‘Gone With the Wind’ was turned down by 38 publishers. Judy Blume suffered 2 years of nothing but rejections. A publisher who passed on ‘Animal Farm’ told George Orwell, “It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.” So we learn from Neatorama, which has compiled an amusing list of famous books that had a hard time making their way into print.

“His frenetic and scrambled prose perfectly express the feverish travels of the Beat Generation. But is that enough? I don’t think so,” is what one publisher said about Jack Kerouac‘s ‘On the Road’. After it came out in 1957, The New York Times wrote a review that basically stated the exact opposite opinion: “The most beautifully executed, the clearest and most important utterance” of the generation.