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Handling Rejection as Failure: Aspiring Writers Getting the Rejection Slip

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Abstract

Included in the definition of being an aspiring person is the risk of failure. Aspiring fiction writers are no exception. This article shows that the role of aspiring fiction writer involves managing three issues: the hope of being published, rejection by a publisher, and the perception of the rejection as a failure. Drawing on 47 interviews with fiction writers who have attempted to become first-time writers, the analysis shows that aspiring writers’ responses to rejection are related to accepting and dismissing responsibility for having failed and admitting or dismissing the rejection as a perceived failure. Based on these findings, the article presents procedures associated with four main approaches to dealing with failure: conceding, excusing, justifying, and refusing. This conceptual framework for understanding failure contributes to a theoretical understanding of evaluation and valuation processes and their consequences and to empirical studies of rejection as career failure; it also systematizes and extends Goffmans work on cooling out strategies.
Valuation Studies 4(2) 2016: –176153
Handling Rejection as Failure: Aspiring
Writers Getting the Rejection Slip
Henrik Fürst
Abstract
Included in the denition of being an aspiring person is the risk of failure.
Aspiring ction writers are no exception. This article shows that the role of
aspiring ction writer involves managing three issues: the hope of being
published, rejection by a publisher, and the perception of the rejection as a
failure. Drawing on 47 interviews with ction writers who have attempted to
become rst-time writers, the analysis shows that aspiring writers’ responses
to rejection are related to accepting and dismissing responsibility for having
failed and admitting or dismissing the rejection as a perceived failure. Based
on these ndings, the article presents procedures associated with four main
approaches to dealing with failure: conceding, excusing, justifying, and
refusing. This conceptual framework for understanding failure contributes to a
theoretical understanding of evaluation and valuation processes and their
consequences and to empirical studies of rejection as career failure; it also
systematizes and extends Goffman's work on cooling out strategies.
Key words: cooling out strategy; cultural worker; culture of success;
evaluation and valuation; failure; rejection
Introduction
People with aspirations attempting to succeed regularly fail, and such
failures are often linked to a rejection. Career termination due to
rejection in sports (Ball 1976; Butt and Molnar 2009) and university
education (Clark 1960) are but two examples of failing in the course
of pursuing career aspirations. A particularly exposed category
includes people who aspire to succeed in the cultural industries, where
many try but most fail (Menger 1999, 2014; Mathieu 2012;
McRobbie 2016). The aspirants end up having to manage the tension
between the aspiration to succeed and the perceived failure of a
rejection. The current article studies the consequences of evaluation
Henrik Fürst, Department of Sociology, Uppsala University, henrik.furst@soc.uu.se
© 2016 Author
LiU Electronic Press, DOI 10.3384/VS. 2001-5992.1642153
http://valuationstudies.liu.se
Valuation Studies 154
and being evaluated by examining how aspiring ction writers deal
with tensions involved in hoping to be published and being rejected by
a publishing house.
There is a huge difference between the number of people who
aspire to be a rst-time published ction writer and those who actually
become one. Every year, the largest publishing houses in Sweden for
ction debuts receive a couple of thousand manuscripts but publish
fewer than ten debut ction books. The 152 publishing houses in
1
Sweden that announced ction debuts between 1997 and 2014
published a combined average of 44 per year. This means that there are
many failed attempts and a few successful ones in becoming a rst-
time published ction writer in Sweden.
In addition, only 1 percent of the debut ction books published
between 1997 and 2014 were rst picked up by a literary agency and
then sold to a publishing house. This contrasts starkly with the
situation in the United States and the United Kingdom, where getting
published through a literary agency is common (Thompson 2012: 71
74). In Sweden, the most common publication route is for writers to
send their manuscript directly to publishing houses. Publishing houses
sometimes offer information on their websites about whether they
accept unsolicited manuscripts from writers. They may also provide
information on what they want, for example stating that they are only
interested in poetry. Some publishing houses also indicate, in various
ways, that they receive large numbers of manuscripts. When publishers
have assessed a manuscript and decided to reject it, they usually send a
rejection slip directly to the writer, which means that the writer needs
to deal with the consequences of being assessed.
The tensions these rejections create for aspiring writers in Sweden
can be understood in relation to individualism and, more specically,
living in a culture that is imbued with notions of success. Cultures of
success are produced by the value of self-realization and a reliance on
the belief that anyone can make it (Meizel 2009). In individualized
cultures, success is not necessarily regarded as determined by structural
opportunities and constraints (Menger 1999, 2014; Abbott 2005:
310). Rather, equal access is assumed, and people are encouraged to
attempt to succeed in their aspirations (Merton 1938: 680; Clark
1960). While the continuation of the social system depends on
individual efforts to succeed, contradictions to the idea that anyone
can succeed are dealt with by adapting people to failure (Clark 1960).
In the case of ction writers, many people have spent a long time
pursuing their aspirations and preparing their manuscripts, while
publishers’ answers are usually a direct and denite “yes” or “no.
Thus, aspiring writers who have been emotionally and socially charged
to succeed at getting published may perceive publishers’ rejections as
failures.
These gures represent ction debuts presented between 1997 and 2014 in the
1
Swedish publishing industry trade magazine Svensk Bokhandel.
Handling Rejection as Failure 155
Publishers act as gatekeepers to the publishing market: they
determine which aspiring writers will succeed and which will fail
(Hirsch 1972; Coser 1975; Coser et al. 1982). Being admitted or
denied entry is the objective side of artistic success and failure. But
there is also a subjective side concerned with writers’ experience of
these assessments and the meanings they assign them. For many
rejected writers, the felt experience of being assessed requires adapting
to having failed.
Goffman (1952) has described this subjective side of failure in his
research on how victims of condence tricks adapt to failure. Like
aspiring writers in cultures of success, the victims (or marks) are led to
believe that they will earn a fast buck by carrying out some illicit task.
However, they often end up failing and, as a consequence, lose their
money. The game is rigged; con men plan the marks’ failures from the
outset. Goffman describes the last step in the game as adapting the
mark to the failure through a process of “cooling the mark out” and
thereby enabling marks to rationalize their failure. Goffman extends
the metaphor of “cooling the mark out” to job transitions, marriage
proposals, and many other phenomena. As Goffman shows, people in
these situations have not necessarily been tricked. Similarly, publishers
are seldom tricking writers when they reject a manuscript.
Nevertheless, the culture offers a variety of “cooling out” strategies to
rejected writers who perceive their rejection as failure, and writers use
these strategies to handle their failure.
The present study analyzes how people deal with the consequences
of being evaluated and rejected in an aspiration. For rejected writers,
these consequences include having to manage the tension between
having hoped to be published and being rejected. I introduce
responsibility for and admitting or dismissing the perceived failure as
key to understanding the cooling out strategies that writers use to deal
with this tension. As my analysis shows, writers use four types of
strategies to adapt to rejection: excusing, justifying, conceding, and
denying failure.
Previous Research
Cultural industries attract people who want to engage in cultural work
for the sake of joy, glamour, and creativity, but which often feature
emotionally demanding working conditions and poor economic
compensation (Hesmondhalgh and Baker 2008; Skov 2012;
Hesmondhalgh 2013: 253257; Conor et al. 2015; McRobbie 2016).
Failure is a hidden reality of being a cultural worker (McRobbie 2016:
56) but is rarely studied. Unlike the few studies of creative failure that
currently exist this article links the experience of failure to the creative
person’s process of adapting or failing to adapt to it. I develop a
framework for studying how cultural workers deal with the regular
Valuation Studies 156
occurrence of being rejected and seeing such rejection as failure. I
focus on aspiring writers as an example of cultural workers who are
especially prone to fail. Coping with failure is a major part of creative
work, and understanding this process sheds light on a major
consequence of winner-takes-all markets, in which many fail and must
deal with not being among the chosen few.
