Somewhere Over the Transom, Part I
Two Editorial Pros to Start You on Your Publishing Journey
“Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.”
― T.S. Eliot
Before I sat down to write this week’s articles, my partner asked me what the topic would be. I said, “I’m going to write about the different kinds of editors that are involved with publishing a book, because I think a lot of non-publishing people think of a book’s ‘editor’ as being just one person.” I will not describe the entire conversation but his shocked-Pikachu response demonstrated that I was correct and at least some non-publishing people—at least one non-publishing person—did not know that it takes a village of editors to raise a book.
Welcome to 2021, by the way. I hope the first few days of the new year have been kind to you. I know we’ve barely scratched the surface yet but I’d like to remind you that by this time last year we had already assassinated Soleimani in a drone strike of dubious legality and kicked off an escalation with Iran that nobody needed and by the way Australia was on fire so I feel like we’re already off to a better start.
This week I’ve got a two part series for you on the four editors that you are likely to work with as you turn your manuscript into a book.
I’ve been an editor for a long time now, so when I try to remember what I thought an editor did before I actually was an editor myself, the picture is hazy. There aren’t a lot of famous editors to think of and say “oh, yes, right, that person, I understand what their job is” like there are famous astronauts or pilots or chefs. Many people know that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was an editor for Viking and then Doubleday, but she wasn’t famous for being an editor. She was already a celebrity when she became an editor. I don’t think a lot of lay people are familiar with names like Max Perkins or Robert Gottlieb or Nan Talese.
So when people outside the publishing industry think of an editor, I suspect they imagine two things:
The person who reads their manuscript and then offers them a contract to publish it.
The person who reads their manuscript, red pencil in hand, and makes it as perfect as possible.
I asked my partner and he nodded along. Yes, that sounds right. But wait—the editors who do those jobs aren’t the same person. They’re probably not even on the same payroll. They’re just two of the editors you’ll have to work with if you’re going to publish traditionally—each with their own unique, specialized, non-overlapping skill set that helps take your story out of the word processor onto the store shelf.
Before I start telling you about all my cool editor friends and what kind of stuff they do, I have to clarify that today I’m talking about book publishing. Keep in mind that other types of publishing have different types of editors and many of them do different work than the editors in book publishing. To make it even more confusing, editors in different types of publishing often have the same job title but completely different job functions. The managing editor of a news desk has a completely different job than the managing editor of a journal, who has again a completely different job from the managing editor of a book imprint. While they share the skill of managing other editorial personnel, their job function in the company otherwise is totally different.
So if you’re publishing a book, or you want to, here’s your chance to study up on several of the editors you’ll have to work with along the way. Today we’ll tackle the folks who give the Editorial Department its name, and on Thursday we’ll discuss the denizens of the Production Department.
The Acquisitions Editor
The first editor you’ll be working with is your acquisitions editor (AE). They are sometimes called a commissioning editor (especially in Europe). When someone tells you their manuscript is “on submission” with an editor, or that their agent has chosen an editor to submit their work to, this is who they mean. This is the editor who acquires material for the company to publish. Although this is their job description, the acquisitions editor doesn’t always have the word “acquisition” in their job title—sometimes the person doing the acquiring is a senior editor, an associate editor, or even an assistant editor. This person is a member of the editorial department, and usually reports to the editor-in-chief, editor-at-large, or editorial director.
This is the type of editor that Jackie O. was. These are the people who take a manuscript and decide whether the publishing company will publish it. Well, sort of.
The job is much more complicated than you might realize if you haven’t worked closely with an acquiring editor. It’s not a matter of reading a manuscript and saying, “Yes, I liked this and I think consumers will like it, let’s sign it” or “No, this manuscript is terrible, let’s reject it.” They do not while away their workday reading manuscripts and rendering decisions based on how they feel about what they read. I would want to be in that line of work. It’s not a thing.
First of all, the acquiring editor may not even read the manuscript in question. They usually have an editorial assistant—a junior staff member who hopes to move up into an acquisitions editor role—working on their list with them who screens project proposals and queries as they come in. So when you “query an editor,” it’s probably not even the editor themself who reviews your query. EAs know what their editor is looking for in query letters and sample chapters. Reading takes time and time is expensive, so that is usually done by junior staff.
When an acquisitions editor finds a project they like and they think it has legs—they still don’t sign it. Next they evaluate the manuscript carefully to see how much work it’s going to need in terms of development, production, permissions, and art—that is, how much it will cost the company to publish. Then, they consider the market to determine how many copies they think they’ll be able to sell. They look at factors like “how are the comps selling?” and “what’s the saturation level of this market?” Using those two sets of data (cost and sales estimates), they’ll put together the book’s contribution margin (dollar contribution per unit) to see if it’s a good bet for the company. If it looks like a sure thing, then they—still don’t sign it.
