Critical Editorial Decisions

 

By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin

As an acquisitions editor at a New York publisher, I’ve read many submissions from potential authors. It’s one of my main tasks to read these submissions and speak with the author to see if they are the right fit for the publishing house. Often these authors have received little feedback about their submission. 

From my decades of experience in this business and writing for many different publishers, I know firsthand how submissions are handled. The editor or literary agent is reading the submission for their own needs. If it looks like something they could use in their bsuiness, then they will reach out to the author. If not, they will not respond and instead press on to the next submission. The author is left with little to zero feedback about what can be done to improve the submission so it could fit the needs of the publishing house.

Understanding these foundational details is a critical part of the publishing process. It’s like the concrete in the image above in this article. The concrete mixture has to be correct or the foundation of the building will not be a strong one. It's the same process in publishing. Every writer must have the right mixture in their submission to hit the right target. From my experience, I will see something different from another person. There is definitely a process and the author needs to enter this submission process.

As an editor, I’ve watched writers make critical editorial choices which affect the results of their work. Because they are new to the business, often they will not understand these critical junctures until months or even years after the fact. In this article I want to give some detailed examples in hopes it will help you become more aware and sensitive to the importance of these decisions.

The book writing process begins with a well-designed foundation. Bestselling novelist James Scott Bell talking about this element in this article, The Art of the Outline. It’s worth studying the patterns and habits of other writers to see how you can improve your own creation process. Notice the creativity that is poured into this storytelling and how it is the foundation of their manuscript. Just look at the detailed planning that J.K. Rowling poured into her Harry Potter books.

Some of the basics why your submission is getting rejected or no response:

--Your word count is too large. For a nonfiction book, the ideal length is 50,000 to 60,000 words. For a fiction submission, it is around 60,000 to 80,000. If your novel is 100,000 words (a common length), you are going to get rejected with no idea why. The published book will be too large and require a high retail price (affecting sales). The word count details are important.

--Is the submission poorly written or not appropriate for the publishing house? If so, you are asking for silence or rejection.

--The editor or literary agent doesn’t understand the title or the overview or the pitch. This situation happens and can why you are getting rejected.

Recently a novelist sent a submission to Morgan James Publishing. He had worked on this novel for years. It was a good length and had an interesting pitch and storyline. The story was something we would possibly publish. I put the submission through our system. The internal feedback was a pass (for now). This author needed a developmental editor to improve his manuscript and change the pass to a contract offer. We recommended an excellent developmental editor who this author hired to help him. He got the feedback from the editor and the path to get his revised work was steep and required a lot of changes and revision. He set everything aside and self-published. 

I understood what this author did but his choice greatly limited the reach of his novel. He has some other writing possibilities so we are still exploring them. My key point is achieving excellence and good storytelling is hard and sometimes as authors we have to choose the hard path. I’ve watched this process happen with many authors through the years.

If you are in this situation, here’s some actions to take:

--join a critique group with some honest feedback

--use some honest beta readers and get their feedback

--hire an experienced developmental editor and follow their suggestions and feedback. There are many different editors and potential costs for this process. I encourage you to ask around and choose carefully. A novelist told me that he had hired some well-known editor and was paying $500 a chapter for editing (excessive in my view). Each author should make careful editing choices.

The publishing process is filled with critical decisions. During each stage, you need to make wise choices to have a solid foundation and find the right publisher. What critical editorial decisions did I miss? Let me know in the comments below.

Tweetable:

This prolific author and editor details some critical editorial decisions made in publishing. Learn the insights here.  (ClickToTweet)

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