The present study also extends the research on evaluation and
valuation. Studies of evaluation and valuation usually investigate value
assessment and creation (Beckert and Aspers 2011; Lamont 2012;
Zuckerman 2012; Helgesson and Muniesa 2013; Vatin 2013), for
example, of ne wines, lms, literary works, and music (Karpik 2010)
and of design school applicants and their work (Strandvad 2014). The
present study begins after the value of the person and the manuscript
has already been established and sheds light on the often overlooked
consequences of these practices.
No research has yet investigated failure and adaption to failure
among aspiring writers. However, scholars have studied cooling out
failures related to other activities, such as sports (Ball 1976; Butt and
Molnar 2009) and delays and waiting (Åkerström 1997; Sellerberg
2008). For instance, Ball (1976) shows that rejection and failure in
sports are more easily cooled out when there are viable alternatives for
the athletes. Others have studied cooling out among unpromising
students (Clark 1960), terminated workers in outplacement programs
(Miller and Robinson 2004), contestants in televised music
competitions (van den Scott et al. 2015; Wei 2016), mothers of
children with Down's syndrome (Thomas 2014), and men making
advances on women in singles bars and nightclubs (Snow et al. 1991).
In the latter case Snow et al. (1991) show that women use cooling out
strategies to protect themselves and to let men down easily. These
strategies include polite refusals, excuses, and jokes, and women use
them both before and during unwanted advances. More persistent men
are cooled out through defensive incivility, including callous rejections
and self-evident justications that clearly state the woman’s lack of
interest. Women use still other strategies to avoid unwanted advances
in the rst place; for example, they may indicate that they are in a
committed relationship, or show a clear lack of interest through their
body language, or by eeing from the situation. Snow et al. (1991)
show that cooling out strategies are implicitly linked to justications
and excuses; the present article elaborates this link.
This body of research focuses on expectations of and reactions to
failure and on particular cooling out strategies. It shows that cooling
out strategies are sometimes formalized in organizations (Clark 1960;
Ball 1976; Åkerström 1997; Miller and Robinson 2004; Sellerberg
2008) and at other times, as in this article, are part of informal, re-
occurring encounters between people or between people and
organizations (Ball 1976; Snow et al. 1991; Butt and Molnar 2009;
Handling Rejection as Failure 157
Thomas 2014; van den Scott et al. 2015; Wei 2016). While some
studies focus on those who are engaged in cooling out (Clark 1960;
Snow et al. 1991; Åkerström 1997; Miller and Robinson 2004;
Sellerberg 2008), this article joins those others that focus on those
being cooled out (Ball 1976; Butt and Molnar 2009; Thomas 2014;
van den Scott et al. 2015; Wei 2016).
This article develops and demonstrates a conceptual scheme that
outlines four ways that people deal with failure. In doing so, it
contributes to three elds of research. The rst and main contribution
is its focus on adaption to failure as a consequence of the assessment
of people and their work under market-like conditions. Second, this
study contributes to the work of Goffman (1952) and his proponents
by systematizing his formulation of cooling out strategies and by
introducing additional strategies and procedures highlighted by the
case of aspiring writers. Third, the scheme also contributes to the study
of creative work and actors dealing with failure in careers in the
creative industries.
Four Ways of Dealing with Failure
Objectively, the rejection of a manuscript is a failure: the publisher has
clearly and explicitly rejected the manuscript. Subjectively, however,
the writer may or may not perceive the rejection as a failure. Many
writers have committed themselves to becoming published writers, and
the publisher’s rejection does not support this aspirational status
(Goffman 1952: 452); the writer’s expectations have not been fullled.
Inconsistencies have appeared in the writer’s course of action; these
inconsistencies present a threat to the writer’s face, and the writer may
be embarrassed (Goffman 1967: 89; see also Ball 1976: 727) or
ashamed. Shame shapes self-identity as people see themselves from the
perspective of another and sense a lack of deference and a negative
evaluation from the other (Cooley 1922: 184; Scheff 1990). However,
shame is often unacknowledged and hidden in social interaction,
which sometimes leads to a cycle of shame and anger (Scheff 1990). To
be cooled out is to dene the situation in a way that enables the person
to handle the emotional impact of failure and its threat to a claimed
self-identity.
From the perspective of a person cooling him- or herself out, four
categories analytically distinguish cooling out strategies. The rst two
categories are excuses and justications. Excuses and justications are
accounts used to deal with claims of having failed (Scott and Lyman
1968). Here, excuses and justications are accounts that ction writers
use to cool themselves out and adapt to a perceived failure. As
accounts, they are “employed whenever an action is subjected to
valuative inquiry” because the action is unanticipated or untoward
Valuation Studies 158
(Scott and Lyman 1968: 46; see also Austin 1956: 2) —for example,
2
when a manuscript is rejected and the rejection is perceived as a
failure.
Excuses are accounts used when the person accepts the occurrence
of failure but not responsibility for the failure (Austin 1956: 2; Scott
and Lyman 1968: 47; Schönbach 1990: 7980); excuses explain and
rationalize the failure. An excuse is used to cool out a perceived failure
by saying, for instance, that one has had a bad day, that one was not
prepared, or that the failure was a clumsy mistake. Justications are
accounts used when the person dismisses the occurrence of failure but
accepts responsibility for the failure (Austin 1956: 2; Scott and Lyman
1968: 47; Schönbach 1990: 80). For example, a writer might justify a
rejection by claiming that it was an intended outcome.
3
The second two types of cooling out strategies are concession and
refusal of failure (Schönbach 1990: 7880). When conceding failure,
4
the person accepts the occurrence of the failure and the responsibility
for it (Schönbach 1990: 78). The writer is either cooled out and has
fully adapted to the failure or has realized that there has been a failure
but has not adapted to it. The strategies involved in conceding failure
include concrete courses of action, such as making a new attempt.
While excuses and justications are oriented toward the failure,
concessions are about leaving the rejection behind by orienting oneself
toward the future. A refusal means that the person is dismissing both
the occurrence of failure and responsibility for having failed
(Schönbach 1990: 80). For example, a writer might perceive the
rejection as a failure but at the same time be unable to comprehend
having been rejected, and this might signal that the writer is in need of
cooling out, for example by being angry with the publisher.
Schönbach (1990: 5) denes an account “as a special explanation: an account is an
2
answer to an explicit or implicit question guided by a normative expectation.” The
implicit question for writers failing to get published is, “Why did you get rejected?”
and excuses and justications are two types of answers to this question.
Another example of justication is how people rationalize meat consumption and
3
avoid feeling guilt when meat consumption is perceived as a failure. Piazza et al.
(2015) have shown that people usually use four types of justication. Eating meat is
nice, natural, necessary, and normal. Following the line of thought in this article,
eating meat is a failure or something bad. The person claims responsibility for doing
it, but denies that it is a failure or bad, since it is nice, natural, necessary, and normal.
Austin (1956) studies the language used to convey excuses or justications as
4
speech acts dealing with failure. According to Austin, excuses and justications are
used when a person has been accused of having done something wrong. They are
related to taking or not taking responsibility for the failure (Austin 1956: 2). No one
directly tells writers that they have done something wrong, but they may perceive the
rejection as a failure and use excuses and justications as accounts for why their
work was rejected; these excuses and justications may question whether a failure
really has occurred and what their own responsibility for the failure has been.
Handling Rejection as Failure 159
Thus cooling out strategies are directed at handling the failure
either through accounts or by conceding them and creating new
courses of action. Table 1 summarizes this conceptual scheme. This
5
scheme makes it easier to understand and rene the variety of cooling
out strategies that researchers have already identied and to describe
additional strategies that new research uncovers. Below, I use this
scheme to analyze how ction writers deal with the tension between
hoping to succeed and failing.
