Every traditional publishing company has a personality or focus that defines them and their product. Usually that personality or focus is determined by past success. They also know how many books they can effectively publish during a year. Combining focus and capacity, you have the beginnings of a publishing strategy.
No publisher (or for that matter any company) will succeed for long unless they have a diversity of product to offer. Even companies selling lawn furniture offer a variety of sizes, features and price ranges. It simply makes good business sense.
Being one-dimensional at anything is not generally a good thing for companies. Diversifying acquisitions will allow a publisher to appeal to a wider range of customers and navigate the changing trends in consumer book-buying habits.
This applies to a publisher, not authors.
Authors are usually known for one type of writing. The publisher is the whole, the author is one of the parts. Writing too widely might show your creativity, but confuses agents, publishers and readers as to who you are. It muddies your brand. The same concept applies for indie authors, except you will only confuse readers.
Let’s see how all this might work in practice for a book publisher.
While it is an ever-evolving process, a publisher knows the general categories they want to publish. For the sake of this example, let’s say they can effectively publish 100 titles a year and they are good at ten general categories with a suggested title quantity for each: (FYI- there are over fifty official BISAC categories utilized in organizing publishing information across the industry – click the link to see them all.)
Biographies and Autobiographies (5 titles)
Cooking (5 titles)
Family & Relationships (10 titles)
Fiction – adult (20 titles)
Gardening (5 titles)
Juvenile Fiction (10 titles)
Music (5 titles)
Self-Help (15 titles)
Sports and Recreation (10 titles)
Travel (5 titles)
Misc. opportunities (10 titles)
While not a rigid process, this general overview is communicated to acquisitions people to serve as a guide for how much they need to acquire. Maintaining the diversity of books is why some publishers create “imprints” or companies within companies focusing only on one or two categories.
Various terms are used for this, but publishers commonly refer to these as “slots”. The editor of cooking titles has five “slots” to fill for a year and might see 200 proposals for those five slots and must determine which ones are best for them.
Since the publisher won’t get all 200 proposals at once, they hesitate at making a quick decision on most unless they know something definitely won’t work for them. Rejection travels fast.
The added element of competition with other publishers means that of the top ten books on cooking in a particular year, maybe an individual publisher can only acquire one or two of those titles at best.
Now, let’s say you have a great proposal for a cooking book and the publisher really likes it, but they have already acquired their target number of titles for the next year. They might have a “slot” open two years in the future. Even though you have a ready manuscript, the publisher still has a limit on the number of books they want to acquire for a particular category in a year.
Opportunities can be jumped on, but mostly publishers try to publish within a general plan and a key element of that plan is a finite number of titles.
Our hypothetical publisher doesn’t publish the best 100 books they can during the year. They publish the best 100 books that fit the company personality in a mix of the categories they are good at publishing.
So what?
It is simply another factor for an author (and agent) to consider in book publishing. A publisher might really like your book, and they need something like that to fill a slot two or three years from now. But they often don’t want to contract books that far out, in case something better comes along. Honestly, in the next year, they might find something they like better.
Some categories of products are very limited. Many publishers of Christian books will do only one or two devotional products in a year. Maybe one or two memoirs. Bible studies? Maybe one every other year.
While attending a recent meeting of writers, a humorous group discussion began using a social “dating” metaphor (in its worst form) to explain how publishing really works.
“Let’s be friends until I find someone better to date.”
“I don’t want to make any long-term commitments.”
“We should be seeing different people.”
“This just isn’t working for me.”
“It’s not you, it’s me,”
Believe it or not, there is a lot of truth to these statements explaining why a proposal is declined. (No wonder it has been suggested to kiss dating goodbye.)Anyway that’s generally how it works.
There is a fine line between being discouraging and being a realist. Knowing how things work in the real world should lower your blood pressure. I am sorry if that wasn’t the case today.
It was me, not you. No, really.
