What do publishers do all week?!

An insight into a working week - and why we might be slower getting back to you!

Hi everyone,

I hope you’re all doing well! Welcome to any new subscribers :)

Today I wanted to write about what a week looks like in the life of an editor, or more specifically my own role as a publisher running a fiction team. Part of this is to help those who might be thinking of their own publishing careers - next steps, or joining the industry - and partly it is to help authors and give you all a little more context into what goes on behind the scenes. I get a lot of comments from writers wondering why it can take a while for editors or publishers to get back to them, and this isn’t intended to be defensive at all - I aim to respond to all my authors within the day where possible, even if it is just to acknowledge receipt of their email - but it is intended to show you that a lack of speed doesn’t mean your book is bad or that you are not a priority - sometimes it is just that the demands on our time are quite intense. (I think most of you reading this know that I value communication very highly and I always want my authors to feel valued, so please don’t take anything other than that from this!)

So the easiest way to do this is to run you through a typical working week. Apologies in advance if this is boring - feel free to read one of my other posts instead! (I wrote about why it can take editors a while to get back to authors on submission here).

Obviously there are things that drop in and out of weeks for various reasons and you have to be flexible, but a typical working week for me looks a bit like this:

Monday: Fiction editorial meeting with my team, where we run through submissions anyone is excited about, discuss them, and I update the team on other key business from the company (from the board or similar - e.g. any wider changes that might be happening, anything I need them to do (training, forms, etc). We might also talk about new IP ideas here, and we might also talk about anything anyone needs advice on or is finding difficult. It’s a time where people can share anything interesting they have noticed online or noticed other publishers doing, too - observations are always welcomed. Someone might mention what’s doing well in the charts, or something great they have read, or seen / listened to - in publishing we are also competing against things like NetFlix and Spotify now as well - it’s all entertainment that can capture people’s attention (so our challenge is, how do we get them to read our books instead of doing something else?!) It is of course also a chance for us to be together as a team and chat!

After this we go straight into the Cover Art meeting, which is where designers show us visuals they have created, for our books, and where we brief new visuals as well. We all look at the covers together on a big screen, with sales and marketing too. We will suggest changes in an open forum, or approve a jacket if there’s no change needed.

In addition, next Monday I also have: a meeting before Editorial to discuss our ‘unpublished portfolio’ which means checking on contracts that are perhaps not where we need them to be - authors have not delivered, etc, so we may need to cancel them or have a closer look. That is with our finance team. Next Monday I also have a budget check in with our finance representative for fiction, to look at the latest monthly numbers and assess how we as a division are doing versus our overall budget. There’s also a US call at the end of the day to discuss a publication date move with the American editor, a marketing and PR meeting specifically for our new SFF list (Solstice! Very excited about it!), an HR meeting, and an interview for a role I am currently hiring for. I’m also hoping to meet an author for coffee, and take one of my commissioning editors out for lunch. To be clear - this is one day! There are also things I cannot go to due to timing clashes - in this case, a wider update from America, that I will have to ask someone to catch me up on later.

On Tuesday, I have a meeting to discuss our Special Editions process (we create special editions for specific retailers - they are BEAUTIFUL!), lunch with a colleague in the non-fiction team, our acquisitions meeting where our CFO and CEO sign off advance levels for any offers that need to be made that week, and my 121 with my boss. I also have 121s with several of my team - if you are a manager you usually have either weekly or fortnightly 121s with individuals, to check they are ok, see what they need, how their work is going, discuss anything relevant, etc. My relationships with my direct reports are really important to me, so I want them to have this time to discuss anything they need to. In the afternoon there is also our Sign Off meeting which is done before the books go to press - so this is when we look at the final print run numbers for the first print run of our upcoming titles, check they are what sales need quantity-wise, and check the margins for each book. Sometimes at this stage we have to make tricky decisions to drop finishes if a book isn’t making a good margin - for example foil or another special finish on the cover - but sometimes we do the reverse and add finishes if a print run is looking better than expected and we feel the cover needs it! Again, this is not any reflection on the quality of the author’s work, really - it’s a result of how retailers have responded, and how many we feel we can print accordingly without losing money. If we as a publisher lose money on a book (or books) then we will eventually end up in a position where we cannot continue publishing an author, so it makes sense to be sensible, whilst also keeping in mind that we want our books to look as good as possible and to be as appealing to readers as they can be. So this is just a reminder that publishing is a business, too, and that we do have to think about these sorts of things as we go.