Table 1. Four ways of dealing with rejection as failure
Source: author’s own illustration
Data and Methods
To understand how writers deal with rejection, I conducted four group
interviews and 43 individual interviews in various parts of Sweden
during 2013 and 2014. I interviewed several types of writers: writers
who were aspiring to become published, writers who had aspired to
become published and had either succeeded or failed, and writers who
had not (yet) oriented themselves toward being published. I use
6
pseudonyms for all writers to protect their anonymity.
See Schönbach (1990: 188195) for a full taxonomy of concession, excuse, justi-
5
cation, and refusal as reactions in the context of interactional conict.
I also conducted interviews with literary agents and publishers or people working
6
at publishing houses. I asked publishers and literary agents about both the ction
debut books they had published and the manuscripts they had rejected. For instance,
sometimes they had manuscripts already submitted on their desks that they could
talk about. During these interviews, I also observed how the submitted manuscripts
were handled in the ofce space. Agents and publishers talked about procedures and
different types of rejections and selections, for example how they formulated
rejection letters and contacted writers. However, the main focus of this analysis is the
writers themselves and their ways of dealing with failure.
Accepting responsibility
Dismissing responsibility
Accepting the
occurrence of
failure
Dismissing the
occurrence of
failure
Valuation Studies 160
The rst third of each interview consisted of open-ended questions
about the interviewee’s writing and orientation to becoming published.
I then introduced a “career scheme template”: a table with headings
such as writing-school participation, literary mentors, writing projects,
selections/rejections, and timescale. I checked for potential additional
categories during the open-ended part of all the interviews and found
no new categories after the rst couple of interviews. I then asked the
writer to ll out the template and talk about writing projects and
selections and rejections of their work. Writers who had had such
experiences then narrated what had happened before, during, and after
a publishing house had selected or rejected their work. I developed a
tentative conceptual scheme, resembling the one presented in this
article, after the rst seven interviews and used this scheme throughout
the rest of the interviews, making it possible to both explore and
develop the scheme.
I performed a rst-cycle and a second-cycle coding (Saldaña 2013).
The rst coding cycle was to code and categorize the material into
broadly different phases of a literary career. For the second-cycle
coding, I used the theoretical outline of cooling out strategies; the
outline focused on writers who had received a response from a
publisher and the different roles involved in this process. I also
analyzed the different scenarios of rejection and selection for
publication. I then closely compared and analyzed the material and
tted it into the conceptual scheme. This way of developing existing
theory in second-cycle coding is called elaborate coding, “where the
goal is to rene theoretical constructs from a previous
study” (Auerbach and Silverstein 2003: 104), leading to the use and
elaboration of previous theoretical constructs and the development of
new ones. The conceptual scheme is thus both an analytic result and a
7
conceptual model linked to existing research.
Analysis
In what follows, I present my analysis of the phase after a publisher
has rejected the writer’s work. I focus on the strategies used by the
writers themselves from their own perspective, since these are the most
varied strategies in the material. Some writers used only one of these
strategies, while others used several. Publishers and peers also
sometimes offered cooling out strategies to failed aspiring writers; in
these cases, I analyze the roles of these publishers and peers in relation
to the writers' own perspective.
Some proponents of grounded theory have hinted at this type of coding procedure,
7
in which the researcher is explicitly involved with existing theory and extant
concepts (Strauss 1987: 306311; Charmaz 2006: 6465). A general procedure in
grounded theory, however, involves using suggestive theoretical codes rather than
explicitly extending existing theory (Charmaz 2006: 6366).
Handling Rejection as Failure 161
Conceding rejection as failure
Nowadays you can read your e-mail on your phone, and on my way home from
work I saw the letter from the publishing house. I could not help myself, and I
read it. It was a rejection. I went home, xed a strong gin and tonic, and got
drunk. That was my way of dealing with it. (Cecilia, aspiring writer)
Conceding failure happens when the writer has accepted that a failure
has occurred and claims some or full responsibility for it. Writers who
concede failure either are in need of cooling out or have already cooled
out. As writers cool out, they may either withdraw from their
aspiration or continue with it. If they are in need of cooling out, they
have not coped with the failure, and their sense of pride has taken a
blow. To concede failure, the writer might offer or be offered a new
status, turn sour, use synthetic methods, perform magic and
ceremonies, blow out steam, or plan to make a new attempt. When
conceding the rejection as failure, the writers either involve themselves
in rituals or give reasons why they should continue or not continue to
pursue an aspiration to be published.
One way of dealing with the conceded failure is to be offered or to
offer oneself another status or aspiration that is different from the one
being rejected (Goffman 1952: 457; Clark 1960: 574574; Ball 1976:
736; Thomas 2014: 293295). One writer who had failed and initially
had a hard time coping with the situation was offered a status as a
writing teacher. The writer said, “It is common knowledge: ‘Those who
can, do; those who can’t, teach’” (Anna, formerly an aspiring writer).
The writer was then able to leave the situation of being a rejected
aspiring writer and enter this new status as a teacher. At the same time
as the writer's orientation shifted, she also came to accept the failure
and her responsibility for it. For rejected writers, self-publishing can
work in a similar way; in this case, writers offer themselves a status
similar to the rejected status. In the words of Goffman, the writer can
be understood to “gather about him the persons and facilities required
to establish a status similar to the one he has lost, albeit in relation to
different persons” (Goffman 1952: 459). A writer who had failed to be
published by a publishing house for a number of years, said:
After two and half years, I had nally been rejected by all publishing houses. I felt
that I was closing in to be published, but it gets harder and harder to be published
through a publishing house as time goes on. I then decided to self-publish and
started a journey to become a self-published writer. (Adam, published writer)
The writer then offered himself a new status and at the same time dealt
with the failure of having been rejected by the publishing houses.
These writers have conceded failure and are able to be cooled out by
offering themselves a similar status, for example by becoming
something else or by self-publishing. In so doing they soften the blow
of being rejected and cope with having failed.
Valuation Studies 162
Writers who have conceded failure can also deal with the situation
by turning sour (Goffman 1952: 45). The writer outwardly appears to
have conceded the situation as a failed attempt but has not fully dealt
with the failure. This is a way of keeping the chin up and cooling out
while at the same time withdrawing from the effort of getting
published. A writer and her peers had thought that she would be
published, but she says that after her work was rejected, “I do not talk
about my own writing these days, not many people know that I write.
I usually tell people that I have stopped writing [and do other fullling
things] and that doing that is as fullling as writing” (Anna, formerly
an aspiring writer). She said that she does this to get away from the
pressure to try again and the blow of having failed at a time when she
still had a hard time coping with the failure.
To cool out, the person can blow out steam (Goffman 1952: 457;
Thomas 2014: 289290). One crime novel writer became very upset
when publishers rejected one of her manuscripts:
Interviewer: Returning to the rejections from the publishing houses, what did you
think about the rejection letters when you got them?
Birgitta: I said, “Forget about the publishers! We can include the publishers in the
next novel and kill them off.” (Birgitta, published writer)
By telling her peers that she would symbolically kill the publishers who
had rejected her work, she was able to blow off some steam and accept
her failure. While turning sour is about appearing to accept the failure,
blowing off steam is about strongly showing that one has not accepted
it. Both strategies are based on conceding the failure and responding to
the blow in different ways. Blowing off steam is not a reactive strategy
for responding to rejection, as, for example, is exploding with anger.
Instead, blowing off steam is a proactive strategy that writers use to
overcome the sting of failure.
Writers can also use synthetic methods to cool out from a failure
they have conceded—for example, by drinking alcohol. One such
example was given by Cecilia in the opening of this section, where she
had got drunk after having read a rejection e-mail on her phone. She
conceded her failure and did not nd any excuses or justications for
it, and she dealt with it by attempting with the help of alcohol not to
think about it.
