41 Successful People Who Failed Miserably Before Making It Big

The Call of the Wild came after many failures.

7. Jack London Received 50 Publishing Rejections

The author of The Call of the Wild and numerous other stories about life in the far north received so many rejections that he considered himself to be a failure. He dropped out of college and moved out to the Klondike for a year to recover from personal tragedy, and when he returned, decided that he wanted to get published.

He wrote every single day, but every submission that he made to magazines and newspapers was rejected. Finally, after new printing technologies caused the print market to expand, things seemed to turn around. However, he was rejected 50 more times before finally getting published.