dantem42 said:
There are various processes. In my case, I am in a "long" auction. None of the publishers asked to see the manuscript, it's based on my agent's pitch to them. If they indicate interest in the "premise" of the novel (in my case, hopefully the most original serial killer novel to come along in years), then my agent puts them on the list.
Meaning no disrespect, but I'm an editor at a trade house, and what you're describing here is nothing like auctions as I know them.
I'm also startled by the idea that an editor or publisher would enter an auction for a work of fiction without seeing the manuscript, unless it was for a book by an established fiction writer. Are you familiar with Watt-Evans' Law and Feist's Corollary? They say that there's no idea so old, tired, and hackneyed that a competent writer can't make a passable piece of work out of it; and that there's no idea so transplendently brilliant that an inept writer can't screw it up. Ideas matter, but execution matters more.
This is why some fiction publishers' submission guidelines say "skip the queries, just send us three chapters." It's also why many houses won't buy an unfinished book from a first-time novelist. The idea may be promising and the first three chapters lively as all get-out, but they want to see whether the author has what it takes to develop and finish the novel in a satisfactory fashion. It's quite common for otherwise well-written novels to fall apart in the last chapter or three. It's also not unheard-of for writers who only have nonfiction, comics, poetry, or short story credentials to have trouble when they try to switch over to writing novels.
I don't know your background, but I'm under the impression that this is your first novel you're talking about. If so, this is a very strange scenario.
After the manuscripts are submitted, some publishers probably read the first fifty pages, it isn't what they were looking for and they pass out of hand. Others will take a week or two or three or four.
That's not an auction. That's an agent doing simultaneous submissions to multiple houses. The process may end in an auction, but it may also end with one of the publishers making what the agent feels is a satisfactory offer. He or she may make a last round of phone calls to the other editors, just in case one or more of them are on the verge of making a superior offer, but even then it doesn't necessarily become a formal auction.
The target date to end the auction is something of a paper tiger -- it can be extended at will.
It cannot be extended at will, at least not if one of the houses has the floor plus topping privileges. Once they've exercised their topping privilege (or declined to do so), the auction is over. Or should be over. If it isn't over, the agent doesn't know what he or she is doing, and the house that had the floor is going to be seriously ticked off.
An additional complication in my case is that I have agreed to do a complete revision and resubmission for one publisher. So there will be even more than one manuscript version floating around.
My goodness. If you've agreed to do a complete revision and resubmission for one publisher, that definitely isn't an auction. (Just curious: are you doing that revision on spec? Is just the one publisher seeing it?)
In a more traditional auction, the manuscript has been circulating in the publishing community, maybe in full, maybe in excerpt.
Again, if it's not an established author, an excerpt isn't enough -- unless you're talking extremely topical nonfiction with nondisclosure agreements all round, which you aren't.
The agent selects a certain number of publishers who have evinced interest and asks for bids. Sometimes the agent will get one offer, and then go out to auction if he thinks the offer is not high enough. The agent may, or may not, inform other publishers of a bid amount to try to obtain a higher bid (note, this was the subject of a major scandal involving agent Natasha Kern, who created a fictitious bid to get a publisher to raise his bid).
Here's the way a classic auction works: the agent sends the manuscript out to howevermany publishing houses the agent thinks appropriate. If enough of them express interest, the agent tells them that it's going to auction.
Usually, at that point, one of the houses will ask for the floor plus topping privileges. This means they volunteer to be the first bidder to put up an actual dollar amount, instead of hanging back to see what the others will do. In return, they get the privilege of topping the highest final offer, usually by 10%. That is: when all the other bidders have finished bidding, the agent takes the highest bid to the house that has the floor, and gives them the option of buying the book for the price that other house bid plus ten percent. They don't have to exercise that privilege, but when the agent comes to them to ask whether they want to do so, the auction is definitely over. The agent can't take that highest+10% bid around to the other bidders, say "look what so-and-so thinks it's worth" in an effort to provoke another round of bidding.
Auctions can be complicated. You can have one house offering a slightly higher amount for the original book plus a guaranteed dollar amount for the promo budget, while another house is offering a higher total figure for three books that works out to less per book, but implies more long-term commitment from the house. Other factors can be brought in. Things can get downright exciting.
