On the wall near my desk, I keep a list of the thirteen publishers who rejected Ayn Rand’s masterpiece The Fountainhead. They are:
- Macmillan
- Knopf
- Doubleday
- Simon & Schuster
- Paramount
- Little, Brown
- Duell
- Sloan & Pearce
- Dutton
- Dodd Mead
- Lippincott
- Reynal & Hitchcock
- Random House
This is a great source of inspiration to me. Think about it: Ayn Rand escaped a totalitarian Russia (which eventually killed her parents) and started a new life in America. She learned English, doggedly pursued her goal of becoming a writer, and after many years and scant recognition for her work, wrote a profound and original novel that fulfilled her artistic vision. Oh, it was also a commercial success, despite virtually no publicity, and it earned her the much-deserved financial rewards that eluded her for years (she once fainted from lack of food). She paid a high price over many years, and won — all on her own terms.
Ayn Rand encountered more than just physical problems; she had to wage an intellectual battle against an increasingly collectivist culture. People in the industry told her that no one would buy her book, let alone understand it. It was too intellectual. Its ideas were out of step with the modern world.
To become a huge commercial success selling ideas that the entire world was hostile to — that would mean holding an unabated confidence in the power of the true and the good to change people’s minds. That internal battle may have been the hardest one of all. Ayn said once that without the support of her husband Frank (who was the inspiration for all of her heroes), she never would have been able to keep up the fight.
And if, after persisting through all of that, she had received the thirteenth rejection and said “Enough!”… well, I would not have blamed her.
But she didn’t.
She kept after her goal. And I and thousands and thousands of others are grateful.
So I keep this list of the publishers who rejected The Fountainhead on my wall for inspiration. It reminds me to keep trying, to keep pursuing my ideal.
When I think that I’ve put up with a lot, I remember the incredible struggle it took to conceive of and create Howard Roark and get him in print. And then my own problems don’t seem so big and bad.
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