Another way to overcome the failure is to perform ceremonies or,
in Malinowski's (1954) words, magic. The writer who planned to
symbolically kill off the publishers drew on the idea of magic in
imagining such an endeavor. Another writer used a ceremony and
magic more concretely; he said, “I invited my friends to a party and set
the manuscript and the rejection letters on re”. This symbolic act
helped him “get over the rejection and get on with [his] life” (Simon,
aspiring writer). Another writer told a similar story: “My literary
Handling Rejection as Failure 163
mentor ripped the rejection letters apart. [...] It was like a therapeutic
intervention” (Anna, formerly an aspiring writer). These ceremonies
and magic were meant to literally and symbolically destroy the sign of
failure to enable the writers to overcome a situation they have
conceded as a failure.
Peers may become involved as coolers when they hear about the
rejected writers’ grievances concerning the rejection. Peers can console
the writer by providing excuses, justications, refusals, as well as
concessions. In the excerpt below, a writer describes his peers as
helping him concede the failure (see also Clark 1960: 575; Thomas
2014: 291293):
Interviewer: Did you talk to anyone about these rejections?
Daniel: Yes. I talked to my wife and a few friends.
Interviewer: What did they say?
Daniel: My wife said that it must hurt, and I knew she really felt for me. Then I
mentioned it to a friend in another context, and I felt like they understood my
pain. It feels like not many people understand this kind of pain. (Daniel,
published writer)
The writer’s partner and friends were able to console the writer and
give him social support that helped him concede and adapt to his
failure. Another rejected writer consulted the members of her writing
group, who said, “Just do it again. They were very supportive;
“without them, I wouldn't have been published today. I wouldn't have
managed to go on” (Emma, published writer). The writing group’s
social support helped this writer cope with her failure by encouraging
her to plan to make a new attempt (Goffman 1952: 457). In a similar
fashion, publishers can act as coolers. Their main strategy as
organizations is to stall (Goffman 1952: 458; see also Clark 1960:
575; Sellerberg 2008) by giving the impression in the rejection letter
that they might be interested in publishing the rejected writer’s work in
the future. This stalling strategy helps rejected writers cope with their
failure by implicitly offering them a chance to try again.
Excusing rejection as failure
Everyone gets rejection letters. (Jonas, published writer)
An excuse happens when the writer has accepted the occurrence of
failure but does not claim full responsibility for having failed. In
practice, this means having been rejected by a publisher but not
accepting responsibility for the failure. Writers who excuse rejection
may or may not be correct in their claim that the rejection was not
Valuation Studies 164
their responsibility. The writers I interviewed used the following
strategies to excuse rejection: claiming unclear evaluation criteria;
claiming clear but wrong evaluation criteria; and claiming that
everyone fails. Excusing rejection as failure involves giving reasons
why the manuscript was rejected.
Writers who claimed unclear evaluation criteria argued that
publishers do not know what they are doing and are making mistakes
when they select and reject manuscripts. One concrete excuse was to
use exemplars of well-known writers who were rst rejected and then
became successful, published writers. In a group interview, four writers
developed and used a strategy of unclear evaluation criteria to handle
one of the participants’ rejection:
Gerd: What if the publishing houses actually would do a different kind of
assessments of your manuscript? One publishing house would like to publish it,
and another would not like to publish it. Why would one response be worth more
than the other?
Stina: The ambition is to have it published.
Gerd: The manuscript might be rejected by some publishing houses, but there
may also be fteen other publishing houses that would like to publish it, saying
“How it is even possible that this manuscript was once rejected?”
Fanny: Wasn’t it [Astrid Lindgren's book] Pippi Longstocking that got rejected?
(Gerd: Yes, it was.) She sent it to one publisher who rejected it and then to
another one who selected it.
Hanna: Yes, that is the case for most writers. Most writers get rejected by
publishers. (Stina, Gerd, Fanny, and Hanna, aspiring writers)
The writers discuss the unclear evaluation criteria at publishing houses
and make the case that well-known writers have initially been rejected.
The rejection of Pippi Longstocking could also have been used as an
example of “everyone fails” or “even the best writers fail”. However,
in the above quote, the illustrative rejection is used to present the
uncertainty that prevails in the publishing market and the difculty
that this uncertainty causes for publishing houses in their search for
“good” manuscripts. This interpretation makes the rejection of a
writer’s manuscript a case of unclear evaluation criteria. The writers
use previous mistakes by publishers as an excuse for the current
failure; the implicit argument is that the publishers have made a
mistake. This strategy recalls Goffman’s (1952: 456457) discussion of
people with similar status to the marks who are used to cool the mark
out. Here, the writers use a published writer as an exemplar of similar
status to the rejected writer. Through an act of imagination, the writers
use a past situation as an excuse that makes it possible to deal with the
Handling Rejection as Failure 165
failure; they imagine that the rejection was wrong and that it might be
part of a longer-term success story.
Other excuses concerning unclear evaluation criteria have to do
with having the wrong timing and the fact that people read
manuscripts differently. This means that the writer is not responsible
for having failed because the rejection was just the result of a different
reading of the manuscript, and the manuscript itself might still be good
and publishable. The response to the failure may then be to say, “It’s
their loss.” One writer expressed this sentiment:
Inger: I got a rejection where the publisher said I should read the greatest
novelists of our time, and then I will learn how to write well. I became upset; I
thought I was a really good writer […]
Interviewer: Did you change your way of writing after this rejection?
Inger: No, actually, I did not. I do not want to be published because I write as the
publishers want me to write. I write the things I feel like writing, and I have a
uniqueness in my way of writing, like everyone else in my writing group. I value
this uniqueness, and that is why I am part of a writing group. (Inger, published
writer)
Inger knows she has failed but says that it is the publishing houses’
loss if they do not want to publish her texts. Self-publishing can work
as a similar type of excuse to cool out the failure of having been
rejected by a traditional publisher. The status denied by the traditional
publisher is created by the writers themselves, sometimes with a
sentiment of “I will show them”; that is, the writer will show the
publishers that deciding not to publish their work was the wrong
decision.
Another excuse is to say, as writer Hanna does above, that most
writers are rejected or, as another writer said, “Everyone gets rejection
letters” (Jonas, published writer). Everyone fails means not only that
writers now famous have been rejected, but also that everyone who
submits a manuscript has been rejected. This does not necessarily have
to do with unclear evaluation criteria—it’s simply a claim that all
writers fail, including this writer. The strategy is to remove the
personal feeling of failure and instead talk about it as a general and
common event. To be rejected is then at least not a personal failure; the
responsibility is not on the shoulders of the individuals themselves. As
an objective failure, a rejection is always a sign of having attempted to
do something that failed. But individuals may not interpret objective
failures as personal failures—they might even see them as personal
successes.
Alternatively, the rejected individual might claim that the
evaluation criteria were clear but wrong. One aspiring writer said,
when asked how he had reacted when he was rejected, “Yes, of course,
Valuation Studies 166
you get a bit disappointed. You have expectations. As I said before,
[for publishers] it might be about earning money quickly” (Karl,
aspiring writer). Here, the writer excuses the failure by saying that the
publishers might have only been interested in potential best-sellers.
Another writer said, “[Publishers publish] things of inferior quality
because the person who has written it is a bit famous. Then they just
publish it” (Lars, published writer). This writer excuses the failure of
rejection by claiming that publishers prefer work written by celebrities.
In both cases, the evaluation criteria are clear—it is the potential best-
seller or the manuscript written by a famous person that gets selected
—but these criteria are leading publishers to select the wrong
manuscripts. With this excuse, writers can cool out by claiming that
the rejection was not a failure, since their manuscript might still be
better (and more publishable) than the manuscripts getting published.
Justifying the attempt and denying failure
I would not like to have been published and then forgotten. (Nils, formerly
aspiring writer)
A justication is made when the person accepts the responsibility of
having been rejected but denies that a failure has occurred. The writer
accepts the rejection but at the same time argues that it was not a bad
thing. The writers I interviewed justied their rejections by dening the
situation as a good attempt, hedging, relativizing, and reconstructing in
hindsight. Justications offer reasons why being rejected is actually not
a bad thing.
