Who Reads Submissions..?

Happy New Year authonomists! And what better way to begin 2009 here on the blog than with another guest contribution. Today we bring you Pria who, as an Editorial Assistant in HC’s prolific Fiction department, will often be the first person to cast an eye over manuscripts coming in from agented and unsolicited channels.

This little piece is not really about writing, but more about reading.

Who’s reading your book?

I am an editorial assistant working on a commercial list at HC. I will usually be the first person to see any manuscript that comes in, in part, simply because I open all the post. My choice of an editorial career arose from my sincere belief that books and literacy change lives for the better. Whether fiction, non fiction, science, food, biography: an access to books and love of reading can make the difference to an individual life and to a society. It is only through empathy and knowledge that we begin to understand each other, to have insights into other cultures, and other generations, other sexualities and differences. I believe that literacy and access to books is one of the crucial things which can empower a minority or a marginalised section of society to find a voice and a community through reading stories they identify with. British publishing is the best in the world, unmatched in terms of the diversity of its output. This diversity is crucial for the future – it is our stories that will endure.

What Are We Looking For?

We’re often asked what we are looking for when we consider manuscripts. There are a bunch of easy answers – the next Harry Potter or Jilly Cooper, the next Salmon Fishing in the Yemen or Memory Keeper’s Daughter. These books all have some key things in common. Firstly they all have real emotional truth and integrity at their heart. Second, we can all empathise with the dilemmas and hopes and fears of the characters, even if they are as different to us as it is possible to be, and crucially, we come to care about them. When the characters are fully fleshed and believable – even if we haven’t been told, we know enough about them to say, buy them a gift or imagine what they would like for breakfast. Thirdly their worlds, their milieus, are realised for the reader in a satisfying way – we can imagine the pub they’re sitting in, or the inside of their cupboards.
I am not a writer, so I can’t say how this is done, how to write. But I am a voracious reader across many disciplines and genres. Reading has to be pleasurable, and if it is going to be successful (in the way that publishers measure success) it has to be accessible. Even canonical books – those we think of as classics, the ones which we can compare to modern day bestsellers – think of Austen or Thackeray or Dickens, are accessible every day stories about the world we live in and people and situations we recognise.
That is not to say that stories about unusual or imagined or disgusting people and things cannot be successful – novels about serial killers, about slavery, about vampires have all captured the imagination of millions and become part of the cultural genealogy of books, stories, readers and writers.

What Happens to Unsolicited Manuscripts?

We certainly look at everything that comes in. Most will be sent back after a cursory read as we don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts. Such rejections would previously be accompanied by a pre-printed polite rejection. Happily we at HC have evolved and can now direct authors to authonomy.
If the first pages are really good there is an excellent chance we will read on so it is worth focusing on the opening and providing a tight, succinct synopsis. Things like spelling, punctuation and grammar are important – they don’t have to be perfect by any means, but it is off-putting to see careless mistakes in a submission. The first thing we read is the covering letter – think about what you want to say, what category your book fits into, who your reader is. Again, authonomy is dispensing with these formal ways of approaching publishers so this may be something that is less relevant to authors reading this. If I read on and found something in the work I liked, I would speak to my senior publisher and commissioning editors, and given the green light have it read by our professional reader. If our reader’s opinion that the work’s quality and commercial potential is good, it will be brought up at the weekly editorial meeting and put on the minutes as a new submission. It will then be circulated among the wider editorial team for feed back. If this feedback is positive, the manuscript is then circulated among the sales, marketing and rights teams. If there is enthusiasm and passion for the project, the editor will then raise the manuscript at the Acquisitions meeting. If the consensus is that it is a sound investment, only then will an offer be made.
Sound like an arduous process? It is. But it does mean that you get the best possible chance for everyone crucial to the success of your book to become passionate about it. Also if editors like manuscripts they will occasionally offer you editorial comments in the hope you will be able to come back with something they can circulate. Contrary to some opinion, editing is a skilled job, not anyone can do it, it requires a lot of practice and training, and if you are offered advice from a professional editor I would take it, even if it feels hard to make changes to something you have worked on and hold dear.

Above all I would say though, do not be discouraged, find your voice, follow your dream and tell your story.