from the editor

I am having serious technical difficulties this morning!  two posts have disappeared, when all I want to do is say how much I love EC and her stories and how happy I am to see her discussed here.  I buy very few books every year -- last year, just 2 novels from people I hadn't already published -- so I can always remember what we call in my office that "golden ticket" thrill of opening a box and reading a paragraph and knowing this could be the real thing.  That was the feeling I had when I read the first story in WHEN THE MESSENGER IS HOT, and I had it all over again when I read "Ad," the first story in ALL THIS HEAVENLY GLORY.  Both are technical triple-flips, astonishingly daring and seemingly impossible but carried off with such grace and agility and, above all, pure entertaining wit that, as a reader, you never feel you're being tricked or subjected to a performance.  Elizabeth  is most interested in people, and in seeing how and why we all manage to get through life, and she's also got an incredible sense of humor even in the saddest situations.  I try to read "Football" as often as I can for its beautiful, heartbreaking sadness balanced with an indomitable optimism, and I think overall those are the qualities that draw me to EC's writing again and again.  I'm sorry this is brief and possibly incoherent -- Draft 1 was much better, I swear!

Feel free to ask me something!

Comments

[Dan Wickett]

Reagan,

I apologize if I asked you something extremely similar when you last appeared on this site, but how do things work at Little, Brown in terms of acquiring books for publishing? Do you, as editor, make the initial foray into the fray, and get backed up by some higher management? Or, is the decision yours to make? Etc.

The paperback version of The Messenger is Hot has a discussion with Elizabeth in the back and makes the statement that you outbid another major publisher to get ahold of Elizabeth's writing.

[Reagan Arthur]

Usually the acquisition process works a little like this: editors get manuscripts or proposals from agents. We read them, and if we like them we bring them to an editorial meeting for discussion. If enough reads are positive, we bring the project to an acquisitions board. This is a more formal process: we circulate the material to a range of people in-house, including the CEO, President, Publisher, and heads of sales, marketing, and publicity. Then the discussion begins with the general reactions to the book itself before we turn to the question of numbers: how many copies we can sell and therefore how much money we think we can pay the author for an advance. We base the sales estimate on our experience with similar books, the author's track record, known sales of similar books at other houses, etc.

Sometimes, if things are moving quickly -- someone else has bid, usually -- a book might not get so much early scrutiny from so many people. The process always begins with an editor's interest (or, ideally, excitement) but, at least at Little, Brown, that's just the first step.

[Dan Wickett]

Thanks!

Do you find that you edit each of your writers in a similar fashion? Or is your style determined by the writer?

Are you big on things like specific word selection, or do the rhythm and ideas behind a story jump out first when you read with red pen in hand?

[Reagan Arthur]

Editing varies from author to author -- some don't need or want a lot of line-editing, others welcome it (but don't often need it). I take my cues from them, and most, or I'd say all, are such excellent writers that I don't need to worry about things like word selection, though certainly sometimes I'll circle things that feel off to me and suggest alternatives.

[TEV]

Reagan, Typepad is reporting system-wide problems today, so it's not you, it's just bad luck. So sorry about this, please bear with us.

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