Tenacity
Mr. Tenacious and his son
An acquintance of mine is about to send a poem into the New Yorker. He said, "I know I'll probably get rejected, but I might as well aim high." I agreed, and told him that even if they reject it, someone else will love it and publish it.
121 publishers rejected Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance before one of them offered Robert Pirsig a $3,000 advance, telling him that the book had "forced him to decide what he was in publishing for." That was in 1974.
The book has since been translated into 27 languages and has sold over five million copies.