Merry Christmas all. Good luck on sales and have a great new year!
This morning I received a rejection letter for my latest item, uploaded to the CSS category on Code Canyon.
It told me that my item was not of high enough quality in terms of design, style, uniqueness, etc.
Okay, that’s perfectly fine. I have no problem accepting that my item may not be good enough, or unique enough.
But here’s the problem. When an item is rejected, whether it is one of mine or of someone else’s, there really needs to be some sort of information included by the reviewer that provides at least some sort of feedback for how the author could improve the item.
The submitted file is not good enough for CodeCanyon in terms of design, use of colors and uniqueness.
What does that tell me, and all other authors, about how to improve the item?
In the past, when I have received rejection emails, I’ve responded with questions for the reviewer about how I could improve the item to the point it could be accepted.
Here’s the response I got:
It simply isn’t good enough.
Is that helpful in the slightest? No.
Rejection emails include statements encouraging authors to submit more items in the future, and to resubmit the rejected item after it has been improved. But how can authors who get rejected be encouraged to continually submit and improve items if rejection letters are so bland and unhelpful?
I am a reasonably well established author with decent success, but I worry about how rejection letters like these affect new authors who haven’t had anything published?
As a community, it should be Code Canyon’s goal, and the goal of all other marketplaces, to do its best to encourage new authors to submit items.
But if an author’s first item is rejected, and the email doesn’t give any specific reasons, and the reviewer is completely unhelpful when asked for further clarification, then how can that author be expected to try again? Would that author advise his friends to submit items? Probably not.
I’m never going to try and claim that every reviewer should be required to write an extensive explanation for every single rejection; that would be ridiculous. However, I do think that reviewers should be required (or strongly encouraged) to include at least one or two short suggestions for improvement.
For example, if the reviewer of my item that was rejected this morning had included something like this:
You could improve it by using smoother gradients and subtle borders, or providing more user-configured options.
I would have been happy, and would not be writing this novel. However, the reviewer did not do that, but instead made a blanket statement about the item’s overall quality without giving any sort of feedback on how it could be improved, and thus approved.
I know that reviewers have dozens of items to review every day, but how long can it take to include one or two sentences about how to improve the item?
These are just my thoughts about the issue, but I do believe it’s something that should be improved, for the betterment of the marketplaces.
P.S. My item’s rejection is by no means going to make me stop submitting items
December for me so far:
December 2010 321 Clickthroughs 12 Registered Members 10 Deposits $36.00
SELECT * FROM $wpdb->posts LEFT JOIN $wpdb->term_relationships ON($wpdb->posts.ID = $wpdb->term_relationships.object_id) LEFT JOIN $wpdb->term_taxonomy ON($wpdb->term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id = $wpdb->term_taxonomy.term_taxonomy_id) LEFT JOIN $wpdb->terms ON($wpdb->term_taxonomy.term_id = $wpdb->terms.term_id) WHERE $wpdb->posts.post_type = 'post' AND $wpdb->posts.post_status = 'publish' AND $wpdb->term_taxonomy.taxonomy = 'technologies' AND $wpdb->terms.slug = 'php' OR $wpdb->terms.slug = 'css' ORDER BY $wpdb->posts.post_date DESC
That should get the posts from a taxonomy of “technologies” with values of “php” or “css”.
If you’re talking about two distinct taxonomies (not two values within same tax), then try this:
SELECT * FROM $wpdb->posts LEFT JOIN $wpdb->term_relationships ON($wpdb->posts.ID = $wpdb->term_relationships.object_id) LEFT JOIN $wpdb->term_taxonomy ON($wpdb->term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id = $wpdb->term_taxonomy.term_taxonomy_id) LEFT JOIN $wpdb->terms ON($wpdb->term_taxonomy.term_id = $wpdb->terms.term_id) WHERE $wpdb->posts.post_type = 'post' AND $wpdb->posts.post_status = 'publish' AND $wpdb->term_taxonomy.taxonomy = 'tax1' OR $wpdb->term_taxonomy.taxonomy = 'tax2' ORDER BY $wpdb->posts.post_date DESC
Something along those lines.
Also think about what the other similar items have done well (and poorly) and then improve those aspects in your own item.
Also, always make sure you include thorough documentation. You need to ensure that anyone who buys your script can figure out exactly how to use it without digging into the code themselves.