
And the right home can make all the difference.
