Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
From what I have heard from publisher they look for writers that they can develop to sell much more of there future books. So the publishing decision is most often not taken from what they thing the first book will sell.
I totally agree with you that you cannot criticize the publishers that did not publish the book.
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This is true. When one of my books was being looked at by a trad publisher, I was asked to submit an outline and/or the first three chapters of the next book by two different publishers. They tend to look at an entire package/scenario and when it is a new author without a sales history, they want to know a lot of things:
Does this person intend to write another in the series?
How far along is that plan?
Is the person reliable?
How long will it take the author to write book 2, 3?
Is the person easy to work with?
It isn't all about the prose. Because there are a lot of good books that get submitted. Most of them have been "vetted" by an agent so the publisher isn't expecting to get bottom of the pile stuff.
And even after that process of discussing books, and future books...there's a whole level of marketing that someone else talked about
: How many books does a given publisher have in that genre? Is it a genre we want to continue to pursue? Do we already have 3 on the table? Which of the 3 is best?
And so on.