Often, the editor-in-chief is the leading player in the acquisitions game. To perform the job effectively, an editor-in-chief must possess a broad range of taste that encompasses such varied subjects as pop culture as well as popular science and politics. If the house publishes fiction, the editor-in-chief and her staff must have an acute sense of style and the ability to evaluate good writing by merely scanning a few pages of a manuscript.
The editor-in-chief must also be willing to gamble on unpublished authors who show potential, even if it means a great deal of hand- holding throughout the writing period. The job, however, does not end with the writing. Often, editors are integrally involved in the marketing of books they have acquired for publication.
In addition to acquisition chores, the senior editor's job often includes the editing of a dozen or more books in one year.
The size of the acquisitions team varies with the size of the house and the number of new books it publishes yearly. At Simon & Schuster's trade book division, there are thirteen individuals with the rank of senior editor and above, all of whom are concerned with acquisitions. At a smaller house, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, about ten people bear the responsibility of acquiring the roughly two hundred new books it publishes annually. William Morrow & Company publishes almost five hundred new books a year, split up into seven different lines. About twenty people at this house put together the company's diverse list.
How Books Are Acquired
There are more than a dozen sources for procuring the books that make up a publisher's list. We will discuss a number of these.
Raw Submissions: Few publishing houses today accept unsolicited manuscripts, sometimes known as "slush" or "over the transom." Publishers have generally found that it is too costly to handle these submissions. Publishers will either return an unsolicited manuscript to the author unread, with a polite note stating the company's policy or, in many cases, not return it at all.
Nevertheless, each year a number of unsolicited works are published and become successful. A simple word of advice to authors without agents. Before sending a manuscript to a publisher, inquire about its policy on submissions.
Literary Agents: Most of the books that ultimately reach the exalted position of appearing on a publisher's list come from agents. Agents pre-screen manuscripts and thereby perform a service for publishers. As a result of their contacts, agents are in the best position to place a property at the right house.
Agents represent established authors, since many authors do not have exclusive publishing arrangements. Acquisitions editors for trade houses spend a great deal of time negotiating and interacting with literary agents for the works of established authors. Literary agents also conduct auctions on behalf of name authors' books that are deemed to have mass-market appeal.
Prospecting: In the late 1970s, I taught a course on magazine publishing at New York University. An enterprising acquisitions editor at Prentice-Hall, Mary Kennan, contacted me about writing a book on magazine publishing. I agreed to do the book, The Magazine, which has been in continuous publication since 1979. Editors regularly scan catalogs of college extension and continuing education programs for provocative subjects for books that might be written by the individuals teaching the courses.
Other acquisitions editors peruse newspapers and magazines for subject ideas and potential authors. Contacts with theatrical agents also turn up celebrity clients who may be persuaded to become authors. Where a ghostwriter is required for one of these projects, both publishers and literary agents maintain a roster of competent writers.
Writers' Conferences: Literary agents frequently attend the major writers' conferences. When convenient, acquisitions editors attend them as well, with the objective of discovering promising writing talent. Literary magazines have also proven a productive source for finding new writers.
Foreign Translations: Publishers are often given the opportunity to publish the English-language version of a book first published in another language. Many American publishers attend the Frankfurt Book Fair each October, where thousands of books in every language are made available for translation purposes. Competition is often feverish for the big books with a track record, published abroad.
Rotten Rejections
In publishing, stories abound about "the big one that got away." In the book Rotten Rejections, publisher Bill Henderson has collected the rejection notices of some famous works that were originally turned down by publishers before they were ultimately accepted.
MADAME BOVARY
Gustave Flaubert (1856)
You have buried your novel underneath a heap of details which are well done but utterly superfluous.
CATCH-22
Joseph Heller (1961)
I haven't really the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say.
THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD
John le Carre (1963)
You 're welcome to le Carre - he hasn't got any future.
THE DEER PARK
Norman Mailer (1955)
This will set publishing back twenty-five years.
THE TIME MACHINE
H. G. Wells (1895)
It is not interesting enough for the general reader and not thorough enough for the scientific reader.
RUDYARD KIPLING (1889)
I'm sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language.
(Editor of the San Francisco Examiner informing Kipling, who had had one article published in the newspaper, that he needn't bother submitting a second)
JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL
Richard Bach (1972)
Jonathan Livingston Seagull will never make it as a paperback.
(James Galton, publisher of Modern Library, refusing an offer from Macmillan to bid on the paperback rights to Richard Bach's best-selling novel. Avon Books sold almost eight million copies of the book.)