If the rejection letter deviated in any sense from the standard
rejection letter, writers could use it to justify the rejection as not a real
failure. The submission might have been a good attempt. The writer
might then feel a new hope to be published one day, as expressed by
this writer:
Interviewer: How did you know that [a large publishing house] was interested in
your work?
Maud: I understood it when I read the rejection letter. I did not get the standard
rejection. “We have read your manuscript. Thank you, but we are not interested
in publishing your work.” They described the plot a bit and asked me to work on
it some more. I worked on it some more and got a long letter with a review of my
work. I was like “Wow, this is fun.” I thought that if I worked some more on this
manuscript and sent it to a lot of publishing houses, it would be accepted
someday. (Maud, published writer)
Writers interpret these kinds of rejection letters as rejections but not as
total failures. They justify them by claiming responsibility for having
failed but claiming that the failure was not bad. An objective failure
has occurred, but the person does not perceive it as a subjective failure.
Handling Rejection as Failure 167
Another justication strategy is to claim that the submission was
not a real attempt. This claim recalls Goffman’s (1952: 461) notion of
hedging, in which the person makes sure to avoid totally committing
to achieving something. Writers may conceal their commitment to
being published from others and even from themselves. When I asked a
writer what his rst thought was when his work was rejected, he said,
“My rst thought when I got the rejection letter was that it was one
less rejection letter to think about” (Karl, published writer). The writer
had from the outset contemplated the opportunity to self-publish but,
despite this, had sent the manuscript to a traditional publisher. He
justied the rejection as not really a bad thing because he had not
expected the manuscript to be published by a traditional publisher
anyway, and so the rejection was not that important or particularly
bad. Although the writer contemplated and eventually decided to self-
publish, he would still have preferred to be published by a publishing
house. He said:
I dreamed about getting published by a publishing house, and when I nished my
manuscript I just did like everyone else and submitted it to publishing houses,
who rejected it. I then just continued by self-publishing it, making it possible for
me to hold the printed book in my hands.
As I interpret the writer’s responses, he was still committed to being
published by a traditional publisher, but for the hedging to work as a
justication of the failure, he had to avoid fully expressing this
commitment.
Relativization is a way of using justication to distance oneself
from a rejection. The writer can claim after a rejection that becoming
published is not the only thing that is important in life (cf. Goffman
1952: 455). “I do not think my life will be a failure if I am not
published,one writer said, “and that was an important insight [...] it
is important to get distance and see that a person is more than his or
her writing, there are other things you can do” (Anna, formerly
aspiring writer). Here, the writer’s formerly total commitment to
becoming a rst-time published ction writer is not salient; she justies
the failure by stating that it is not particularly bad and thus protects
herself by distancing herself from the commitment.
Rejections can also be turned around; an initial failure can be
turned into a success. This is a form of reconstructing in hindsight,
which is related to eulogy work. Eulogy work is a strategy for coping
with failure and managing emotion and reputation when one has lost
an esteemed status in public by claiming the loss was not really a bad
thing (van den Scott et al. 2015). In contrast to eulogy work,
reconstructing in hindsight is not done immediately or for public
display, and the writer has not lost a status but instead has failed to
claim an aspirational status. For example, rejected writers might
engage in reconstructing in hindsight when another publishing house
Valuation Studies 168
publishes their work or if they rethink their priorities and what is
important in life. They may even claim to be happy not to have been
published, because the publication may have been a failure. As one
writer said, “I would not like to have been published and then
forgotten” (Nils, formerly aspiring writer). Another writer discussed
the consequences of having been rejected and in hindsight
reconstructed the meaning of her rejection:
If the manuscript of my novel had been published back then, I think it would
have been uncomfortable for me today […] I did not think about it then, but if it
had been published then, everyone would have read a text that actually was quite
a private matter. (Ulrika, formerly an aspiring writer)
Several years had passed since this writer’s work had been rejected. By
the time of the interview, she had reconstructed the rejection in
hindsight by turning her initial perception of it as a failure into a
feeling of relief.
Refusing to see the rejection as a failure
The writer who dismisses the failure and denies responsibility for it is
unable to comprehend the situation as a failure and may eventually
search for reasons why he or she failed. The writer may say, “I am
right; they are wrong. One writer told me, “I had previously
published a [non-ction book]. When I published it, [the publisher]
said, ‘If you do anything more, something like ction, I want to see it
rst.‘You will see it rst,’ I said.” She continued:
I was so angry when I was rejected [by the publisher]. I was furious. I was going
out [for an event] in the evening, but I just wanted to knock someone to the
ground.
Interviewer: Were you angry because you assumed you would be published?
Olga: Yes, because I was not that upset when I got rejections from the other
publishing houses. When I got their rejections, it was not such a big deal. (Olga,
published writer)
The writer had felt that the publisher had made an implicit promise to
publish her work in the future, so when her manuscript was rejected,
she could not comprehend it. The publisher was the one that did “not
understand a thing”; the writer simply could not fail. This meant that
the writer was getting “hot” and that conceding, excusing, or justifying
the failure might cool her out. A writer who refuses a rejection is
therefore not cooled out and has not adapted to the failure, while
those deploying justications, excuses, and concession are using
strategies to adapt themselves to the failure. While some writers may
fully adapt to a failure, others may never fully do so.
Handling Rejection as Failure 169
Discussion
The writers I interviewed dealt with the failure of rejection in four
main ways and by using a number of previously explored and not yet
explored procedures. This conceptual framework systematizes
Goffman's (1952) account of how people using cooling out strategies
adapt to failure. It also brings additional perspective to the study of
evaluation and valuations by linking their consequences to the
experience of failure. Finally, this study contributes to research on
careers in creative industries by linking experiences of failure to
objective failures.
There is a lack of clear aesthetic standards for evaluating works of
ction (Anheier and Gerhards 1991a: 812813, 1991b: 139140;
Janssen 2001: 340; Menger 2014: 4). The lack of clear aesthetic
standards creates situations in which rejected writers cannot easily
determine how publishers have assessed their manuscripts. Because of
this uncertainty, writers attempt to make sense of what has happened
and why their work has been rejected. They use excuses to nd reasons
for the rejection. Because the excuse makes it possible to imagine why
the manuscript was rejected, the excuse transforms uncertainty into a
resource for dealing with failure. For instance, rejected writers imagine
and handle the failure by stating the excuse that publishers only select
potential best-sellers or manuscripts written by celebrities. Rejected
writers who refuse the rejection, on the other hand, are responding
directly to the lack of clear evaluative criteria. They cannot imagine
why their work was rejected; such a thing simply could not have
happened. Justications leave uncertainty aside and focus on the
consequences of the rejection; they claim that in its consequences, the
rejection was simply not that bad. Concessions attempt neither to
grapple with the uncertainty nor to determine what could have
happened. Instead, through concessions, rejected writers use rituals
and strategies to overcome the failure and come up with reasons why
they should or should not continue to pursue their aspiration to be
published. A temporal sequence of adapting to failure appears: writers
move from not comprehending the rejection (refusal), to focusing on
why their work was rejected (excuses), to why, in its consequences, the
rejection is not that bad (justication), to reorientation (concession).
However, different strategies and sequences are in play; some people
may use several different strategies at once, and the strategies used may
depend on the situation and persons involved.
Because there are many aspiring writers who attempt to get
published and whose work is rejected by a publishing house, the
strategies and procedures presented here are commonly performed.
