Subjectivity?

In terms of authors submitting either to literary agencies or directly to targeted publishing houses, a great deal is said about toughening up to resist rejection and at the same time to understand how subjective the whole topic of quality is.

The fact is that subjectivity comes into it less than does the business aspect of rejection. Publishing houses are overwhelmed by the volume of submissions and are, I'm sure, under enormous pressure to keep staff at a minimum...at an insufficient level. Literary agents are up against the wall more than ever, having found ways to deal with the same basic economics. The problem isn't really subjectivity and actual quality of work as much as it is a very, very low signal to noise ratio. Agency readers and publishing house editors simple cannot pay equal attention to each and every submission coming in. So they have to find "artificial" ways to screen. Self-published works are easy targets for exclusion as a group.

If a self-published author gets any response at all, he or she is doing pretty well. Same with an unpublished, unrepresented, unrecognized author. Being ignored entirely is the coldest and worst insult. The key is to remain focused on the work...on producing the finest copy possible and then on persisting  trying to find an audience for it. There's nothing truly subjective about extremely well-crafted fiction artfully done. It's either ignored or noticed. There lies  the distinction that matters.