Memorial Day Thoughts
While the argument behind not “confusing readers” with different types of writing seems to make some sense with regards to branding and marketing, on an artistic level it seems to be an artificially-imposed barrier. Publishers and agents most certainly have a vested interest in guiding a writer in ways that accentuate an individual author’s strong suit or the needs of a particular house or agency. However, most indie authors exist outside of those constraints for a variety of reasons (quality, patience, drive, etc.). So to repeatedly hear that an independent author (or any author for that matter) should concentrate only on one type of writing continues to baffle me. Years from now, I want to look back and say “Yeah, I told all the stories I wanted to tell”, not “Gee, I am happy I button-holed some tales into a category so as to not confuse anyone…”
Dan, I love when you open my eyes to a new-to-me aspect of publishing. Seeing the numbers and categories of books your example publisher might accept in a year helps me to better understand why there are so many no’s. And why it’s uber-important for writers to put our very best work out there.
When I spoke with an editor at ACFW last fall, I learned that that publisher doesn’t take books with certain types of characters . . . because their readers don’t like them. I hadn’t considered that before, but it made lots of sense. They want to publish books their readers will like. My book wasn’t a good fit for that publisher, but it might work somewhere else. Anyway, just chiming in with my tiny bit of personal experience.
One of the best dividends in following this site is the information that is carefully explained balancing realism in the publishing world.
Understanding the practicalities frequently has drowned out the voice of discouragement. Thanks very much for the writing and guiding that you all contribute.
I understand all of that. Its marketing 101 and it aligns to a publisher’s indents. The problem is it becomes self-unfulfilling unless it uses some form of marketing algorithm to determine what makes the cut, else it risks just filling pigeon holes with more of the same and safer bets. That said the overlay is the publishing agent who should be able to find more slots across the market than any one publisher can fill and the agent should already enjoy some priority in the queue due to the value of the relationship. So the odds of a slot are in the agent, the completeness of a manuscript, the usp of each book and the demands of the market. I suspect that odds can be tilted and that this is not a simple fait accompli.
You are correct in your assumption about the role of agents.
But no matter how structured or scientific a publisher might be, there is substantial subjectivity to this entire process. One editor will decline something and the editor in the office next to them loves it. Publishers have strategies but then editors use their intuition to acquire within that strategy and intuition is not perfect or 100% predictable. Publishers are people, not computers.
When an agent sees a proposal we need to be able to think of specific publishers and editors who would like it. If we cannot, we decline to represent.
Dan, I fully accept the subjectivity of agents – that is a given. I have clients with whom I will never connect. One of them, a psychologist, echoed the same about her clients. That’s life. As a Christian mixes in church circles to find a Christian partner (to Steve’s analogy), so writers and agents would tend to find each other. It implies brand association. But that assumes pro-activity rather than fatalism. It does not resign us to what will be will be, but it drives us to tilt the odds our way – and it works, has worked for eons. What writers here need is not more reasons why they will never make it, no matter how well meant. They need ways to give themselves a fighting chance. Besides, our words are precious, often reflecting a deep, personal odyssey with God – why would I bare my soul and entrust so much to someone who cannot share my heart. As a Godly steward it behooves me to seek out agents with which I resonate and with whom I can co-craft a noble work.
I feel like every client with whom I work was part of a serendipitous series of events. For some I read their proposal at 11pm when I couldn’t fall asleep and in hindsight I know now why sleep evaded me that night.
It’s a complicated process involving a lot of moving parts which should drive every party involved to their knees asking for wisdom…which I have to think is precisely where God wants us.
I can relate to that … it really is exciting when I find people that I just connect with or with clients that I wish I had met earlier. Its the stuff of marriage and the first step towards a long term relationship. I guess it confirms one point – if you don’t resonate or click with your agent, accept that as life and keep looking – life is more art than science, more felt than taught. Thanks for the insights by the way.
Amen!
Dan, Excellent explanation of a phenomenon many of us know little or nothing about. Actually, I’ve faced this a couple of times, and have been forced to wait a year or so between published titles. Thanks for sharing the information.