Once they’ve decided they want to sign the book, they take it to the publishing committee. This group of senior staff members from editorial, marketing, sales, and production sit down together and review the margin to make sure they agree with the acquiring editor’s decision to sign it—that after everyone’s work is budgeted for the profit margin will be worthwhile, that the sales targets are reasonable and attainable, and that the product fits into the company’s overall publishing strategy. If this committee gets to “yes”—congratulations, that editor is going to be reaching out with your shiny new contract. Once you sign your X on the line, it’s time for the next editor to come up to bat.
The Developmental Editor
Next you’ll meet your developmental editor (DE), sometimes called a substantive editor. Just because your book got signed by the publishing company does not necessarily mean they think it is publishable. The most carefully crafted, beautifully written manuscript in the world will get rejected if it doesn’t have sales potential or fit the company’s editorial strategy. Conversely, manuscripts that need work—lots of work, tons of work—get signed all the time when they have a premise that can sell well. When that happens—when the bones are there but the manuscript needs a major structural overhaul or a lot of organizational work before it’s ready to start production, this editor steps up to the plate.
The developmental editor is the person who knows the market for your book inside out and can help you understand the types of overarching changes you might need to make before your manuscript is ready to become a book. If you worked with a literary agent, they might have done some of this work already to make your project more attractive to the acquisitions editor before submission. Further, in smaller publishing houses, the acquisitions editor might do some of this work themself. Alternatively, they might have an assistant editor or even an experienced editorial assistant doing it.
The developmental editor is a member of the editorial department and works closely with an acquisitions editor on their list. The DE may report to the acquisitions editor directly, or they may instead report to a senior developmental editor who manages the DE team as part of their responsibilities.
Most manuscripts aren’t ready to go straight into production from acquisition. Every manuscript needs some kind of work. The truth is, you’ll probably hate working with this editor. This is the person who tells you stuff like, “you’ve got to cut 25,000 words” or “you need to change the narrator to this other character and retell the story from their point of view” or “this entire subplot isn’t working and has to go.” They’re almost always going to ask for at least one painful change. You also might feel like they’re not “catching everything” because when your manuscript comes back to you for work, it still has typos and misspelled words. This is not the editor who fixes typos! That’s later! This editor handles big-picture items only.
If you’re writing nonfiction, then you probably got signed from your book proposal instead of a finished manuscript. In that case, the developmental editor is the person who is going to review your proposed table of contents and sample chapters and help you restructure to make your book as marketable as possible. Some of the things your DE asks for might not make sense to you. You can ask them to help you understand why they’re requesting the changes. Listen, no editor asks you to change things in your manuscript because they just want to see you do extra work. These folks know what they’re doing.
I worked with an author once on launching a new 200-level college textbook. He was dead set on his table of contents but the DE told him he had to move chapter 3 up to chapter 2 and put chapter 2 somewhere else. He felt like this change was totally arbitrary and would require a lot of work—redoing cross references, fixing text in chapter 3 that referred to material in chapter 2 now that chapter 3 was going to come first, and so on. His DE knew, though, that every other book already in that course space covered the same topic in chapter 2 that this author wanted to cover in chapter 3. It’s already an uphill battle to get a professor to adopt a new textbook when they’re used to the old one—but if the material is at least in the same order then they don’t have to change their entire syllabus to switch books and the sales reps have a shot.
The developmental editor also has a good sense of the features that your competitors have and knows how to help you get those same features into your book. Do you need a map of your fantasy world professionally drawn or painted? Do you need infographics? Do you need to develop a glossary, or a pronunciation guide? Do you have the right number and type of figures to illustrate your data? Do you need chapter summaries or quizzes? It’s the developmental editor’s job to know, and they’ll be able to tell you exactly how to create that content or get it created for you. That’s the knowledge and skill set that your DE brings to your project: This is the editor who knows exactly what it will take to get a consumer to pick up your book, and how to get your manuscript to that state from where it is right now.
Your acquisitions editor and developmental editor got your manuscript ready to become a successful book. Now you just have to make an actual book out of that manuscript. How does that happen? The editorial department throws your manuscript downfield to the production department, and the editors on the production staff run it to the end zone from there. Make sure you come back on Thursday to meet the two editors you’ll need to know in the production group. I’ll tell you all about them, their skills, and the value they bring to your project. Did I leave you wondering what a transom even is? I’ll make sure to drop that important info for you in two days. Subscribe so you don’t miss it!
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I DO know what a transom is, but no spoilers here!