The Catholic Writers Guild

This is my first month back blogging at the Catholic Writers Guild, and I’d like to open with a series on some of the things that happen behind the scenes in Catholic non-fiction publishing that first-time authors might not know about.

Today’s publishing industry reality-check: When you go to pitch your book idea to a publisher, you might end up being asked to write a completely different book.

When I first attended a CWG conference, I heard about opportunities to “pitch” but I had no idea what that even meant. Pitching is when you take a few minutes to talk with an acquisitions editor about the book you’d like to publish.

You’ll work with several different kinds of editors over the course of publishing your book. Acquisitions editors work for publishers, and they have one single, very specific job: To assess whether their publishing house might be interested in your book project.

The acquisitions editor is going to listen to you, probably ask a few questions to better understand what you have in mind for your book, and then come back with one of three answers: No, Maybe, or Surprise!

1. No. I’m very sorry but this book doesn’t sound like a good fit. Don’t take it personally, and don’t assume the publisher never wants to work with you in the future. It just means that right now their budget, their audience, or their schedule isn’t a good match for this particular book. If you’ve made a good effort to only pitch to publishers who sell the kind of book you are trying to write, then you should be leaving the pitch session on good terms.

2. Maybe. Acquisitions editors are not there to say yes at the end of your pitch session. That’s not their job. Their job is to say, “This sounds like a book that my publisher might want to publish. Let me take your idea to my supervisor.” There will usually be a committee who will vet your book proposal and make some difficult business decisions about whether this is something the publisher can take on at this time. Maybe is a great answer! As long as you’re professional and pleasant to work with, they will be interested in hearing from you in the future about other book ideas, even if they don’t end up publishing this particular book.

3. How about if you wrote a different book? This is the surprise that you might not have been expecting. Here are two examples of what that might mean.

With Classroom Management for Catechists, I pitched a booklet-length work to Our Sunday Visitor. I had researched their product line, I had talked to a fellow CWG member who had written for them, and this seemed like an excellent fit. My guess was close: I received a “maybe” that turned into a “no.” Next, I pitched that same work to Liguori Publications. They gave me a “maybe” that turned into, “Well, how about if you doubled the length by adding these important chapters?”

This was a fantastic surprise! I was excited to be able to write in more detail about my topic, so it was easy to agree to this change. There was no doubt in my mind that we’d be publishing a better book than what I had originally pitched.

In contrast, when I first began talking with longtime CWG member Sarah Reinhard, then an acquisitions editor at Our Sunday Visitor, about ideas for my second book, the back-and-forth wasn’t nearly as simple. Sarah and I had worked together on many writing projects over the years, so she was confident that I had some kind of book in me that OSV might want, but my first few pitches got the big fat no.

When I proposed the idea that eventually became The How-to Book of Evangelization, we stepped into maybe-territory. She liked the concept, but my proposed outline wasn’t quite there. I held on to the topic but rewrote the table of contents to explain the basics of evangelization and discipleship in a completely different way.

Now here’s the thing: I think OSV made the right call. I am very, very happy with how that book turned out. None of that, however, changes my conviction that my other book ideas were also valuable and much needed.

But ultimately it was up to me, the author, to make the call on what book I was going to publish. I had to decide if my other project ideas were important enough to me that I’d rather pitch to another publisher, or if I was open to writing a different book that this publisher wanted at this time.

This is a hard decision for an author to have to make. It’s exciting that your would-be publisher wants to work with you, but you might not be comfortable with letting go of your original book idea. Next month I’ll talk about some factors to consider in deciding whether to hold firm on your initial proposal or whether to follow your publisher’s lead into writing something different than what you’d planned.