5 SURPRISING BOOKS THAT ALMOST WEREN’ T PUBLISHED- KEEP THE FAITH
Some of these are well-known stories of rejection, but what would have happened if some open-minded person had not seen the potential?
# 1 Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen
When the now globally famous book of inspirational stories, Chicken Soup for the Soul, was published it launched an amazing brand— the title not only became one of the world ' s best-known phrases, but the series now encompasses over 200 books ranging from Chicken Soup for the Mother ' s Soul, to Chicken Soup Shopper’ s Soul, to titles as far-ranging as Chicken Soup for the Aspiring Meth Addict ' s Soul, with total worldwide sales of half a billion copies. And, it almost didn’ t happen.
Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, shopped it around to over 140 publishers, and not a single one of them wanted anything to do with it. According to Canfield, " They all said it was a stupid title, that nobody bought collections of short stories, that there was no edge-- no sex, no violence. Why would anyone read it?"
Health Communications, a small company specializing in recovery books on subjects like alcoholism and drug addiction, were seriously hurting financially. It appeared that no one wanted to read about that stuff. When they saw Chicken Soup for the Soul, they immediately loved it and snapped it up for a hefty advance of zero dollars. Then the amazing thing happened— every Englishspeaking person on Earth bought a copy. # 2 A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The story behind how A Confederacy of Dunces, a Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy considered by many to be one of the funniest books ever written, got published is almost as insane as the story itself. It was published in 1980, ten years after John Kennedy Toole committed suicide and it won the Pulitzer the following year. John Belushi, John Candy, Chris Farley and Will Ferrell all attempted to make it into a movie, but that has not happened to date. It was produced as a play.
After John Kennedy Toole, a struggling young author, shipped his manuscript off to Simon & Schuster, it immediately caught the attention of senior editor Robert Gottlieb. He saw the novel ' s potential, but thought it wasn ' t quite where it needed to be. He sent several requests for revisions, which Toole readily com-
MAY- JUNE 2016
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