As an aspiring author, what happens inside publishing houses once a book lands on an editor’s desk can feel frustratingly opaque. What makes an editor keep reading? What makes them stop? While every editor has their specific taste and approach, there are certain things most people who acquire books for a living stop to think about. In this article, I’ll do my best to share some of the secrets of the trade.
Firstly, who am I and what do I know about anything?
I’ve been editing fiction books for almost twenty years and spent over a decade working in trade fiction publishing within Hachette, one of the world’s biggest publishers. I both acquired authors myself and then stepped up to Publisher, managing a team of editors and overseeing their acquisitions. During that time, I have read and acquired uncountable manuscripts, and along the way was lucky enough to work with some absolute superstars such as Julia Quinn (author of Bridgerton); New York Times bestsellers Abby Jimenez, Christina Lauren and Jennifer Weiner; and MW Craven (Sunday Times bestselling author of the Washington Poe series)—as well as overseeing acquisitions of Rebecca Yarros’s all-conquering Fourth Wing and the multi-million bestselling Ana Huang. In my role with KAA, I now edit an enormous range of fiction and memoir, working with clients and authors all over the world.
Over the years, I have developed an internal checklist I lean on to identify a saleable book. So, without further ado, here are the top 8 things I believe a fiction editor looks for in a book…
1. Every Book Needs a Strong Pitch
First and foremost: the hook. What is the central question or situation of your novel? An editor liking your book is great, but to put together an offer, that editor will need to convince the other teams—sales, marketing, and publicity—that it’s a good buy. A great pitch is a gift, as it makes it much easier to bring everyone else on board—and in turn, is likely to help with sales. It’s therefore particularly important if you’re a first-time author; the pitch is vital to convincing readers to try something new. A recent debut novel with a truly standout pitch is Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear, where a ‘tradwife’ influencer wakes up one morning and discovers she may have been transported back in time to the real pioneering days she emulates online. A good agent will refine your pitch; however, they will also be more likely to take on novels that have an immediately intriguing premise. To help think about your hook, imagine you are only allowed three words to describe your novel—what would they be and why?
2. Books Have to Be a Fit for the Imprint
This is where a good agent or good research is particularly vital. Your novel may be the most beautiful thing ever committed to a laptop, but if it’s a thriller and you’ve sent it to an editor specialising in science fiction, you are unlikely to get much further with them! This doesn’t mean that an excellent novel won’t be recognised: I remember receiving Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss on submission, reading it overnight and sobbing my heart out, before sadly ringing our MD and saying I thought we needed to pass this book—a clear winner—onto an imprint it better suited, who ultimately bid for it. If you’re searching for an agent or planning to submit without one, a great tip from NYT bestselling author (and all-round superstar) Amanda Eyre Ward is to look in the back of books you admire to work out who they thank—hopefully it will help guide you to the best people to approach with your manuscript.
3. A Book Needs Characters Readers Actually Care About
Character is absolutely key. It simply doesn’t matter how exciting a plot might be if we don’t care about the impact of the events on the characters. I don’t think your characters have to necessarily be likeable (though honestly, for most commercial fiction it’s usually easier if they are), but they do need to be relatable. We need to understand and be able to sympathise with what drives them, even if ultimately they do evil things. Something I often suggest to authors is that before they even begin writing, they spend some time interviewing their characters: what do they want on the outside? What do they want on the inside? What are they frightened of? Do they learn anything in the story? How do they change? What do they truly need? The answers to those questions can often help you in developing your plot points, as well as bringing your character more to life on the page. For an example of a book that does this exceptionally well, I’d recommend Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall—the portrayal of Thomas Cromwell is a masterclass in characterisation, and it led to millions of readers who might not have normally been attracted to a fairly weighty historical tome becoming thoroughly addicted!
4. A Clear Target Audience Helps Books Demonstrate Potential
As an editor, this is always something you have to keep in mind: what is the route to market? Simply put: who is this book for, and how can we reach them? If I don’t know the answer to that, it will be much harder for me to do the best job of getting it into readers’ hands, and I’m not the right editor for the novel. You can help us out with this by reading around the area you’re writing in. For example, if you’ve written an epic historical novel with a love story, find books that deliver a similar promise and read around that genre—this is one of the surest ways to help your novel improve, and to become more publishable.
5. Books Need to Open with a Grabby Beginning
No matter the genre, it is impossible to overestimate the importance of those first three chapters. There is a reason most agents only ask for the first few chapters of every project—they know editors are time-poor, and if they’re not immediately hooked, they’re likely to move on. There’s a solid commercial reason for this too: in an age where books must compete with everything from Netflix to YouTube, the vast majority of readers simply won’t keep reading if they aren’t hooked from the opening chapter. A good way to see the truth of this is to try downloading some of the free opening samples from Amazon—you’ll be able to tell instantly which ones readers would be likely to go on to buy. Be ruthless about those opening chapters. Generally speaking, it’s better to get straight into the action and to start showing us who your characters are from the very beginning. I’d suggest avoiding long passages of introspection, memory, or scene setting (aiming instead for immersive and intriguing from the get-go).
6. Humour Makes Books More Attractive to Acquire
This is one that might not drive every editor as strongly as it does me, but I am always drawn in by a sense of humour. I don’t mean forced jokes, but a bit of snark, a distinct point of view, an awareness of the bathos that can lurk beneath the darkest moments, characters with snappy dialogue… however it best suits the book, a bit of humour is a selling point. There’s sometimes a belief that somehow having humour in the book makes your novel less literary, less serious, whereas I think the opposite is true: humour is a core part of what makes us human, of how we deal with the world around us, no matter how difficult our experience might be. Characters or a narrator who lack a sense of humour are harder to connect with. They can come across as one-note, and as a result, the novel loses an essential tool for opening its world and tempting readers to engage.
