For designers, rejections are a part of life; simply punch “knit/ crochet design rejection” into your favorite search engine for a wealth of musings, cries, and groanings of varied length. They’re a nasty shock for a young designer and nobody finds them easy to deal with (anyone who says otherwise, as Westley would have it, is selling something).
The world of knit and crochet design becomes more competitive by the day. With the rise of online platforms like Ravelry, Etsy and Lovecrafts that make publishing your own patterns a matter of pushing buttons (I speak here of the simple act of publishing a pattern, not all the work of pattern writing, sample creation, editing, testing, marketing, etc. that precedes it), more and more knitters and crocheters are growing the confidence to make the leap from crafter to designer. And this is a good thing.
It also means that the market is becoming more crowded, and that the supply of patterns is keeping up with the demand for them, if not surpassing it. Not only that, but innovation is constantly happening all around us; which means that when we submit to a publisher our designs might be in company with submissions from the next Bristol Ivy or Melanie Berg. Publishers are now spoiled for choice in ways that they may not have been a few decades ago. Going along with the Princess Bride theme, they “can clearly not choose the design in front of me!”
Why Designs Are Rejected
Most of us will probably receive far, far more rejection letters over a lifetime than acceptances; this is something most of us also, before submitting, hear in one ear and automatically allow to run out the other. We’re utterly convinced of the acceptability of our pieces (that’s usually why we send them out…) until the canned letter arrives in our inboxes that begins something like this: “Thank you for your submission; however…” I submitted and was rejected again and again for over a year before my first acceptance with Fenestra. Flushed with victory, I whipped up another batch of designs, all of which were sent back to me.
This seldom gets any easier, whether it’s the first submission or the fiftieth. Of course we all want to know “Why?” One of the most common questions I see in designer forums is, “Can the publisher write back to me and explain why my design was rejected?”
Usually the answer is no; a publisher may receive hundreds of submissions (in one of their podcast episodes, KnitPicks mentioned 300-400 submissions for one collection alone) and select only 5-15; that means at least 285-385 pieces were rejected, and it would be a work of weeks to reply individually to each designer and enumerate the reasons. However, it would be a mistake to think that this is because publishers don’t care. Far from it—the kind of designs they want to see are the kind they can accept. Many of them will give general answers to the question, “Why do you reject submissions?” These are the answers that crop up over and over again:
- The proposal did not include all the required information, or was not formatted according to guidelines. If a publisher asks for certain information, it’s because they need it to make a decision. If they ask us to format it a certain way (as a single page only, or according to a template), it’s so that they can find all that information as quickly and efficiently as possible. For more on assembling the proposal itself, check out this post.
- The design did not fit the theme of the call for submissions. This can be an obvious misfit, such as submitting an Estonian lace shawl to a Celtic cable call; usually it’s far more subtle and even a bit subjective. For instance, the theme ‘Modern Lace’ can mean different things to different people, and we as designers can only make an educated guess (based on the mood board and any other provided hints) as to how this theme is interpreted in the mind of a review board.
- The design is too similar to too many other designs, whether already-published pieces or submissions for the call in question. Like the previous point, this can only be partially avoided. If you’ve done your homework, you’ll have a general idea of the kinds of designs there are out there, and the kinds there are too many of (I’m looking at you, garter stitch crescent shawls…). But we’re not omniscient; we haven’t seen every single pattern that’s out there on the market, and we don’t know what other designers are submitting for the call.
- The design doesn’t fit with the publisher’s established aesthetic. This is especially pertinent with yarn companies and dyers, each of whom has their own distinct flavor and feel. Freia Handpaints has a totally different style and look than Quince and Co., which in turn is totally different from SweetGeorgia Yarns.
It’s worth noting that none of these reasons are personal. They all revolve around the design and its suitability to the company and the individual needs of the sub call. When we receive a rejection on these grounds (and I believe most rejections are based on one or more of them), it’s not a rejection of our persons or even necessarily of our work. While it may be painful and sad, and that’s normal, we can know that we’re not being singled out; and we can resist the urge to give up (which I’ve felt many times). In a future post, I’ll be addressing points 3 and 4 above, and discuss developing unique submissions that are tailored to the publisher.
