This great question was offered by an anonymous poster just before I began my time here at RI, and I thought that trying to address it would be a good way to end my week of blogs with you all. It’s a timeless question, and one I remember asking myself with increasing frequency - and sometimes frustration - in the two years or so before I was offered that first contract.

However, before I get started, allow me to say that I don’t have a magic-bullet answer to this. I’m not an editor (except of my own work and my students’ papers), though even if I was an editor, my answer to this question would probably be a little different from the answer you’d get from the editor at the publishing house two blocks over and the one you’d get from the editor two doors down from that. But my answer will be the result of my own experiences submitting my work (and being rejected vs. getting The Call), watching other writers, and listening to editors during formal talks and during informal conversations.

The poster asked, “What does an editor expect to see in a ms? Does she expect the whole package: a compelling story, memorable characters, AND grammatically correct writing? Or is she looking for, say, 2 of the three?”

This is probably going to be a little tough to swallow, but it’s my opinion that in order to get that first sale in today’s very competitive and fast-paced market, you DO have to have all three…plus a fourth as well. Your story has to be marketable in some way. Because if it’s not - if the editor knows she won’t be able to get the sales team behind it (they’re those very important people in every publishing house who are the direct contact for the house with the big buyers who place orders for your book) - it’s going to be dead in the water no matter how compelling, memorable, and grammatically correct the book is. But for the purposes of this blog, I’m going to assume you have what you believe is a saleble, marketable idea.

Ok, then, why do you need a compelling story, memorable characters, AND grammatically correct writing all in one package in order to have a chance at getting The Call?

Answer: Because there are thousands of other writers just like you, desperately wanting the same thing you want: to see your baby in print. In order to be noticed, you need to do everything in your power - pull out every weapon in your writing arsenol - to really show your stuff.

Look at it this way. Each publishing house or romance imprint (like Avon, Bantam, St. Martin’s, Leisure, Harlequin, etc.) employs anywhere from two (St. Martin’s, last time I checked) to 15+ (Harlequin/Silhouette) romance editors. At Avon, off the top of my head, there are five editors (executive, senior, and full editors), with several assistant editors who, well, assist, usually, rather than actively acquire manuscripts. Avon editors receive hundreds of unsolicited submissions a week. That’s right: hundreds every week. These include e-mail queries, snail-mail queries, partials, and full manuscripts. And it doesn’t include manuscripts/partials sent in by reputable literary agents for the editor’s consideration.

Now right off the bat, some of these unsolicited submissions are nixed…people who send in fulls without having received the go-ahead to do so, queries for the kind of book Avon doesn’t publish, people who haven’t followed the Avon guildlines for submission policies (and I have to confess I haven’t looked at the submission policies for a while…I believe they’ve changed in the last few years to ask that all initial contact - query letters etc. - take place via e-mail, rather than snail-mail. You can be sure, however, that when I was actively submitting my work in my pre-published days, I was right on top of what each house preferred, as far as submission practices go. After all, what’s the point of getting a black mark against you before anyone has even looked at one word of your writing?)

Out of those that are left - still a hefty number - these five editors plus assistants must try to sift through, hoping against all hope they’ll find some wheat amongst the chaff. They do this because as overworked, harried, and time-starved as they are, they really do love books. They really DO want to find the next great story-teller. If they didn’t, they could find much cushier jobs somewhere else, doing something else, and probably for more money. *g* But dealing with unsolicited - or even solicited submissions (i.e. they’ve requested to see a partial based upon a conference meeting or a query letter you sent, or it’s a partial sent in by your agent) - is a huge and very taxing part of any editor’s job. Talk to any editor about how difficult it is to set aside a certain number of hours regularly to read what comes into the office each week, and her eyes will glaze over. Editors routinely take work home; they’re reading on the train into work and on the way home. It’s a never-ending task.

And of course, it’s not all they have to do. They’re editors, after all. Here’s a job listing I pulled right off the HarperCollins site this morning, for a Senior Editor in the General Books division (though you can be sure it’s very similar if not identical to what’s expected of a Senior Editor in the Romance division):

Job Responsibilities:
Editor will acquire and edit 10-12 books a year and be intimately involved in the positioning and marketing of his or her books.
Acquire, negotiate, develop and edit book projects.
Prepare acquisitions for transmittal to the production department.
Develop and maintain relationships with appropriate outside contacts such as authors, booksellers and agents.
Work, as a member of a team, with assigned Marketing Manager and other marketing staff.
Work with Publishing Director in refining the editorial and publishing strategy of the program.
Travel to represent the company at conferences, to agents, etc.
Participate in key meetings on a regular basis.
Participate in various corporate initiatives, as needed.
Share supervision of an Editorial Assistant.

As you can see by the job posting above, there is plenty to do; each editor has multiple authors, sometimes in different genres. My own editor - Senior Editor extraordinaire Lyssa Keusch - edits romance and mystery, for example. Regardless, every editor faces reading and critiquing 400+ pages for each of her authors with every book, with a manuscript for each author coming in every nine months to a year - and sometimes with three or four manuscripts rolling in all at around the same time, with a window of about four weeks to get them all done, or else production time is messed up) ; editors have to go to “cover conferences” to provide their input for every romance manuscript published at the house, they have to attend various meetings, they have to read their authors’ new proposals and give the ok or nay and provide feedback as to why it was approved or why it wasn’t; they have to make time for phone calls and meetings with agents, for conferences and editor appointments. And if they can manage it, they do have a life squeezed in there as well, somewhere. *g*

Sounds exhausting, doesn’t it? I’m sure it is.

The same way it’s exhausting to get up at 3am to write each morning, because you have to leave for work by 7am, or because you’re trying to squeeze in an hour or so since the baby woke you up anyway. The way you carry a notebook or your laptop or your alphasmart to the dentist’s office, on vacation, to your child’s soccer practice, or to work, so you can sneak in some writing time during lunch or any free moment. The same way that you feel a little piece of your heart fall away each time you rush to the mailbox or click open your e-mail to see that there is nothing there from that editor/publishing house/agent. Again. (My personal “best” for length of time between submission and rejection was 18.5 months). Or the way that knot tightens in your stomach and your eyes sting when you excitedly rip open the response you FINALLY received to your submisson, and the salutation reads, “Dear Writer…” .

Which is why if you really, really, want to see your work in print, in a real, bound, beautiful book, you have to do EVERYTHING in your power to make it as “un-put-downable” as you can. You MUST have a compelling story, memorable characters, and clean (picture the editor heaving a sigh of relief here) grammatical construction.

Editors see a LOT of writing. In decades past, an editor’s job might have entailed helping a writer hone a diamond in the rough by cleaning up her spelling, grammar, and phrasing, along with what they generally stick to doing now, which includes giving salient feedback on pacing, characterization, and story flow. An editor who has acquired your manuscript will of course still correct the few spelling errors and/or grammatical mistakes that might have slipped by you, as she edits your book in preparation for revision and ultimate publication. But if your manuscript is riddled with such errors, you’re unlikely to ever get to that point with her. In today’s world, time is at a premium for everyone, and you have to put your absolute best foot forward each time you step into the publishing arena by sending your work in to be considered by an editor. Anything less is selling yourself and your manuscript short.

And now to finish, I want to thank you all at RI for inviting me to blog this week. I’ve enjoyed my time here immensely! Please feel free (posters and lurkers alike) to write me a note or ask a question any time you want. I love to hear from people, and you’d be surprised how quiet my in-box is most of the time. *g* (e-mail: mary@maryreedmccall.com).

Question for the day: What date is SINFUL PLEASURES: The Templar Knights going to go on-sale?

–MRM