Thanks for the view into the operating principles of a publishing house. It raised some logistical questions for me. First, is there a standard “fiscal year” when the publishing houses are making these decisions? If so, when is it and does the timing of a submission relative to their fiscal year make a measurable difference on acceptance rates? Second, do most agents operate on the same slot principle or on some variation of it? If not, what are the guiding principles? Is there an optimum time of year for submission to an agent?
As a new writer of fiction, I find your nuts-and-bolts postings extremely useful. Thanks for opening the curtains on the windows. It’s much easier to aim at a target we can see, especially when that target keeps moving.
Good questions.
Most publishers work in “seasons” from 2-4 depending on the publisher. Seasons are comprised of books releasing during a certain time-frame. Driven by sales and marketing, they want to craft each season to include a mix of products. There are no better times for proposals, unless they are seasonal.
A Christmas themed book would release in the Fall, would be presented to sales/marketing in a early Spring sales meeting and acquired the Summer a year before. A Christmas themed book pitched in the Fall would be for two years later.
The real reason for this? Book sellers want to have a handle on all Christmas products well in advance so they can plan their marketing.
As a rule of thumb, think about 15-18 months from the time of a proposal or contract and the release of a book.
Fiction releases every month, but the 15-18 month process still applies.
Long and short of all this…unless a book is very seasonal in nature, there is no good or bad time of year for a proposal.
Truth can be so annoying, mainly because it IS the truth and won’t be ignored, exceptioned or twiddled with in any way. What you wrote is essential to know, and thank you sir I’d like another.
“You’re just not what I’m looking for at this time. Don’t take it personal.”
Blood pressure lowered. Check.
This post is another example of why I respect this agency. You share the truth of this roller coaster of an industry, which is so needed! There have been many posts in the past that have made me step back, look at the process, pray intently about my path, and wait to hear on the Lord on the next step. Do I feel called to jump on the ride? Do I have a passion to? There are many bumps, loops, and tunnels in the dark. So much unknown of what’s ahead!
What is refreshing about this post is that we shouldn’t stop writing. Sure, timing plays a role in when and what books gets published, subjectivity is still the main component, but let’s keep writing the God given stories placed on our hearts. Smiling, I hold that perspective closer today 🙂
Thanx Dan, the lights are on and the wheels are turning, slow but their turning. My eyes are open. The mystery is solved. The passing of your knowledge this morning, has relieved some of the rejection sting.
Since I found the Steve Laube Agency site my “get-up-and-go” has gotten more “get-up”. I answer my alarm with break-my-neck-speed. I get the flock fed faster than pond water. I look at the laundry pile before noon (and groan).
Then I smile cz I can hide out in the chicken house and read the blog.
P.S. Please don’t let my secret out. So far I’m good, they haven’t noticed we have no chickens.
Loved this information. No, wait – I didn’t. I loved the presentation of this good-to-know-but-still-frustrating information. It doesn’t sound any more encouraging than it did the other times I’ve heard/read it, but the presentation. Oh, yes. A spoon full of sugar, they say. Laughter always makes things go down better.
That conversation on dating just got better and better the further it was stretched! And yet it fits so well. That’s actually all I can remember from that panel–that plus that someone couldn’t remember if you were Dan or Don. 😉
Hope to run into you at WTP next week!
So Dan (to use an NFL analogy), it’s like the Packers drafting a slightly-better-than-average TE (because they really don’t have a decent TE) and passing on that future All-Pro LB prospect (because they already have Clay Matthews). Need (or perceived need) vs. best player available.
Yes or no?
He’s got it, by George he’s got it.
But some teams trade away their all-pro TE when he his too expensive and acts like a goof-ball.
🙂
Appreciate this insight into the process, Dan. Thanks for sharing!
There is a fine line between being discouraging and being a realist. – See more at: https://stevelaube2.wpengine.com/the-great-slot-mystery/#comments
That’s not what I typed, and I did not select the option to post it. Apparently my PC has a mind of its own! Since I’m here, I’ll say that the walking the line between discouragement and reality analogy resonated with me. I often say I walk the line between being flexible and being wishy-washy. Some of the greatest and best challenges in the Christian “walk” are making sure we walk on the right side of the right lines.