Yes, there's a connection between the two--at least according to the entertaining treatise called On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile, authored by the Grumpy Old Bookman.

His theory, in a nutshell: publication (and subsequent success) of fiction is random and arbitrary. The business of publishing, in GOB's mind, is bass ackwards, from the slush pile readers at literary agencies to the advances paid at publishing houses. And all in all, it's hard to argue with his logic. If you have any interest whatsoever in the world of books and publishing, this is a must-read you'll find oddly exhilarating and depressing at the same time (make sure you download the whole pdf file).

Favorite excerpt:

Does rejection make you more determined to succeed? Possibly. But it may also cause a writer to decide (probably quite correctly) that this writing business is a fool’s game. A writer who produces a professional piece of work, and is yet unable to persuade an agent to take him on, or a publisher to invest in his book, may well conclude that the slush-pile procedure is impossibly flawed and that sensible people would not continue to waste postage on it. I happen to believe (without empirical evidence to support my view) that the writers who come to this conclusion are probably the ones who would do best in publishing if they actually persevered; because they, at least, have proved capable of rational thought. By contrast, it is the all-time, never-going-to-be-publishable losers who will see rejection as a reason to redouble their efforts.

I suppose this would be a bad time to talk about redoubling efforts to get my latest novel published. Oh, and another favorite snippet, this a bit of advice to would-be novelists:

It is unlikely, on the whole, even with Madame Randomness on your side, that you are going to be able to achieve fame, literary reputation, and lots of money, all at the same time. There are exceptions, of course (e.g. Hemingway), and one of the most frequent errors on the part of writers is to assume that they themselves will be one of those rare exceptions. (If you want to know why this is an error, consider this: when we get into a car to go to the supermarket, we do not, generally speaking, assume that we are going to be one of those rare people who get killed in an accident.)

I suppose this would be a bad time to talk about going to the supermarket.