Publishers’ rejection slips are delivered privately to writers, and writers
sometimes conceal the rejection. The consequences of assessment and
rejection are not limited to aspiring writers, however, and can
Valuation Studies 170
sometimes be of a more public nature. An example that is structurally
analogous to that of aspiring writers who have failed is aspiring
singers who fail in reality television music competitions (e.g., Idols/
Superstar). Thousands of aspiring singers participate in auditions to
have their abilities assessed by a jury. They hope to succeed, but most
end up failing (Meizel 2009: 485; Wei 2016). Participants who are
rejected after the rst round cool themselves out by justifying their
failure, arguing that they are an unrecognized talent, and continuing to
aspire to be recognized for their talents (Wei 2016). As cultures of
success and evaluation and valuation play out, the stories of rejections
and humiliation become part of the narrative plot and appeal of the
program (Meizel 2009). The value lies in the public nature of the
auditions and in what Garnkel (1956) has called status degradation
ceremonies, in which participants lose their claimed status in front of
others. Participants save face by claiming in an exit ritual that what
happened was actually good (van den Scott et al. 2015). There might
be specic strategies for cooling out aspirants so that they maintain
their identity and for destroying aspirants and their claimed identity
after an assessment (Ball 1976: 727). In contrast to the aspiring
writers' rejections, which are concealed, the program has created
entertainment value from public evaluations and valuations (see also
Muniesa and Helgesson 2013). Audiences are entertained by both
failure and success, and the participants themselves might be mortied
or in a state of celebration. Failure and success depend on each other
in this context; a singer can only succeed if someone else fails and can
only fail if someone else succeeds. While the failure, in this case, is a
public event, the rejection from publishers is handled through the more
private process of cooling out.
What happens when aspiring writers and singers attempt to
succeed but continually fail? Another structurally analogous example
is internet daters. Some internet daters hope to meet a romantic
partner but end up failing in their aspiration to be matched with
someone. In the face of recurring failures, daters may either learn to
control their feelings of hope and failure (Fürst 2013) or be unable to
control their feelings and thus be in need of cooling out (Snow et al.
1991). The consequences of evaluation and valuation might then lead
8
to a gradual emotional distancing from the situation of evaluation and
valuation and the risk of rejection (Fürst 2013). This connects with
existing and possible future research on the consequences of being
assessed in other elds.
In education, for example, reactions to university rankings have
intended and unintended consequences for the universities involved,
and these universities come to adapt their practices to these rankings
(Espeland and Sauder 2007). Future research might explore the
It might, however, be possible to organize hope of success by instilling such an 8
emotional climate within a group or organization (Fürst and Kümmel 2011).
Handling Rejection as Failure 171
consequences of other kinds of evaluation in education including, for
example, rejections of articles, book proposals, and grant proposals
and rejections from aspirational academic positions. This brief
summary of research on the consequences of evaluation seems to hint
at a larger and perhaps promising eld within valuation studies in
which the consequences of assessment and being assessed are studied.
Conclusion
This article has shown that rejected writers manage the tension
between having hoped to be published and being rejected by claiming
responsibility and admitting or dismissing the perceived failure. The
discussion showed the potential of studying the responses and
strategies that people use to handle the intended and unintended
consequences of evaluation.
A suggestion for further research is to extend this article’s
conceptual apparatus for understanding perceived failure to the study
of success. Goffman (1952: 454) mainly analyzes adaption to failure
but notes the possibility of promotion to a new status. Austin (1956)
analyzes accusations of having failed, and Scott and Lyman (1968)
study accounts of unanticipated or untoward actions; but it would be
possible to study corresponding successes. Four different scenarios
may arise that reverse the actions of conceding, excusing, justifying,
and refusing. First, the success may be accepted (one has succeeded),
and the person may claim responsibility for having succeeded; for
example, the writer may fully adjust to having succeeded at getting
published and accept the situation as such. Second, the success may
also be accepted without any claim of responsibility; for example, the
writer may attribute the success to someone else’s actions and dene it
as not a real success. Third, the success may be refuted but the person
may claim responsibility for having succeeded; for example, the writer
may say that getting published was not the experience he or she had
expected it to be. Fourth, the writer may not accept the success and
may refrain from assuming responsibility for it, for example, by
wanting to forget all about it. Future studies of success can empirically
test and use this outline.
Another, more direct way to develop this research is to further
analyze sequences of adaption to failure and success by following
research procedures developed in social sequence analysis (Cornwell
2015). For example, researchers might examine how often and when
people use different strategies or certain sequences of strategies and
procedures (cf. Piazza et al. 2015), as well as how the different
strategies are sequentially organized in talk (cf. Cerulo and Ruane
2014). Resulting patterns may indicate whether different social groups
use similar or dissimilar strategies to cope with failure and success.
Additional research would also be needed to understand when and
Valuation Studies 172
how actors come to act out one or another of the strategies after
having been rejected or selected. Such research might identify which
structural factors shape the labor markets of creative industries, who
attempts to access the labor market and with what consequences, and
how failure and success in this labor market are shaped by structural
inequalities (Hesmondhalgh and Saha 2013; Oakley 2013; Gill 2014;
Conor et al. 2015; Saha 2015; McRobbie 2016). The consequences for
the identities of those who are rejected or selected could also be
studied. For instance, those rejected may be considered to be non-
persons or nobodies (Goffman 1963: 84); in this case, actors within
the core of the literary world might behave with civil inattention in not
recognizing the existence of the person. This could be contrasted to
how a person becomes a “somebody” in the literary world and the
consequences of evaluation and valuation of this identity. Such a study
would investigate how people are identied and positioned by the
identities that are produced and recognized within the literary world.
An individual’s commitment to an aspiration is presumably
inuenced by how he or she deals with the consequences of being the
object of an assessment. This research is thus important not only for
the study of careers in cultural industries (see Mathieu 2012), but also
for the study of aspiration and commitment to becoming something in
general. Failures and methods of dealing with failure tap into
fundamental conditions of living as a social being.
Acknowledgments. I thank the anonymous reviewers and the co-
Editor-in-Chief Claes-Fredrik Helgesson for their valuable feedback on
earlier versions of this article. I also thank the participants of the
Cultural Matters Group and The Uppsala Laboratory of Economy
Sociology at Uppsala University for their comments. The research
reported in this study has been part of a larger research project funded
by a European Research Council Starting Grant (ERC 263699-CEV).
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Henrik Fürst is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at
Uppsala University. His research is in the elds of sociology of culture
and economic sociology, and focuses on cultural evaluation under
conditions of quality uncertainty. His dissertation is about the Swedish
publishing market and how aspiring ction writers and publishers deal
with the quality uncertainty of manuscripts.
... Da es mir nicht um eine ausführliche ideengeschichtliche Rekonstruktion geht, steht das Anregungspotenzial des Konzepts für die Analyse von Wissenschaftskarrieren im Vordergrund. Zu diesem Zweck werde ich auf ausgewählte Studien zu Cooling out in Bildungs-und Arbeitskontexten (Clark 1960;Fürst 2016;Nadai 2007) eingehen und insbesondere die analytische Leerstelle des Aufbaus von Erfolgserwartungen aufzeigen (Abschn. 2.3 und 2.4). ...
... 10 Allerdings muss die Verantwortung für das Ergebnis der Bewertung nicht zwangsläufig angenommen werden. Ähnlich wie Fürst (2016) in Bezug auf Schriftsteller*innen argumentiert, können Misserfolge als solche akzeptiert werden, ohne dass sie als selbst verschuldet gedeutet werden müssen. Dabei dürfte es einen Unterschied machen, ob sich die Bewertung auf ein individuell oder kollektiv zugerechnetes Erzeugnis bezieht. ...
... Die Konstellation, mit mehreren Autor*innen einen Antrag verfasst zu haben, ist nicht unwesentlich für die Bearbeitung der Enttäuschung. Denn als Gruppe gescheitert zu sein, fordert nur bedingt das wissenschaftliche Selbstbild heraus, wenn das Scheitern individuell nicht anerkannt wird (Fürst 2016). Zudem verknüpft der Interviewte seine persönliche Reaktion auf die Ablehnung mit deren sachlicher Begründung. ...
