"People were a little scared of it," he said of the rejections, noting that one network, "couldn't figure out a way to market a radio show adapted to television".
I assumed it was a rejection note, but inside the envelope was a letter saying, 'Thank you.
Still, in its rejection note, Shared Medical said it had $1.2 billion in revenue last year, while Eclipsys had $249 million.
While there, Ashbery submitted two of his poems to the magazine Poetry, and received a one-word rejection note: "Sorry".
So I was extremely surprised recently when my US agent forwarded me a rejection note in which an editor wonders whether I intended it as "erotica".
When this vicious rejection note to a a young jobseeker who tried to connect with a US marketing executive went viral, people were appalled.
"I think you can make that kind of a rule," Palin says, referring to Cleese's rejection note, "if you are prepared to break it.
As for having an editor who writes thank-you notes to his writers for work submitted, I write thank-you notes to editors who go to the trouble of sending me personalized rejection notes.
Ruth Lilly, 87, an heir to the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical fortune, submitted several poems to Poetry magazine in the 1970's and was rewarded only with handwritten rejection notes from the editor, Joseph Parisi.
A rejection note I will always treasure came from a reader at the National Theatre who sniffed, "This is not yet a play, and if it were to become one it still wouldn't be for us".
