Today I'm sharing seven signs that your book might get rejected. Every week I speak to people who either want to write or who are writing their first books. Many of them hope to see their book published, but sadly not everybody gets published.

So what are the warning signs that your book might not be accepted by a publisher? And is there anything you can do to boost your chances?

I want to share a couple of tips to help you avoid getting that terrible, final book rejection from a publisher.

It's everyone's worst nightmare, right? You spend all your time writing this book and no one wants to publish it.

Years ago I was pitching a memoir proposal and sending it out to literary agents. I was hearing lots and lots of no's and one literary agent wrote me back and said, "Hey. Oh man, I could have sold the heck out of this in the nineties, but I can't now. So what have you got now?"

And I read that and thought, what? I wrote a book that could have sold 15 years ago? That just seemed so sad, like such bad timing. So how do we keep this from happening? How do you write a book that can be published now?

Sign #1: You haven’t researched who you’re pitching to

One sign your book may not make it to shelves is if you haven't researched who you are pitching it to. Literary agents aren't all the same and not all publishers are the same, either.

They're not all looking for the same thing. And if they are a literary agent, they won’t all be equally equipped to help you sell your book to the best publisher.

Not all agents and editors work on all kinds of books. If you're writing a cookbook, you want to be pitching to an agency that represents cookbooks.

If you're blindly querying every agent you come across, then you're wasting a lot of your own time and energy and subjecting yourself to unnecessary rejection.

The upshot is that most agents are going to tell you exactly what they're looking for on their website or their page on the agency's site. So get organized, do your research, and you'll spend more time querying the people who are actually a good match for you and can get your book to the right editors and, therefore, on shelves.

Sign #2: You aren’t clear on how your book compares to others

Another sign your book might be rejected is if you aren't clear on what makes your book both similar to and different from other books. You might be thinking, but Mary there's so many books out there. How could my book be that special?

Well, I hate to break it to you, but your book is special, and it's up to you to figure out how, and to highlight that in your queries, which are your emails to agents.

Agents are always looking for something new and different. If you've written this book as only you can write it, then you should be able to identify the things that make it special and tell those things to prospective agents.

If your pitch isn't clearly stating what makes your book special it'll make it harder for your pitch to stand out, and if it's harder for your pitch to stand out, you're more likely to get no's. So now is not the time to sell yourself short. As an old boss once told me, no one gets points for bashfulness.

Sign #3: You haven’t given a compelling reason for writing the book

Sign number three is if you were pitching memoir or nonfiction, you may not have a compelling enough reason, or you're not adequately getting the reason across, for why you are the one to write this book.

Now of course we all have the prerogative to tell our own stories. That's one of the reasons that memoir can be so compelling. We get to read someone else's story.

But if you are pitching a memoir or a non-fiction book about a particular subject to agents, you need to make sure they're clear on why you are the one to write about it.

Are you writing a book about the psychology behind board games? Okay. Well then tell your agent about your PhD in cognitive psychology or the psychology newsletter you run that has a bunch of subscribers or how you invented a board game, whatever it may be.

If your pitch isn't making clear why you are qualified to write this book, it's going to be hard for that agent to sell it to editors, which means it's going to be hard for you to convince the agent to take it on.

And if it's memoir, make sure you're telling your story, not someone else's. If it's a memoir about being the parent of a disabled child, are you telling the story of being the parent or are you telling your child's story?

It's an important distinction and you want to make sure that you are telling the story as the author of the book and that the story is about you.

Sign #4: Your grammar needs work

The fourth sign that your book might get rejected is if even you know that your grammar needs work. A cardinal rule of querying is don't send out a manuscript that has not been copy-edited. Let me repeat, do not send out a manuscript that has not been copy-edited.

By copy-edited I mean reviewed for all grammar mistakes, inconsistencies, and punctuation errors. I don't mean you have to pay someone to do it. You can do it yourself, but you have to be equipped to do it yourself.

Not to be a Debbie downer, but to a literary agent, receiving a manuscript that has a bunch of spelling errors or grammatical mistakes is not only a huge turnoff, it can even feel disrespectful, like you didn't do the work to fix that stuff before you sent it over.

