"Margaret Mitchell gets 38 rejections from publishers before finding one to publish her novel Gone With The Wind. It sells 30 million copies."
I don't know about the rest of the books on this list, but the one about Gone with the Wind is completely untrue.
Margaret Mitchell never submitted Gone with the Wind officially. She certainly never submitted it 38 times, and she was never rejected for it. She spontaneously presented it to an editor who had spent a couple days with her BEGGING her for a look at a novel she claimed {and had been claiming for years} she wasn't writing. If he hadn't been so persistent, and a friend hadn't made the mistake of daring her, we probably wouldn't have Gone with the Wind.
She had written most of it several years earlier {1926-1929} because she'd injured her ankle and had nothing to do while housebound. Accustomed to a fast-paced life as a reporter in Atlanta, she was suddenly reduced to sitting around all day staring at the walls. She tried reading, but eventually that bored her, and since she enjoyed writing, she decided to take on a novel. Before she finished the project, life overwhelmed her. She'd long since given it up as "lousy" {though she privately worked on it sporadically, too shy with it to truly believe it would ever be ready for publication} when Harold Latham of MacMillan Publishing Company came through Atlanta in the 1930s. He was on the hunt for a new Southern writer, & having received a tip from a mutual acquaintance that she was writing something and could write well, he set his sights on Mitchell. She was spending the day with him showing him around Atlanta as a favor for a writing friend. She told him repeatedly that day she had no novel, adamantly changing the topic whenever he brought it up. She met him again the following day at a luncheon, and again rejected his repeated questions about her novel. By now he'd spoken enough to her, and heard enough about her, to be truly intrigued.
That night, a writing acquaintance {who had often benefited from Mitchell's research and suggestions when it came to her own novel} commented that it was remarkable Mr. Latham had thought Margaret could write a whole book, for Mitchell didn't take life seriously enough to accomplish such a feat. Mitchell was driving at the time, having spent the last couple days ferrying Mr. Latham as well as several writing friends, who hoped to sell their work to him, all over Atlanta. She had to stop the car when she began laughing. Furious by the taunt {for she despised not be taken seriously}, she stormed home and scoured her apartment, collecting the frayed manila envelopes containing long-forgotten chapters from Gone with the Wind, which she had stuffed everywhere in prior years as she randomly wrote: in the bathroom, under the sofa, in the closet. Each envelope contained multiple chapter revisions. They were all out of order, and since she had written the scenes spontaneously over a period of years, she had no idea which chapters had been completed anymore, and which hadn't. She'd never written the opening of the book, and some chapters failed to tie together important details in the story. All of it was in her head, and it had been so long since she'd written it she could no longer remember where it was incomplete.
She presented this stack, wholly out of order, to an astonished Harold Latham as he was leaving his hotel for the train. She later recalled that she was "hatless, hair flying, dirt all over my face and arms and, worse luck, my hastily rolled up stocking coming down about my ankles" {Walker, 197}. The stack was as tall as she was. As she progressed through the lobby, she had to stop several times to retrieve random chapters that leapt from the pile. He was, she claimed, able to keep a straight face. She told him to just take it for goodness sake, before she changed her mind. He began to read from a random chapter on the train, and when she telegraphed just hours later begging to retract her impulsive submission, he begged her to let him refuse, claiming he was already hooked.
That is how Gone with the Wind was published. She submitted it once, on impulse, in the most unprofessional way imaginable, & it was snapped up immediately.
Sources:
Gone with the Wind Letters by Margaret Mitchell – posthumous (1976)
Letters From Margaret (ed. Julian Granberry) – 2001
Southern Daughter: The Life of Margaret Mitchell by Darden Asbury Pyron (1991)
Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh: The Love Story Behind Gone With the Wind by Marianne Walker (1993)
Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller’s Odyssey by Ellen F. Brown and John Wiley, Jr. (2011)
