: How to know the reason for rejection? Just out of curiousity, how do people figure out the reason their work is not accepted? I tried submitting my work to a newspaper but the editor rejected

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Writing in particular suffers from what I call "The Artists' Bane", which is the fact that there is a LOT more good talent out there than there is market to absorb that talent.

I once sent a submission to a major literary agency, that said it could take up to 8 weeks to consider a proposal. 10 weeks after I sent that, I sent a very polite follow-up query asking if was still under consideration. Almost immediately they sent me back a rejection, leading me to believe that they automatically reject anything that gets a follow-up query.

The reason they said I was being rejected was that my material was not suitable for their list, whatever that means.

As others here have said, it could have nothing to do with the quality of your material. Remember, it took J. K. Rowling over a year for her agent to place the Harry Potter series with a publisher.

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There are tons of reasons for rejection.

The reviewers didn't think the work was good enough.
The work doesn't match the journal's theme well enough.
The journal just published a story about a dragon last issue and they don't want another one so soon.
The reviewer had a bad night's sleep.
Your story is the third one about mermaids they've read this month.
Your main character is named Brandon, the editor's ex-husband's name.

And that's just scratching the surface. I'm a reviewer for a literary journal that sends comments back to the submitter, but we're unusual that way.

So don't take it personally. Draft and revise your story until it's as good as you can get it and keep sending it out.

Here's an article on rejection you might enjoy.

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I have been rejected many times with no explanation.

I think sometimes, like any competition, what I wrote is just not the best of what they had to choose from at the time. They can't publish everything, some editors say they cannot publish 1% of everything they receive, so there is no 'reason' I got rejected that is specific to what I wrote: I am in the same pile as dozens of other people, rejected because some other author wrote something more compelling than me. I got rejected because I wasn't the best thing they read that day.

If you have a specific venue that you want to get into, like a newspaper or particular publishing house, one way to learn anything from that is to try and figure out what the editor IS publishing. Imagine you are trying to learn how to predict what topics they like, the style they like, whether they like simple sentences or complex ones, whether they like highly educated language and grammar or more common language and grammar; similarly the education level they like their writing at. Does the political writing they accept tend toward the middle, or one end of the spectrum? Do they like emotional words and content, or do they prefer dry and emotionless prose? If there is humor, what TYPE of humor is acceptable, and what do you NOT see? For your newspaper, do most of the published authors seem to have credentials, like academic standing, political standing, or social standing (businessmen, school leaders, charity leaders, religious leaders, etc)?

Consider structure: the lengths of sentences, and paragraphs. The lengths of dialogue sentences.

All of these things (and any other generalizations you can think up) are metrics you can use to compare or categorize 'writing'. Some of what I mention may not apply to newspapers, or non-fiction, but I hope you get the idea.

Use such metrics to compare YOUR writing to the writing that gets published. Obviously the words are different, but you need to try and separate what your editor accepts from what they reject, and all you have to work with is what they have accepted!

That isn't as hard as it sounds; it is like trying to generalize my interests in fiction based on what what books I have bought: You'll get a pretty good idea, even though you don't know which books I have considered and rejected.

This kind of analysis may reveal why you were rejected. It may not, but if you can develop any mental model at all of what the editor accepts and prints, at least it can guide you toward writing pieces with a better chance of being published.

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Specific critique groups or websites such as Critique circle (what I'm using now) may help as a basis to find the reasons of the rejection or methods to improve upon.

I think this website is able to provide feedback on specific issues but I am still new here and can't say much.

You probably will need to find another similar type of website for Chinese based writing (I'm sure there is one out there)

Hope this helps.

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I found an online community a good place to get feedback from strangers. It helps to have someone, apart from family and friends, to read your work.
At times, it's not what the editor was looking for. Also, we all are humans with different tastes, maybe your genre wasn't to this editor's taste. Very rarely, in the rejection letters, they state why the piece wasn't accepted.
And yes, all the languages are the same. Just don't give up. Keep trying and learning to improve.

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