One thing that’s worth noting before moving on is that in some cases rejections can be personal. For instance, I’ve seen sub calls marked as giving preference to BIPOC entrants, and Caucasian designers are warned that they will be second choice for the call. (While as a Vietnamese-American I fit into this preferred category, I personally have chosen not to submit to these publishers as the submissions are clearly being judged on criteria other than the quality of work.) There are other forms of preference as well (such as female designers being preferred over male). But unless a call is delineated specifically in this way, don’t assume that you were rejected for personal reasons.
So if your work has been rejected, what should you do with it?
Reduce
This step comes before you even click ‘submit’ – in fact, it may come before you even assemble your proposal. Early on, I submitted to every call that came up, and often sent five or six submissions per call. Not only was this exhausting up front and disappointing afterwards, but I ended up using exactly zero of the concepts contained in those dozens of submissions.
The reason for this was twofold. Number one, simple inexperience; many of those concepts were cliched or impractical, and weren’t worth coming back to upon review. The second reason was that many of them were tailored to a highly specific sub call theme that I didn’t actually like, but submitted to because, well, beggars can’t be choosers. Once I’d received my canned email I promptly shoved those ideas aside and never thought about them again.
An example would be a submission call for modern, multicolored socks: I don’t like knitting socks in the first place, and socks in three neon colors—let’s say they’re not my jam. Why spend hours designing, swatching, and proposing a piece I wouldn’t actually make and wear of my own free will—especially when returns are by no means certain?
With this in mind, a few tips:
- Design things you would actually like to knit/crochet.
- Generally speaking, design concepts that can be reused (more on this below) in the event that you do receive one of those emails. If you’ve got a super-duper idea for that tri-color brioche sub call then flesh it out, by all means; but be circumspect and don’t make it a habit if you can help it.
- Spend time refining and perfecting a few targeted submissions rather than swatching wildly and hoping to get a hit. Just because you can send in as many submissions as you like doesn’t mean it’s wise.
Recycle & Reuse
Once those rejects come back, provided they’ve been refined according to the handy-dandy reduction tips above, start thinking about how you can recycle them. (In fact, designing for a sub call with the idea of recycling in the back of your mind is usually a good idea.) Here are just a few ways:
- Self-publish as a single pattern. Take my shawl design Farthest Coast, which was originally a reject. By the time I began working on this particular sub call I had learned the lessons enumerated under ‘Reduce’, and knew already that I would self-publish Farthest Coast if it did come back to me.
- Save it and submit somewhere else, if the opportunity arises. When my Ealhswith Mittens were sent back, I submitted them to Harrisville Designs for yarn support.
- Turn it into something else. When I received the yarn for the Ealhswith Mittens, I realized that one hank was more than twice the amount I needed for the mittens, so I turned the rest into a matching hat. I also have a hat design that I can’t use for various reasons, and so plan to turn it into a shawl.
- Be flexible and patient. I have a piece that was rejected from the same collection that Fenestra was accepted into; and I actually liked the reject better, even though I see now how Fenestra was a better fit for the collection. I’ve kept that second design tucked away in my mind since September of 2018, and the opportunity has just come up this year for me to work towards publication.
Don’t Be a Crab
Even if you’ve prepared yourself as best as possible, rejection will still hurt; this is only human and in itself nothing to be ashamed of. But in the world of social media, blogging, and I know not what, this article would not be complete without few brief words on how not to handle rejection:
- Don’t shoot back an angry/offended email or demand an explanation; as I mentioned above, publishers seldom if ever have the time to devote to answering or explaining further than they do in the rejection emails.
- Don’t, immediately or ever, post a woeful dirge on your blog or social media about how you were just turned down; and do not, do not, name the publisher/yarn company who rejected your design! While this would seem self-evident, I see posts of this nature on a not-uncommon basis. Not only does this come across as self-pity, but it is unprofessional and indiscreet; and that will only hurt your reputation in the future.
- On the heels of the previous point, don’t speculate online about why you were rejected—many publishers’ names have been hurt, whether intentionally or not, by rejected designers making insinuations about them and their policies/beliefs online, often without concrete proof.
Conclusion
Reduce, recycle and reuse are applicable in more than one sense! Here’s a parting word of wisdom from The Princess Bride:
“I’ve spent so much time on revenge, now I have no idea what to do with the rest of my life.”
“Have you ever considered piracy? You’d make a swell Dread Pirate Roberts.”
Have a question about design that you’d like to have answered in a post like this? Leave it in the comments or shoot me an email here, and I’ll keep it in mind for future articles. And Red Earth Designs does not condone revenge. Or piracy. Just to be clear.