You're asking them to represent you and speak on your behalf in the world of publishing, and if you send them something that you haven't taken the time to make sure is as grammatically perfect and readable as possible, that's going to feel, or could feel, like an insult.

That being said, copy-editing may not be your strong suit and that's totally fine. You can copy-edit your manuscript yourself, and you can use software like Grammarly or Pro Writing Aid—there's some good software out there to help you do this. Or you can hire someone to copy-edit your work, a copy-editor, which I recommend if grammar really isn't a strong suit for you. Either way, it's critical that you do some kind of copy-editing pass of your work to prepare it for queries.

A grammar mistake here and there isn't going to make a huge difference, but a couple on every page will.

Sign #5: People aren’t finishing your manuscript

Sign five that you might get rejected is if people you have shared your manuscript with aren't finishing it. So has this ever happened to you? You rally a few people close to you to read your manuscript and ask them to let you know what they think of it.

A few weeks pass and you still haven't heard back, and when you ask around your friends kind of give you the runaround. "Oh yeah. I'm um, about a quarter of the way through," or, "Oh yeah, I've just been really busy. Could you give me a few more weeks?" or, "I'm sorry. I'm about halfway through now."

All of these things could be true and probably are true. But if someone has started your manuscript and can't finish it, that might be a sign that it needs some more work.

Now it's different if they haven't started it at all. If they say literally, "I haven't started it, I've been so busy," then they've probably been so busy.

But if they've told you that they're in it and they can't keep reading, a good question might be, where did you stop? Because that may be a point at which you need to do some work. They got bored. You kind of lost your reader at that point. So when and where they stopped reading is good information for you to know.

Sign #6: You get bored reading your own book

Sign number six that your book might get rejected is if you're bored when you read it yourself. If you go back to read your work and you find your mind drifting, mmm, that's not a great sign.

I'm not saying you need to ditch it, but it's a sign that it may need more work. Because if you are a reader yourself, you know that when you find a book that really hooks you, you can't put it down. And if you are getting bored when you are reading over your final revision pass, or you're on your copy-editing pass and you're bored, that's a sign that you still have some work to do.

Now the work can be fun. It can be adding more exciting things to your draft, but it may still be work. The truth is, if your book is compelling an audience the way it's supposed to, you shouldn't have to prod your readers to finish it or yourself to finish it again.

This doesn't mean your writing is bad. It just means you need to figure out the points where the reader loses interest so that you can do some revision there. Make some adjustments to keep up the momentum.

There's a story in there. You just need to flesh out what the best possible version of it is.

Sign #7: Your book doesn’t fit with what’s being published right now

Sign seven that your book might get rejected is if it's not what's being published right now. Just like the entertainment industry, the publishing world ebbs and flows on what's popular. When one thing does well, it's natural that a lot of other people are going to try to get in on the action.

Remember that weird time when we got two different movies about a buff guy having to stop the white house from getting destroyed in the same year? It's kind of like that.

So educate yourself on what's coming out. And if you happen to have a book that's related to a subject gaining traction right now, or that's similar to what publishers are putting out, use that to your advantage and highlight that in your queries to literary agents or to publishers.

That said, if your book doesn't happen to be in that magical group, that's okay too. In that case, just emphasize why your book is important now even if the connection isn't immediately obvious.

And coming back to my first point, seek out the agents who are looking for the kind of project you have, even if it's not the it thing. There's always someone out there who wants what you have. You just have to find them.

Ready to write your book?

I really hope these tips help. If you like them, I have more for you. As a three time published novelist and writing coach I've put together a free training for you on how to write your dream book while holding down a full-time job and keeping your life.

In my free training, I teach you the exact process I use to write my books. All you have to do is click below to apply for my program, the Book Incubator. The application is just two questions. You can do it in under five minutes, and there's no obligation to join the program.

But if you're admitted, I'll send you that free training right away. So you have nothing to lose. Just click below, answer those two questions and apply to the Book Incubator. It'll be worth your time. I promise.

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