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Zusammenfassung Mit seinem 1952 veröffentlichten Aufsatz „On cooling the mark out“ formulierte Erving Goffman einen einflussreichen Vorschlag, um die Enttäuschung von Erwartungen sowie Strategien der Vermeidung und Bearbeitung typischerweise individuell zugerechneter Misserfolge zu konzeptualisieren. In kompetitiven Feldern, die zugleich Universalismus wie Leistungsgerechtigkeit versprechen und systematisch an der Einlösung dieser modernen Versprechungen scheitern, ist die Bearbeitung von enttäuschten Erwartungen eine Daueraufgabe. Ein Musterbeispiel für diese Kombination von feldspezifischem Glauben an die Relevanz von Leistung und hoher Dichte an Erwartungsenttäuschungen stellen Karrieren im Wissenschaftsfeld dar. Der Artikel nimmt am Beispiel von Wissenschaftskarrieren eine Erweiterung des Cooling-out-Konzepts um Prozesse des Warming up vor. Während Cooling out sich auf die Abkühlung von Erfolgserwartungen bezieht, zielt Warming up auf den Prozess des Aufbaus von Erfolgserwartungen. Auf der Grundlage von 20 erwerbsbiografischen Interviews mit Wissenschaftler*innen aus den Disziplinen BWL, Geschichte und Physik geht der Beitrag dem Management von Erfolgserwartungen und der Anpassung von Möglichkeitshorizonten nach und arbeitet zentrale Strategien heraus, die dabei zum Einsatz kommen.
... Auch in dieser Konstellation gestaltet sich der Cooling-out-Prozess weitgehend in Form des "Selbst-Auskühlens", bei dem die Fälle sich gleichsam im Sinne einer inneren Kündigung von ihrem Commitment gegenüber der Organisation verabschieden. Dabei zeigen sich deutliche Parallelen zu Strategien des "Excusing" und "Refusing", die Fürst (2016) bei Autor*innen im Umgang mit abgelehnten Manuskripten herausgearbeitet hat. "An excuse happens", so Fürst (ebd.,S. ...
... Vgl. dazuFürst (2016), der am Beispiel des Umgangs von Autor*innen mit abgelehnten Manuskripten unterschiedliche Strategien des "Selbst-Auskühlens" herausarbeitet, um das Scheitern erträglicher zu machen. ...
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Zusammenfassung In diesem Beitrag werden Berufswechsel aus der Cooling-out-Perspektive rekonstruiert. Dabei wird das Cooling-out-Konzept in zweierlei Hinsicht erweitert. Erstens wird es mit Blick auf die an Goffman anschließende Diskussion nicht nur als eine von außen auf ein Subjekt gerichtete Selektionsstrategie aufgefasst, sondern auch als eine von innen kommende Strategie der Krisenintervention zur Verarbeitung von beruflichen Enttäuschungen. Zweitens wird ein berufliches Cooling out in Anlehnung an Bourdieu als Folge eines misslungenen Passungsverhältnisses von beruflichen Bewährungsbedingungen und individuellen Dispositionen konzeptualisiert, um die Entweder-oder-Struktur von Selbst- versus Fremdselektion zu überwinden und auch das „Dazwischen“ von Feld und Subjekt in den Blick zu nehmen. Am Beispiel von empirischen Fallstudien unter Berufswechslern wird gezeigt, dass Entscheidungen für einen Berufswechsel keiner der beiden Seiten allein zugeschlagen werden können, sondern lediglich den Endpunkt einer kontinuierlichen biographischen Erfahrungsaufschichtung darstellen, an der individuelle Dispositionen ebenso wie Feldstrukturen ihren Anteil haben.
... Författarna använder olika strategier för att hantera refuseringen. De handlar framförallt om huruvida de refuserade författarna ser sig själva eller någon annan som ansvariga för refuseringen och om de själva ser det inträffade som ett misslyckande eller inte (Fürst, 2016). För att hantera den osäkra bedömningssituationen lär sig de som bedömer manuskript hos förlagen att lita på sin magkänsla istället för att utgå från färdigformulerade kriterier. ...
... Information och utlåtanden från de litterära mentorerna, publiceringar i tidskrifter, litterära kalendrar eller bådadera och nomineringar till eller vinster av litterära priser kan dessutom användas av författarna själva för att bedöma sina litterära förmågor och chanser till att bli utgivna i framtiden (Fürst, 2017(Fürst, , 2018a. Många blir dock refuserade och har olika strategier för att hantera refuseringen som ett "misslyckande" (Fürst, 2016(Fürst, , 2017. För att ett manuskript till slut ska bli antaget av ett traditionellt förlag måste de personer som har hand om manushanteringen på förlaget upptäcka det insända manuskriptet och rättfärdiga utgivningen av det (Fürst, 2017(Fürst, , 2018b. ...
Book
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Denna bok handlar om debutanters karriärvägar fram till deras skönlitterära debut och uppmärksamhet efteråt. Främst analyseras de urvalsinstanser som är avgörande för att bedöma framgången för debutanter, debutböcker och förlag. Dessa instansers arbete resulterar i pyramider av prestige med få debutanter, debutböcker och förlag i toppen. Boken bygger på 80 intervjuer, redogörelser för författarkarriärer för över 800 debutanter som debuterade mellan åren 1997 till 2014 och material om över 150 förlag. Den ger unika inblickar i villkoren för skönlitterära debuter i vår tids Sverige.
... Previous studies have emphasised the capacity for managing failure and rejection as important dimensions in the occupational socialisation of artists, because facing rejection from gatekeepers is something most artists are exposed to throughout their careers (Fürst, 2016;Skaggs, 2019). In line with these studies, the ability to cope with rejection in the admission process can be considered an important learning experience which tacitly prepares aspirants for a future in the insecure field of creative work. ...
... In a clinical guide for psychological counseling for artists, rejection and failure show up over 80 times, 2 and recommendations in this book encourage counselors to understand that even the most talented or gifted artists have self-doubt and need interventions to build creative confidence (Gonithellis, 2018). Outside of a therapeutic or counseling setting, occupational communities that surround artists, including mentorship, friendship relationships, and participation in the normal activities of an art world help individuals to understand the regular, normal character of failure in their particular artistic context (Craig & Dubois, 2010;Frenette, 2013;Fürst, 2016;Reilly, 2018;Skaggs, 2019). Though all artists experience failure, understanding it as a normal reality of their field is important, taking individual self-doubt and exchanging it for an understanding of how art worlds work. ...
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This essay presents the argument that failure in the arts is kaleidoscopic, presenting myriad points and types of regular, repeated, patterned failures that are concealed by focusing on financial earnings as the primary way that failure is experienced by artists. This framework is useful as a way to examine and review knowledge about the arts through outlining how individuals, groups, artistic products, and ideas can fail to accumulate economic, human, social, and cultural capital.
... Demgegenüber zeigen Studien aus dem angelsächsischen Raum die umfänglichen Anwendungsmöglichkeiten dieses Konzepts. Neben zahlreichen Studien zum Bildungsbereich reicht die thematische Bandbreite der Arbeiten vom Jobverlust (Miller und Robinson 2004) über das Scheitern im Sport (Butt und Molnar 2009), in Talent-Shows (Wei 2016), beim Publizieren (Fürst 2016), in Paarbeziehungen (Usera 2018) oder bei der Geburt eines gesundes Kindes (Thomas 2014) bis zum gesellschaftlichen Umgang mit der Finanzkrise (Glynos und Willmott 2012). ...
... This reaction is expressed as a questioning of traditional publishing houses' practices, their sense of quality, and what they publish and who they publish. Authors may move on from rejections to self-publishing with the sense that they are publishing something that the publishing houses have missed out on (Fürst, 2016). Self-published writers actively use self-publishing as a strategy to position themselves as legitimate actors and producers by questioning the status quo in the publishing industry. ...
