Acquisitions & editors – an odd irony

July 21, 2010 Publishing

Getting through the editor isn’t the last stage either. Once an editor likes it, they have to put their case to an acquisitions board which includes sales, marketing, distibution etc. The acquisitions board then decide if the book is worth buying. These boards often meet once or twice a month.

I am trying hard not to remember that my first book got through all the editorial levels with one publisher but was rejected at acquisitions as they did not think they could market it. If I’d known then what I know now – how rare it is for a first novel to get that far – I’d probably have sent it to more than five agents and one publisher. Instead I trunked it, and wrote the one that’s now on submission as “Firestorm”.

It is rather ironic that my first book failed to get published because of potential lack of demand, and my next lost a deal because of too much…