Fly on the wall: the editorial committee meeting
It’s one of those days when I get to work from home while awaiting the a/c repair man. First thing, I’ll be reading a manuscript proposal for today’s editorial committee meeting and emailing in my comments. At 10:30 am, three editors will be in the HCI conference room, the director leading from her home office in New York, two sales people attending in person, and our stray sales guy from Michigan phoning in.
How very contemporary we are in our multi-locale conference.
Here’s how it goes. Book proposals come to the HCI editorial offices by the droves. From agents, from authors directly (yes, we are one of the few publishing houses that still considers unsolicited works), bins fill up with book ideas packaged in a variety of styles. Mostly, tons and tons of paper stacks are strewn about the editorial area otherwise know affectionately as “Sleepy Hollow.”
Don’t ask.
Over time, the editorial assistant sort of ’screens’ the submission for the gems. A lot of trust must be placed in this person. This is the first hoop that the “Harry Potters”, “The Secrets” or the “Eat, Pray, Love(s)” must jump through for possible publication by HCI. Have we seen books like these not pass through our hoops only to land on a bestseller list for a competing house? Sadly, it’s happened.
On to the next hoop which is to land on the desk of the actual editor. She/he will give the proposal their best attention (Let’s hope they’re having a good day, for your sake, dear author). Luckily, the editors are quite bright, talented and imbued with great gut instincts and after careful consideration they give it a yay or nay.
They bring it to their departmental committee meeting and discuss it among themselves. At these meetings, editors only.
If the book proposal makes it this far and all of the editors are feeling the love, then onto the Thursday morning meeting where, as pointed out before, all breeds of HCI staff convene. I’ll be there (except today) representing the voice of publicity, a sales person who sells to Barnes & Noble and the library market will be there, another representing Borders and the big box stores, another who sells to independent bookstores and distributors like Ingram’s and Baker & Taylor.
It’s one big happy melange of opinions. Sometimes, not so happy. All the pieces of the publishing puzzle come together to see if enough elements of the bookselling process will come together to fuel a book successfully to market – first to the trade level of stores/libraries, etc., then to the reader him/herself.
In other words. It’s one big crap shoot! An intelligent gamble, but a gamble nonetheless. Everyone is making their best guesses at what will happen. The good news is that experience influences much of the decision making process and when all departments reach some kind of consensus about sale-ability, the trigger is pulled and a book is launched.
That is, if the editor strikes an amenable deal with the author. And, in time. It’s no fun when the committee members reach an agreement about a book idea and it’s already been sold to someone else. No fun at all. Then when it hits a bestseller list we simply wave and wait for the sick feeling to pass in our bellies.
Such is publishing life.
With what you’ve just read, picture some lively background noise of people saying things like, “It’ll make a great magazine story” countered by “I don’t think there’s enough of a market,” to “The buyer is never going to go for this – they’ve have bad luck with this genre”, to “by jove, I think we’ve got it!”
There’s that rare moment when a proposal comes through and everyone is so excited about the content and/or the author and/or the authors’ platform and/or their track record that we just roll the dice.
Have you ever heard of Chicken Soup for the Soul?
Enough said. Now go to work!
I’ve got a book proposal to read.
p.s. questions anyone???
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Have you ever seen an editorial board that will request additional information of an author, regarding a proposal under consideration?
Also in your experience, how often has an editorial board stepped outside its comfort template to consider a proposal that evidences non-traditional uniqueness?
The last one of my books published went to acqusitions- and the idea of the book started so much discussion and laughter than they couldn’t even discuss it properly.
Which is how they knew it would work.
And it did.
If you can get people who have ideas in front of them all the time laugh and stop for a minute- there’s a book in there…