Editors and agents do a great deal more than read unsolicited manuscripts. As an acquisitions editor, I don’t passively sit and wait for these projects to land in my in-basket. Rather, I make it a daily goal to be proactive in looking for the right manuscripts.
Because I’ve been involved in publishing for many years, I have a series phone numbers and other contact information for these bestselling authors and their agents in my address book. Actively I telephone and email these authors to see what they were working on and to discover if anything new might be appropriate for my publishing house. While these authors might not have published with my publisher, each one had a successful sales track record. I understood my publishing house has some different benefits than some other publishers. At the same time, I understand these published authors already have an established group of readers who follow their writings and purchase new books. These authors involve less business risk and give us a greater chance for success.
It’s not easy to acquire these published authors because their schedule is often filled for several years.
In my conversations or emails, I suggest possible projects for them to consider. Sometimes during the conversation, I see a spark of interest. On one occasion, I was talking in detail with a bestselling fiction author, but I was talking with her about a nonfiction book project. In the early days of her career, she wrote nonfiction but now her writing schedule was filled with fiction and storytelling. “I know a nonfiction book would allow different kinds of media possibilities than my fiction,” she said. I could hear the passion in her voice about the topic we were discussing for this nonfiction book. I also knew this author’s agent was discouraging her from talking with me or placing a project with my publishing house. I understand that authors will listen to the perspective of their agent but ultimately they are in charge of their writing schedule. This story gives you a glimpse into the type of proactive acquisitions activity an editor can take.
Another tactic I take when I talked with published authors, is to see if their files contained an unsold book proposal. Often there is a good reason why this proposal is unsold. Maybe it needs reshaping for the marketplace or audience, yet from a published author, it’s worth an editor’s time and consideration. I also looked for out-of-print books which could be repackaged with a new title and updated information to bring this author to my publishing house. Sometimes an author has a book project for which they have considerable passion, but it quickly faded out of print with another publisher. A book goes out of print for many reasons, some of which have nothing to do with the content of the book. Maybe the book had a terrible cover or a weak title. Possibly because of personnel changes within a publishing house, the book sold poorly and was taken out of print in a short amount of time (less than two years).
Sometimes it is rare for a publishing house to take these out of print books.
In certain cases, these books are contracted. If I could create a new package, new title, different content or possibly a different emphasis and it was a better fit for our publishing house than the previous publisher, then we contracted the book for publication. With one of these books I acquired, I know the publisher is going to get endorsements from high profile authors, including an eye-catching foreword, because they repackaged an out-of-print book. I used a variety of different strategies in the acquisition of books rather than taking books from new and unpublished authors.
As a reader who wants to get your book published, why do you care about these acquisitions strategies? As you increase your understanding about the ways publishers operate and make decisions, you will be able to shape your book proposal in a way that will meet their expectations and needs. Never forget that knowledge is power.
Through proactive prodding of bestselling authors, I would often find a book valuable for my publisher to consider. When I spent this type of personal energy grooming established authors, I was not reading or actively looking at manuscripts from unknown authors. What this means to you is that an editor is not spending all their time working on manuscripts from unknown authors.
It is challenging for unpublished authors to receive constructive feedback from an editor.
Because of the volume of material coming across my desk, occasionally I would see a nonfiction proposal which had a nugget of potential. But maybe the nugget was buried on page 5 of the proposal, plus it lacked a number of essential elements to build a complete proposal. If the project was about 80 to 90 percent of what I needed, then I would correspond with the author and get what I needed to build that final 20 or 10 percent. And what if I read an unsolicited nonfiction book proposal which contains only the nugget and needs a greater percentage of work? Unfortunately, this proposal is returned with a standard rejection letter. Because of the sheer volume of proposals, I’m unable to add a personal note of encouragement. There aren’t enough hours available for this type of detailed critique work on unpublished proposals. I’m honestly trying to help you understand the editor and the type of pressures in every day editorial work.
W. Terry Whalin, a writer and acquisitions editor lives in California. A former magazine editor and former literary agent, Terry is an acquisitions editor at Morgan James Publishing. He has written more than 60 nonfiction books including Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams and Billy Graham. To help writers catch the attention of editors and agents, Terry wrote his bestselling Book Proposals That $ell, 21 Secrets To Speed Your Success. Get a free copy of his proposal book (follow the link). Check out his free Ebook, Platform Building Ideas for Every Author. His website is located at: www.terrywhalin.com. Connect with Terry on Twitter, Facebook, his blog and LinkedIn.
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