A Publisher's Conversation with Authors: Publishers' Criteria for Book Acquisition

 

It is Tuesday. Time to tall turkey. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side.

Today's topic attempts to answer questions that authors often wish they could ask about how they can get their books accepted by a published. While publishers differ in their needs for topics, specialist authors, and markets addressed, they pretty much all have the same criteria for book acquisition.

Here are the major criteria that you can expect an acquisitions editor to consider in determining whether or not to take on your book:

Is there a market for this kind of book? 

• This is one of the important questions on the proposal, and often, authors kill their chances for book acceptancy by overstatement, saying that there is a huge market, based on demographics. For example, a book about men should sell copies to about half the world, right? Those kinds of hyperbolized, silly market “analyses” will usually turn a publisher away from a book. It shows that either the author does not understand how nooks sell (and therefore will not be an effective marketing partner), is out of touch with potential readers, and/or has done inadequate market research.
• Do the research: 
• Google the topic of your book.
• Check Amazon for competing books--and identify any content gap that your book fills.
• If you have an academic book, check with professional organizations as to what competition exists as well as what need exists.

Is there a market for your book? If it is clear that there is a market in general for the topic, the question becomes which book of two on the same topic will be purchased, yours or the other guy’s. For yours to be top gun,

• the content must be unique because of the author’s special expertise;
• the writing must be high quality (get it edited if you are not a professor of English);
• the tone must be attractive (humble and engaging, not ego-pumping and preachy); and
• something more than simple knowledge must be provided to the reader; the “plus” could be
•  insights from personal experience, 
• compelling and spellbinding stories or allegories, or 
• ways for readers to personalize the information, e.g. 
• exercises,
• graphics that can be printed out and posted on refrigerators
• calendar reminders, 
• recommended activities, 
• “tests” for personal assessment, personalization of the information, and.or recall the content, and so on and so forth.

Does the book fill a gap? 

• This is generally a critical question for an academic publisher and for professors who write books; they need to contribute to the knowledge base of the field in ways not done before. 
• For the lay market, the situation is a bit different, but there must always be a dearth of competition offering the same or similar information).

Will readers pay for your book? 

• If there are free sources of the same or nearly the same information, then readers will go for the freebies, not what costs them money. 
• If there is a gap in the information out there that your book is filling, it becomes important to do some additional checking/research and determine what in your book is not available elsewhere -- and point that out to the potential publisher.
• When a publisher asks you to describe the market for your book, this is what the publisher is referring to. What the publisher expects you to say are such things as:
• In recent Amazon searches, this topic came up 1500 times, but only two books were identified as available on the topic and neither fully responded to the readers' queries. (interest in the topic).
• I have been writing on this topic on my blog for two years now, have 15,000 followers, and about 1/3 of them have commented on posts on this topic. At least 600 have queried me about when and where my book will be published.
• A Google keyword search produced only only two pages on the topic -- all articles, no books. (deatrth of books)

The bottom line is that you will have a better chance of selling your book proposal to a publisher if you can show its marketability by answering the above questions in very concrete, specific, and provable ways. 

Lesson for today's Tuesday talk: Do the research on marketability before submitting your proposal to a publisher. Avoid easy assumptions, such as there are 2500 members of an association dedicated to your topic so you could sell 2000 or more books to them. (Actually, conservatively speaking, you could probably sell 25 books to this group.)  If you can identify a specific, narrow niche for which reader searches indicate a deep interest, then you will more likely get a publisher's attention, but to be able to pass along that information, you have to do the research first. Swaggers come across as swaggers, hyperbole comes across as hyperbole, and assumptions come across as assumptions. Good research comes across as a serious author that a publisher can rely upon to be a good marketing partner. 

 Read more posts about publishing HERE.

 (Book available from MSI Press LLC; discount of 25% with coupon code FF25;   currently on sale for $5, but that offer will not last long).

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