No one wants to receive a rejection notice, even when we know that such a thing is likely. However, today I received such a positive rejection that I felt I had to share it. Perhaps you are one of those who needs to turn someone down. May I offer this as a model? It was sent to me, turning down my proposal for a chapter of a book.

Thank you for your submission. We are in the midst of finalizing our accepted contributors; we received almost 40 submissions for a book the publisher is limiting to just 16 chapters, which is unfortunate considering all the great abstracts, like yours. We do have another
chapter chosen on a similar topic. I’m very sorry we didn’t get your proposal sooner but know how it is with the overwhelming number of calls out there.

We’re probably going to have to pass, but your work looks tremendously interesting so know it’s a simple matter of limited space that drives the decision. I do hope you’ll submit to the Series again. If anything changes, I’ll be in touch in the next day or so.

I don’t expect anything will change, so perhaps that sentence should have been left out, but the grace of the rest was amazing.