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A do-it-yourself culture and amateur production are significant features of creative industries. Self-publishing is an eloquent expression of these features. Self-publishers invest in and make decisions to publish their creative goods without the involvement of an established and external production company or publishing house. In creative industries, claims are made about the inferior quality of self-published works, creating a stigma for self-publishing. This article investigates the ways in which aspiring writers who are considering self-publishing, handle the tension between their aspiration to publish a book and the possible stigma of self-publishing. The study draws on an analysis of interviews with 59 writers who are considering self-publishing as an option or who have self-published a book. The aspiring writers are aware of the subordinate status of such publications and while some avoid self-publishing, others seek ways to establish and legitimise the quality of their work to avoid the stigma. Legitimisation is produced through the perception of a transitioning author role and by shifting the basis of evaluation of publishability to the consumer side in creative industries, to non-professional judgement, and to the experience of being published. The outcome of the decision to self-publish, and the underpinning culture for making such assessments, has consequences for how books and other cultural goods are currently produced and the type of cultural goods that reach consumers. The assessment of self-publishing as an option among writers exposes tensions and transformations in the evaluation of cultural goods in contemporary creative industries.
Chapter
Anlässlich der Verleihung des Deutschen Buchpreises 2020 an Anne Weber sprach Andreas Platthaus in der FAZ (12.10.2020) unterschiedliche Dinge an: Zunächst Corona, wie kann es anders sein, aber auch Ort und Ritual der Verleihung, die vergebenen Preisgelder, die verkaufssteigernde Wirkung für den prämierten Titel, die hohe Qualität der Titel auf der Shortlist und schließlich auch die Dankesrede von Anne Weber, die für „Annette, ein Heldinnenepos“ (2020) ausgezeichnet wurde. Die genannten Aspekte machen Literaturpreise im Allgemeinen und den Deutschen Buchpreis im Besonderen aus journalistischer Perspektive berichtenswert und finden sich regelmäßig in der Berichterstattung wieder. In manchen Jahren fällt der Nachrichtenwert noch höher aus, wenn beispielsweise die Dankesrede zur öffentlichen Kritik genutzt wird, wie dies ein Jahr zuvor geschah.
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This Handbook examines the study of failure in social sciences, its manifestations in the contemporary world, and the modalities of dealing with it – both in theory and in practice. It draws together a comprehensive approach to failing, and invisible forms of cancelling out and denial of future perspectives. Underlining critical mechanisms for challenging and reimagining norms of success in contemporary society, it allows readers to understand how contemporary regimes of failure are being formed and institutionalized in relation to policy and economic models, such as neoliberalism. While capturing the diversity of approaches in framing failure, it assesses the conflations and shifts which have occurred in the study of failure over time. Intended for scholars who research processes of inequality and invisibility, this Handbook aims to formulate a critical manifesto and activism agenda for contemporary society. Presenting an integrated view about failure, the Handbook will be an essential reading for students in sociology, social theory, anthropology, international relations and development research, organization theory, public policy, management studies, queer theory, disability studies, sports, and performance research.
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There are more aspiring artists than available positions for artists in artistic labor markets. For fiction writers, the publication of a first book often means getting the first big break in their literary career and entering the literary world as a published author. However, few writers succeed in their aspiration to become published. This article draws on interviews with 59 writers in Sweden, to explore the tension resulting from the passing of time while aspiring for, but not having, the first big break. The aspiration among writers is an orientation towards attempting to publicly communicate their fiction writing through a published book. Interruptions to the aspiration can create existential dilemmas of unfulfilled aspirations. The unfulfillment of the aspiration may be existentially responded to through ‘urgency’ or ‘floating’, where the writer actively pushes for success or loses the aspiration. The article addresses aspiration in situations where artists’ chances for success are uncertain and are decided by gatekeepers. The theoretical framework developed is useful for understanding aspiration over time vis-a-vis existential dimensions of artistic careers which do not conform to an aspired for ideal career.
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The Psychology and Sociology of Literature is a collection of 25 chapters on literature by some of the leading psychologists, sociologists, and literary scholars in the field of the empirical study of literature. Contributors include Ziva Ben-Porat, Gerry Cupchik, Art Graesser, Rachel Giora, Norbert Groeben, Colin Martindale, David Miall, Willie van Peer, Kees van Rees, Siegfried Schmidt, Hugo Verdaasdonk, and Rolf Zwaan. Topics include literature and the reading process; the role of poetic language, metaphor, and irony; cathartic and Freudian effects; literature and creativity; the career of the literary author; literature and culture; literature and multicultural society, literature and the mass media; literature and the internet; and literature and history. An introduction by the editors situates the empirical study of literature within an academic context. The chapters are all invited and refereed contributions, collected to honor the scholarship and retirement of professor Elrud Ibsch, of the Free University of Amsterdam. Together they represent the state of the art in the empirical study of literature, a movement in literary studies which aims to produce reliable and valid scientific knowledge about literature as a means of verbal communication in its cultural context. Elrud Ibsch was one of the pioneers in Europe to promote this approach to literature some 25 years ago, and this volume takes stock of what has happened since. The Psychology and Sociology of Literature presents an invaluable overview of the results, promises, gaps, and needs of the empirical study of literature. It addresses social scientists as well as scholars in the humanities who are interested in literature as discourse.
Book
How do we place value on goods-and, importantly, why? Valuation and pricing are core issues in the market economy, but understanding of these concepts and their interrelation is weak. In response, The Worth of Goods takes a sociological approach to the perennial but timely question of what makes a product valuable. Structured in three parts, it first examines value in the broader sense-moral values and how they are formed, and the relations between economic and non-economic values- discussing such matters as the value of an oil spill, the price of a scientific paper, value in ethical consumption, and imaginative value. The second part discusses the issues surrounding valuation in aesthetic markets, specifically wine, fashion models, art, and the creative industries. The third part analyzes valuation in financial markets-credit rating agencies, stock exchange markets, and industrial production. This pioneering volume brings together leading social scientists to provide a range of theoretical tools and case studies for understanding price and the creation of value in markets within social and cultural contexts and preconditions. It is an important source for scholars in economics, sociology, anthropology, and political science interested in how markets work, and how value is established.
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I review recent studies of work and occupations. Most of this work proceeds at the individual level, studying individual characteristics of workers, qualities of the work experience, and, to a lesser extent, stages of the work experience. Structural analysis is less common and often treats structural phenomena as aggregates rather than emergents, except in the area of labor relations. A substantial literature—probably a third of the total—examines particular occupations. In general the literature is divided into two “sides”—one focused on gender, inequality, and career/life cycle issues, the other on unions, and industrial and labor relations. Between these are smaller foci on theoretical issues and on general structures of work. I conclude that with the possible exceptions of Marxism and the study of professions, subfields of work and occupations lack the synthetic theory that would enable synthesis of empirical results. I also consider the twofold role of politicization in the area: the positive role of driving empirical investigation of new areas, the negative one of taking its own politics as unproblematic
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Qualitative Data is meant for the novice researcher who needs guidance on what specifically to do when faced with a sea of information. It takes readers through the qualitative research process, beginning with an examination of the basic philosophy of qualitative research, and ending with planning and carrying out a qualitative research study. It provides an explicit, step-by-step procedure that will take the researcher from the raw text of interview data through data analysis and theory construction to the creation of a publishable work. The volume provides actual examples based on the authors' own work, including two published pieces in the appendix, so that readers can follow examples for each step of the process, from the project's inception to its finished product. The volume also includes an appendix explaining how to implement these data analysis procedures using NVIVO, a qualitative data analysis program.
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Drawing on fieldwork at American Idol auditions, I describe how contestants come to accept their fate after being cut from the competition. I revisit Goffman's metaphor of “cooling the mark out,” especially the cooling out strategy of offering people another chance to qualify for roles at which they failed. Contestants' desires to audition and audition again after failure are driven by meritocratic ideals. They develop accounts in line with these ideals to explain how despite being rejected they are talented and can still excel in the future. This study contributes to literature on “cooling out” by highlighting how people draw on larger systems of meaning—ideologies supporting meritocratic values in the case of Idol contestants—when making sense of their failures.