What is the acquisition editor?

Acquisition editor is a specialized editor in most publishing houses that focuses on searching and acquiring new manuscripts. Depending on the publishing house, this type of editor may include sorting through unsolicited manuscripts, but may also be responsible for contacting existing writers about new projects or exclusively interaction with agents. The acquisition editor largely leads the direction of the publishing house through books they acquire, but eventually has to postpone their decision to a supervisor, so they rarely have a completely free hand in getting books. Most of the acquisition editors have support staff, consisting of junior editors or trainees who help read through a pile of junk manuscripts. These subordinates to cancel any manuscripts that they think could be interesting for the acquisition editor, so the editor has much fewer manuscripts that could go through material with potential.

In houses that do not accept junk manuscripts, the acquisition editor will largely deal with agents or existing authors. In this case, the editor builds relationships with agents to bring a suitable job. Agents act as a kind of preliminary screen to make sure that the writing of a certain quality goes through, so the work of the acquisition editor focuses more on good things.

It is very important that the acquisition editor actually likes a manuscript, or has some other reason to have a desire to promote it. This is important because once the manuscript has been selected, the work of the acquisition editor is far from over. He or she will have to persuade the others inside the book that the book should be made. Even post -center publishing houses require a consensus among many different people, including other editors, executives, legal advisors and business managers. With huge publishing houses, this list of people has been growing even longer.

generally spending the publishing houseFor the production of a basic book around $ 50,000 to $ 100,000 (USD). This is a great price for an established author; It is even more investment if the author is less known. The success or failure of this investment lies mainly on the acquisition editor, which decided to promote this particular manuscript. Its reputation depends on the constant selection of winners or at least books that breaks even, and the editor that finds itself constantly with the selection of book failure will soon find themselves out of work.

The best acquisition editors create close relationships with key people in the field, including network, authors and sometimes smaller presses. They use this network to connect to talent and find gold manuscripts before other publishers discover them. As a result, a truly successful acquisition editor must not only have an eager eye for good, trading, but also has to have the ability to connect and maintain trust and respect for the best authors.