Sometimes it is all over in a week, but usually two or three weeks is more likely nowadays.
I assume, unless I'm told otherwise, that an auction is going to run for a few days at most.
Editors typically have to "sell" their favored books to a committee that decides which books will get offers, and this alone can take an extra week or two. Sometimes a publisher has already seen the manuscript, and may make a "pre-emptive" bid.
No. I'm sorry, but no. Unless you're talking about an established author, one whose work is known to the bidders, fiction publishers don't buy books without seeing the manuscript; and if it's an established author, the only reason for not seeing the manuscript is if the author hasn't written it yet.
If you've got a red-hot book, the agent may send manuscripts to editors and tell them they only have a day or two to read the book and get their offers lined up; and if the book is hot enough, the editors and publishers will do it. Most editors can read very fast indeed, if they have to.
But no way are you going to get a weeks-long process of bidding and counter-bidding on an unknown book, with money on the line, when a couple of nights' reading could tell the participants whether or not they actually want the thing.
Often this may be the publisher who made the original offer, but increases it this time to take it out of auction. This type of bid usually comes early, and it is made with the proviso that the agent cannot entertain other bids, basically the offer has to be accepted immediately.
A preemptive bid happens at the start of the process. The agent brings the manuscript to the editor or publisher, and tells them it's going to go to auction. They read it and decide they like it a lot. They go back to the agent and say, "We'll bid this extremely attractive amount if you'll sell us the book right now." As I understand it, a preemptive bid is only good if there's no auction to follow. If the agent decides to go to auction anyway, the preemptive bid is void, though that house may decide to participate in the auction anyway via more conventional bids.
The offer is usually set high enough to make it attractive to sign with the publisher without waiting for other bids.
If the agent doesn't take other bids, it's not an auction.
Powerhouse auction situations (where multiple six or even seven figure offers are made) are usually - but not always - when the author has previously published and has a good track record of sales. Maybe he/she has defected from his/her previous publisher. In this situation, it's a lot easier for a publisher to evaluate the commercial potential. You won't usually see this situation with an unpublished author, though it does happen from time to time.
True. What you will not see: an auction for a work of fiction by an unpublished author when the participants haven't read the manuscript. Well, not unless the work of fiction is supposedly being written by a major celebrity -- in which case you're buying the name, not the book.
Often publishers may opt out of making a specific dollar offer in auction, but may make an "expression of interest." This often means that they don't want to bid against other publishers (some of them hate the auction process, others make decisions too slowly to accommodate it), but are interested in making an offer if the agent is not satisfied with the results of the auction and the manuscript remains available.
No. Absolutely not. Auctions are about dollar amounts (plus other valuable considerations; see above). Expressions of interest may precede an auction, but they are not part of the auction process. And if an agent were to take a book to auction, then withdraw it after the highest bids were in -- well, that would be a scandal!
If the initial bids weren't enough to buy the book, the agent should have said so at the time. Accepting a bid is accepting a bid. And to accept bids, then take further rounds of higher bids (also accepted, of course), and only at the end say that none of the bids are acceptable, is either outright dishonesty or outright incompetence or both. Everyone would be furious.
Participating in an auction takes a lot of work. The editor or publisher has to read the book, decide they want it, run up some sample P&Ls to show the rest of the house, figure out how much they're willing to bid, and get howevermany approvals are required by their organization. Then they have to do it all over again, if (as often happens) the initial offer mutates into a hard/soft or a multi-book deal. Running a fake auction would be a huge waste of time for a lot of people who don't have time to spare.
Auctions can be great, or they can be not so great. And keep in mind that the size of the advance isn't the only important factor. For example, also critical is whom you would land as an editor. It may be better to take a slightly lower advance and be working with a renowned editor than to take a slightly higher one and end up under a no-talent despot who will massacre your work before it hits the shelves.
The commonest thing no-talent editors do is fail to edit when editing is needed.
Your agent should make decisions taking various factors into consideration.
Look, I don't want to say anything unkind about you or your agent, but at least one of you is badly confused about how auctions work. Here's hoping that you're the one who's confused, and that your manuscript is in good hands.
