When agents submit

It depends on the policies of the particular house.
Some editors have purchase power.
Some need to take the manuscripts to an editorial meeting.
Some have an additional step, and the manuscript needs to go to an acquisition meeting.

Here's a good description of the possibilities: http://www.underdown.org/acquisition-process.htm

Good luck!

Yeah, it varies so widely from house to house that it's really impossible to give a clear answer to this question. I am far from an expert on the process (my own novel having only just been sent to its first editor on Thursday), but from the reading I've done, sales meetings and getting approval from the higher-ups seems to be the usual procedure at a good number of publishers. But the situation could vary depending on individual circumstances, so who knows.

Sure wish I knew, right now!

It varies, but I believe most publishing houses have a procedure for choosing what to buy. Publishing houses have people whose job it is to determine the selling power of a book, how it fits into the market, what else is out there that it would be competing with, etc. An editor might find a great book, but there's a whole other side to determining if it's a good business prospect.

Based on my experience, it goes roughly like this...

An editor gets a submission, likes the idea. They read it, maybe hand it over to another editor or member of their staff for another read. If it still passes muster it might get sent up to the publisher. If everyone likes it, it goes to the sales and marketing folks to determine its viability (some of these steps me be in other orders after it leaves the editor). If it gets a green light, an offer is made.

I'm sure different houses have different specific procedures, buts that's the general idea.

"When Agents Submit" sounds a lot like one of those sensational TV reality shows, a la "When Animals Attack."

Jumping onto Albannah's question (though I don't mean to threadjack...so if it's threadjacking I apologize)...these steps (that I've read here and other places) seem so involved and I know they can often take a long time..so how does it ever manage to be that a book sells in three days? I don't see how that could ever happen considering the number of people involved...it seems like with all these steps it would take a minimum of a week or two...yet we see fast sales with surprising frequency.

Any insight anyone can offer?

Moonrat blogged about this today.

Noah Body said:

"When Agents Submit" sounds a lot like one of those sensational TV reality shows, a la "When Animals Attack."

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lol!

myrmidon said:

Jumping onto Albannah's question (though I don't mean to threadjack...so if it's threadjacking I apologize)...these steps (that I've read here and other places) seem so involved and I know they can often take a long time..so how does it ever manage to be that a book sells in three days? I don't see how that could ever happen considering the number of people involved...it seems like with all these steps it would take a minimum of a week or two...yet we see fast sales with surprising frequency.

Any insight anyone can offer?

Click to expand...

If an editor has purchasing power, then all it takes is that editor's decisions, really.

And, once an auction or pre-empt situation happens, everything speeds up because the stop-watch is running. So, if one editor makes an offer, everyone else who wants to be in the pool to bid at auction or try to pre-empt has to make certain deadlines. Fast.

~suki

suki said:

If an editor has purchasing power, then all it takes is that editor's decisions, really.

And, once an auction or pre-empt situation happens, everything speeds up because the stop-watch is running. So, if one editor makes an offer, everyone else who wants to be in the pool to bid at auction or try to pre-empt has to make certain deadlines. Fast.

~suki

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Yes, what Suki said. Once my agent got an offer from the first publishing house, she was able to leverage that into much faster movement on the parts of the other publishers who had the book. One went ahead and passed becase she didn't feel she loved the book enough to get into an auction for it (which was good to know, IMHO), one editor was out on leave but another editor read the book fast on her behalf, and two other editors loved the book enough to bid as well. In that situation, the editors either have enough clout in the company to bid without higher approval, or they communicate the need for speed to whoever DOES have that approval authority.

suki said:

If an editor has purchasing power, then all it takes is that editor's decisions, really.

Click to expand...

Or if the editor needs only one approval, it can happen fast, too. One of my editors emailed me, asking for a particular novel she knew I'd written. I notified my agent, who sent the latest version. Five days later, I had a two-book deal. Apparently all the editor had to do was approach the top guy with her P&L analysis.

Thanks guys (or I should say, ladies). This was all very helpful!

What...you mean there are no shoe elves or underpants gnomes involved...I'm disappointed.