Frank Herbert's Dune was famously rejected by dozens of publishers before Chilton (the automobile manual people) published it in 1965. But the story had been anthologized in Analog and had won a Hugo Award - wouldn't that have been enough to get it a publisher with more of a reputation for fiction publishing? What about Dune was different than (say) Starship Troopers - serialized in F&SF and then published by Putnam? Was the length of Dune a factor, or was book publication of previously serialized novels a harder sell in the 1960s than I had thought?

Frank Herbert's Dune was famously rejected by dozens of publishers before Chilton (the automobile manual people) published it in 1965. But the story had been serialized in Analog and had won a Hugo Award - wouldn't that have been enough to get it a publisher with more of a reputation for fiction publishing? What about Dune was different than (say) Starship Troopers - serialized in F&SF and then published by Putnam? Was the length of Dune a factor, or was book publication of previously serialized novels a harder sell in the 1960s than I had thought?