Pat Gundry, who owns and oversees the PUBLISH-L e-mail list, a community of independent publishers, authors and vendors (www.publish-l.com), offered the comments below in response to a list question about the tendency of larger publishing houses to be so slow and inefficient in evaluating or otherwise disposing of manuscripts. Her observations, reprinted here with her permission, should give one pause when considering where to shop around book manuscripts.
“I would love to know why acquisitions editors are so slow and do not speed their own internal processes.”
1. They are overworked. Some of the big publishers have a hiring freeze in effect that's been going on for some time. Whenever anyone quits, there's no one to do the work so it gets divided among those who are still there.
2. Publishing is a behind-the-times business, selling products basically on consignment, taking forever to get books to market.
3. There's no reason to hurry. No shortage of writers who will put up with almost anything in order to be published. Usually they don't know they have any choice in the matter.
4. The acquisitions editor is at the mercy of the other people in the chain of events leading to a contract. First there's the first reader, might be outsourced to a freelancer. I used to read over-the- transom manuscripts, and I'd get them by the box, sometimes months after they'd been sent by the writer. Then there's the acquisitions editor, then there's the next step, which may be a committee meeting happening only weekly and if the docket is too full, then the manuscript gets bumped to the next week. If it makes it through the initial committee, then it's going to go to the sales department for their work-up on what they think they could sell in the first year, cost computations, etc. Then it goes on from there to whoever makes the next level of decision. Long process, with many detours and stops along the way.
5. Belly editing takes up a lot of time. The acquisition editor may be gone a lot of the time, away from his/her desk pursuing the big names or the potential big names, attending writers conferences, trade conferences, etc.
6. Personal reasons. Publishing is well endowed with prima donnas and oddballs whose quirks create periodic slowdowns. I've seen several do some really goofy things, and some come to a screeching halt.
7. Incompetence. Publishing is a nice place for incompetents.
8. Many things to consider in offering a contract. There's balancing the list of new books for the next season. Say, they'd be interested in your book if another book they're interested in from a bigger name
doesn't pan out. They need to wait until they get the info about that book before they can decide. Maybe they are anticipating a budget cut, and don't know yet whether they can publish your book or not. It could be that the editor in chief is out of the country on business, and he/she is the one who does the contracts.
© 2002 Patricia Gundry
http://www.patriciagundry.com
