Source link : https://las-vegas-news.com/stephen-kings-carrie-and-6-other-debut-novels-that-nearly-went-unpublished/
A first novel has to get past the most skeptical readers it will ever meet. Those readers are the agents and editors who open the envelope or the email and decide in a few pages whether to go on.
Some of the best known debuts of the last century nearly never reached shelves. Here are seven books that were rejected, abandoned or kept waiting before they found their audience.
Carrie by Stephen King
King began Carrie in the early 1970s while working as a teacher and living in a trailer. He grew unhappy with the opening pages and threw them in the trash. His wife, Tabitha, pulled the pages out and urged him to keep going.
Doubleday published the novel in 1974 with a modest advance of around two and a half thousand dollars. The paperback rights later sold for a much larger sum, reportedly four hundred thousand dollars. That deal let King leave teaching and write full time.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
Rowling’s first book was turned down by about a dozen publishers before Bloomsbury took it. The small London house was run by Nigel Newton. By his account, he gave the opening chapter to his young daughter, who asked for more right away.
Bloomsbury paid a small advance of roughly two and a half thousand pounds and printed a modest first run in 1997. The series has since sold hundreds of millions of…
—-
Author : Matthias Binder
Publish date : 2026-10-06 11:01:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
—-
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8