: Re: Will the publisher/agent tell me what to write? I recently read this answer, which suggested that an author's first novel will be rejected, and the publisher will instead get the author to write

@Kaufman555

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A
This answer has been given multiple times before on this site, and it was consistently met with reservation and disbelief. Yet it is what I have learned from published authors:
First novels are consistently rejected because they lack quality.
Writing is something that you have to learn. And it is something that you learn through practice, that is, by writing. Therefore, in the course of learning to write, you write many texts that are not the works of a master (and publishable) but exercises (and not worthy of publication). That is why your first submissions will most likely be rejected, and it is also why those that don't give up after a few rejections but keep writing will most of them eventually get published (!).
The downside is that many of your early ideas will be badly executed and either remain unpublished for ever or you will have to rewrite them once you have achieved (publishable) mastery.
There are two common approaches to this:

Write another book until one gets published. If you still feel for your first stories, rewrite them and publish them later.

Keep rewriting your first novel until it gets published. (You may grow tired of your story while you do this.)

A survey of 200 traditionally published authors found that on average they had written 3.24 books before they got published.
While zero books before publication happens, and not infrequently, you shouldn't plan on being one of them. Mostly (I found) those are writers with long years of practice writing non-fiction (e.g. journalists) or other kinds of fiction (e.g. screenwriters, short-story writers, etc.).

B
I have never heard of a publisher rejecting a novel and telling the writer what to write. It may happen, but what usually happens is one of the following:

silent rejection (99.9%)
The agent or publisher specifies in their submission guidelines that when they don't reply after a certain time it means that they were not interested. This is the common "reply" today.

signalling interest in further submissions
Sometimes a publisher or agent will see so much potential in your work that they ask you to send in your next manuscript.

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