On Wednesday, I have a breakfast meeting with an agent, followed by an HR meeting to discuss a confidential issue, then a sales meeting where we are going to look at our titles for Q2 next year - making sure we are all on the same page in terms of our expectations, and ensuring our sales team have everything they need from editorial, marketing, and publicity. This week we then have our Christmas party, which is starting with a lovely lunch, but usually on Wednesdays I would then have various meetings that can be a mix - last week a European editor was visiting, so we caught up about what we are both looking for, we had a meeting specifically about Waterstones key titles to make sure we know what extras we need to create for them, and we have a semi-regular meeting with one of the S&S US teams to talk about what they are seeing on submission, what we are seeing on submission, and to check if there is anything we might want to share.

Then onto Thursday! I have a monthly catch up with our audio team, more interviewing, and a discussion about our contractual template for certain projects. On Friday, we have our regular pre-acq meeting which is where we discuss projects that editors want to acquire, before they actually go for sign-off; so we have a robust, informed discussion about the book the editor is excited about, weigh up the pros and cons, get views from sales, marketing, and PR, and then after that we either decide to run a P&L to see if we can offer, or if the majority of people in the wider teams sadly haven’t connected with the book in the way we’d want them to, we might decide to pass on it. This coming Friday, I have more interviews - though of course these aren’t regular, and only go in if you are actively recruiting. I also have another 121 with a line report.

Other things that can go in and out of diaries are: author meetings, catch-ups with marketing and PR about specific books, board meetings (if you are on the board, obviously), chats with Rights about what is selling in translation or about a specific idea, agent meetings, pitch meetings (if you’re actively trying to buy a book or are in an auction situation), sales meetings about specific retailers or areas of the market (e.g. Non-Trade, Special Sales, Digital, etc). And more that I am probably forgetting!

We do have a lot of meetings in publishing, and in a hybrid world, it is so important that sometimes we just pop over to desks if we are in the office, to have quick chats (that don’t need longer meetings) and that we use Teams etc when we are at home to cover things quickly and stay connected. However, the way the business works means that often, the meetings are crucial and that is because it is a genuinely collaborative business, which is part of the reason I love it! It’s rare that you make a decision in isolation.

For editors, we have to try to carve our editing time, to read new manuscripts and feed back to our authors, and lots of publishers (including us) have ‘meeting free weeks’ every so often to try to allow for more creative time. In reality, there still end up being meetings, but slightly fewer! In terms of actually reading submissions, this is hard and I don’t quite know what the answer is. We often read outside hours and that is just part of the job. If something is moving really quickly, we can go to a room or a separate sofa and read in the office, but as you can see, for my role this would mean missing meetings (which you can of course do if it is the right thing for the business).

I love my job and the publishing industry so none of this is a moan, it’s just intended to be quite a practical run-down of the things I might do in a week. Obviously, depending on your level of seniority, you might have different demands on your time - our CEO runs the Australian and Indian sides of the business, too - and if you are more junior you also have other meetings, for example production meetings to check all books are on track, and more junior editors and project editors also spend huge amounts of time collating page proofs, checking through manuscripts, and updating metadata that feeds out to online retailers (in fact people at most levels do that). Then there are the emails to keep on top of, and the random ad-hoc things that shoot into your day occasionally with no warning!

I hope this is useful / semi-interesting to read, and if you are an author waiting to hear back on your book, remember that all of this is going on simultaneously, too. Is publishing under-resourced? Yes, often, but not always and not in every team. Do we have too many meetings? Maybe, but it’s also hard to see which ones you might cut, as most are very useful overall, if they are run in the right way (and that comes back to the collaborative point). Do we all love reading manuscripts? Yes, we do! Is time an issue? Yes, it can be, but we make it work. Is it a great industry to work in? Absolutely, I think so. Is the fact that we haven’t got back to you yet an indicator that your book is terrible and awful and you should never have written it? NO! Please see above! :)

Thanks for reading everyone, have happy weekends! As always, feel free to ask questions or write comments below.

Phoebe x

P.S. I wanted to draw attention today to a new editing service (not sponsored!) set up by Sam Eades and Fran Brown, for anyone who might find it useful. They have recently launched Book-Fix, a friendly online session for writers held on the first Friday of every month. Book a slot to give your WIP a 360-perspective with two knowledgeable editorial brains for the price of one. All you need is a synopsis and the first 2,500 words. Find out more here.