Reflections on Two Weeks in Publishing, Part 1

As you all hopefully know, I spent the last two weeks working at a publishing house here in London. I learned a pretty incredible amount during that time, some of which I've shared on the blog already, and some of which I haven't yet.

So I decided to put together my reflections on the two weeks into a couple of blog posts, as well as some of the things I learned from my meetings with a couple of the lower level editors there. Hopefully it'll be at least a little enlightening.

First off, some interesting bits of knowledge I learned from my meeting with my boss. I asked her about the career ladder in the publishing industry, and one key thing jumped out at me. There seem to be, more or less, two different kinds of editors: those who acquire books, and those who do not. The day-to-day jobs pretty much split into those two categories, with a few different titles and pay grades, as well as some slight variation in duties, available in each.

That was interesting to me, as I'd always thought anyone with the job title "editor" acquired books. Au contraire, at least at the company I was working for, and my boss seemed to think it a common state of affairs.

Also, at the company I worked (a big house), there are different departments for proofreading (editing for typos, factual errors, etc.) and Editing with a capital "E". I'm not sure that it's like that everywhere, but it's another thing worth keeping in mind when looking at careers in publishing, or making sure you're not barking up the wrong kind of editor.

Next, the appraisal process! Her information here wasn't that great, because I worked for an imprint at said big publishing house that focuses on producing a few, big, important titles, rather than trying to capitalize on whatever the market will bear---but it's still an interesting snapshot so I'll share it anyway.

The sheer number of people who must sign off on an acquisition is rather astounding. There's the editor acquiring it, the director of his/her department, someone from sales, and someone from marketing. All of these people can basically veto a book at any point during the appraisal process. And that's for a book with a small advance. Over a certain threshold, the Managing Director of the whole publishing house has to sign off on it as well.

So I guess when people talk about how your book must be pitchable, that's why. You need to be able to get many more people than just your agent and your editor to buy into it before it ever sees the light of day.

She was a bit more hazy on how some of the people on that list make their decisions (she's not directly involved in the appraisal process herself, I don't think), but she did list these things as important: past sales, the author's platform, whether sales estimations will at least be similar to those of the other titles on the imprint's list (you can help yourself out with this one, I think, just by watching trade magazines and tracking how well books at an imprint you're targeting are selling, and estimating whether you can promise to match that), whether the book offers something new, and whether it will build the reputation of the brand (again, I think, unique to this particular imprint, which is very image conscious).

And of course, as she came back over to my desk after our meeting to tell me, the writing must be moving and impeccable. That is the sine qua non, as it were, of getting a book published. Good to hear that that's still how things work. ;-p