Rejection? You Should be a Cartoonist at The New Yorker

If you’re a writer or other creative type, rejection is a way of life — we’ve all collected those rejection slips and it can be a bit depressing after a while. But if you think you've got it bad, you should be a cartoonist for The New Yorker. In a recent TED talk, the magazine’s cartoon editor Bob Mankoff talked about the numbers involved in his job.

My job is to look at 1,000 cartoons a week. But The New Yorker only can take 16 or 17 cartoons, and we have 1,000 cartoons. Of course, many, many cartoons must be rejected. Cartoonists come in through the magazine every week. The average cartoonist who stays with the magazine does 10 or 15 ideas every week. But they mostly are going to be rejected … Now I know all about rejection … from 1974 to 1977 I submitted 2,000 cartoons to The New Yorker, and got 2,000 cartoons rejected by The New Yorker.

Wow. Just ‘wow’. I like to think I’ve got a thick skin, but 10-15 rejections a week? How do you keep going against those kind of odds? This does give me a bit of pause and a bit more appreciation for my cartoonist friends out there.

You can see the video from his TED talk here