I recently finished Andy Weir’s The Martian and thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s fast-paced, has an extremely likeable protagonist, good voice, and it’s geeky science fiction! That’s right up my alley.

Confession: I’m a science geek myself (though nowhere near Andy’s level). I wanted to be an astronaut as a teenager and was so nerdy that I wore a jacket year round—in San Diego, no less—because it had all the mission patches I’d gotten from my visit to Cape Canaveral. So, yeah, The Martian is my kind of book.

That said, having been in the query trenches and in a variety of pitch and writing contests, I’m pretty sure that 90% of agents would have passed on this book.

(If you don’t know the story, Andy Weir tried his hand at writing in his twenties, but couldn’t find an agent for his material. He gave up and went into programming. With The Martian, he didn’t even try to query. He just self-published. It took off and an agent ended up calling him. Now, the book is a bestseller and being made into a movie.)

Recently, I’ve seen agents and editors say they want a book with voice like The Martian or a sci-fi thriller like it. It’s always easy to say in hindsight that you would have seen the promise in a book. But most writers have heard the stories of famous authors who were rejected multiple times, like Harry Potter or Lolita. The Martian probably would have been one of them.

Agents have a tough job. First, they have their own personal tastes to contend with. Then, they have to consider the market and what publishers are seeking. And everyone wants the next great XYZ. Just as you see trends in TV shows and movies,  you see trends in books. (Right now, it’s all about psychological thrillers, thanks to Gone Girl and Girl on a Train. Good chance thanks to The Martian, it’ll soon be all about geeky sci-fi thrillers.) Agents have to sell, so they are looking for books that fit into new popular categories or evergreen genres.

On top of that, agents are reading TONS of queries and pages every day. See that glassy-eyed woman in the coffee shop holding her cup in a shaky hand? She’s probably an agent or assistant who’s just finished going through her slush pile for the day. They have to make quick decisions. And they must get jaded. I don’t see how they couldn’t.

So, it’s no slur against agents to say most would have passed. I expect, as a literary agent, you just have to accept that there’s a good chance you’re going to end up kicking yourself for passing on a top seller, at some point in your life.

With all of that said, here are five reasons I think agents would have passed on The Martian:

1. It’s unbelievable. Andy’s hook is basically, “An astronaut is stranded alone on Mars and must survive and find rescue using only his ingenuity and upbeat attitude.” A lot of agents just wouldn’t have found the premise believable.
2. It’s got a lean writing style. I was really heartened by this, because my own writing style is more minimalist. I don’t tend toward purplish prose, and neither does Andy. You don’t get long descriptions of the landscape. He doesn’t wax on about the beauty of Mars. In fact, he doesn’t paint a picture much at all. That works just fine for this book, but a lot of agents would have felt it wasn’t good writing because it’s so lean.
3. The characters are shallow. This becomes especially apparent when we get to the JPL scenes, with characters other than the main character, Mark. But it’s even true of Mark. The MC is a perpetually optimistic, geeky guy with a sense of humor. He’s unrealistically optimistic, really. And you get little sense of him as a person beyond these traits, and no backstory. That would have turned off a lot of agents, though the protagonist is so likeable, some would have accepted the shallowness.
4. Too much science. Again, I’m a geek. I loved the science. And Andy Weir does a masterful job of making it understandable and giving it to you in bite-sized pieces—and providing only what you need to know at any given moment in the book. Still, this book is all about the science. Mark, the astronaut, has a conflict with Mars and his only tool in the conflict is science. I’m certain most agents would have said that readers wouldn’t suffer through this much tech talk.
5. The POV changes are crazy. Weir breaks the rules here. Most of the time, he’s speaking from Mark’s perspective, speaking through Mark’s diary. But the author also switches to the POV of equipment (really, equipment) and to omniscient. He completely breaks the rules and some agents would have said it was bad writing just for that.

So, there are five reason why I am pretty sure Andy Weir would have seen rejection after rejection of his book. And yet, it’s a bestseller BECAUSE IT’S GOOD! Not every book has to have gorgeous prose or multi-faceted characters. Readers surprise the agents sometimes in what they’re willing to embrace.

So, writers take heart! Agents may be rejecting your novel for good reason—or they might just be missing out.