7. Books Written by a Good Partner Stand Out
Perhaps a less well-known point is that an editor is always looking for an author who is both able to take feedback on their writing and is keen to help with the process according to their skillset. For example, if they’re big on social media, they can promote their books. If they have good contacts, they will use them. If they don’t have any of those things (which is absolutely fine), they should be keen to learn and attend the small signings and events that are crucial when building an author from the ground up. If you have examples of working successfully to make changes to the manuscript—or/and if you have contacts, experience, or any particular skills—make sure to mention them!
8. A Unique Voice Can Make Books Irresistible
Voice is hard to quantify but can trump every other consideration above. Voice is how some stories can feel fresh and familiar all at once—it’s the sense that what you are reading can only have been written by one particular person, no matter how familiar the plot points. It’s also the key to writing something completely new (or, given how cyclical publishing is, something that hasn’t been seen for at least twenty years but that editors still leap to buy!).
An example of a book that felt fresh in a familiar format is a book I bought many years ago, a gorgeous romance called The Hating Game, by a debut author named Sally Thorne. The moment I read it, I knew it was something absolutely special. It delivered an enemies-to-lovers romance: so far, so familiar. But the dialogue! The wonderful, proper-gut-achingly laugh-out-loud weirdness of the games they played!! The chemistry!!! I wasn’t surprised when it went on to become a bestseller, nor when they made it into a film, as Sally’s voice was (and remains) one of the funniest, quirkiest, and most joyful around. As for a book that felt new, and garnered word-of-mouth success (publisher speak for a small initial print run that grew as people slowly realised how wonderful the book was), Virginia Evans’s recently published The Correspondent is a book by a debut author without an immediately obvious hook, but one that has such a uniquely readable, elegant, and charming voice that readers everywhere have been enchanted.
Finding your voice is key to the writing process, and the only way to get there is to keep on writing. Some of the best advice I’ve ever read is in Sue Monk Kidd’s beautiful Writing, Creativity and Soul, where she quotes Maya Angelou about the only three things you need in order to write: ‘something to say, the ability to say it, and the courage to say it at all.’ Or in the reported words of the unequalled Nora Roberts at a writers’ conference: ‘Writers write, honey.’ Although writing itself is hard and complex, there is one simple truth: the more you put pen to paper or finger to laptop, the better your writing will become.
Finding the Right Editor is a Journey
I hope the above helps to demystify what an editor might be looking for; however, I will admit that commissioning books will perhaps always be more of an art than a science. At the end of the day, if an editor doesn’t connect with your novel, they are the wrong editor for you. For me, beyond anything else, a great book is a feeling, a tingle in my stomach, something that says, ‘readers won’t be able to stop gobbling this up’. I’ve always thought of books in terms of food (which makes sense as they are two of my favourite things in the whole world). There is a sweet spot for fiction that feels like a perfectly composed plate: whether the best ice cream you’ve ever tasted (perhaps a particularly beautiful romance) or an exquisitely fresh oyster (a short, literary gem). It doesn’t matter what genre it is; it’s just whether or not it’s an excellent book within that genre.
It could even be a book that’s in a genre most people haven’t yet realised exists! Two submissions gave me that feeling in the past few years: Fourth Wing (which of course we managed to buy, and which, alongside Sarah J. Maas, arguably launched the ‘romantasy’ genre) and Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl (which we missed out on and which introduced millions of readers to LitRPG). These were very different books for very different audiences, but both had the same feeling to me of indefinable magic: they were deeply satisfying, yet I still wanted more.
Perhaps this is why I so enjoy working with a range of writers now; no longer having to acquire to fit a specific company need, I can instead turn all my attention to helping aspiring authors polish their unique novels into the most perfect version of themselves, giving each book the best possible chance to grab the attention it deserves.
Explore KAA’s Book Editing Services here.
Written by Anna Boatman, Executive Editor (UK Office) at KAA
Anna has worked as an Editor and Publisher in the UK for over seventeen years, publishing and acquiring bestselling fiction. Authors she has worked with include Julia Quinn (author of the Bridgerton books), Rebecca Yarros (Fourth Wing), Abby Jimenez, Ana Huang, JR Ward, Lauren Asher, Christina Lauren and MW Craven.
As Fiction Publisher of the Piatkus Fiction and Constable imprints at Little, Brown, Anna built a superbly talented team and presided over an extraordinary seven-year run of success, ranging from the explosion of Bridgerton fever, to the growth of bestselling crime authors MW Craven and Kate Ellis, the publication of a multitude of bestselling romance and women’s fiction authors including Sally Thorne, Abby Jimenez, Eleanor Ray, Christina Lauren, Suzanne Wright, Ana Huang, Elsie Silver, Lauren Asher and Chloe Walsh, and the acquisition of worldwide bestseller Fourth Wing. In 2024, Piatkus Fiction won the prestigious Imprint of the Year title at the UK publishing industry’s annual book trade awards, the Nibbies. Prior to her eleven years at Hachette, Anna was an editor at Harlequin Mills & Boon, where she published several bestselling authors including Tiffany Reisz and Fiona Harper.
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