Writer's Edge Reports: Policies and Principles

Once a book proposal passes our screening, it joins a queue of similar items for the next month's report. Each report contains between 20 and 50 book proposals, both fiction and nonfiction. The summaries are shaped to convey swiftly to the acquiring editors the content and potential of the book. Our policies have been consistent over 15 years:

Writers are sometimes surprised at how brief these descriptions turn out to be, especially if they have provided many paragraphs of promotional description and "sell copy," as they might in a query letter. But as we have said in our "frequently asked questions" on our web site,

. . . publishers initially sift all book proposals on a few, very few, criteria: the "category" or niche of the book, the credentials of the author, the competing titles in the marketplace, and the uniqueness and timeliness of the book. The monthly Writer's Edge reports provide this initial information in a few hundred words. The quality of your writing will not come through; for that the publisher will have to get a copy of your manuscript. But no publisher, to our knowledge, publishes very many books simply on the basis of "quality writing."

This means the descriptions are the Writer's Edge communication, not the author's. We refer to writers in the third person and suggest writers describe themselves that way in the application. We purge your descriptions of what we regard as effusive language ("this spell-binding novel") and, most of all, excessive wordiness. A common failure of the descriptions, as submitted on the Book Information Form, is verbosity, repetitive language, and dubious pious claims ("God gave me this book and I just had to write it"). Occasionally we see a tip-off in the description ("this fictional novel") which will sink the proposal with alert editors who will dismiss the writer as an unthinking amateur..

In addition, we typically eliminate author characteristics that likely have no bearing on marketing of the book, such as how many years someone has been a Christian or how many grandchildren they may have. Editors are not influenced by prospect that an author will devote all the royalties to a charity. They might be drawn to an author who promises to move a significant quantity through his or her organization. If that is mentioned we will include it.

To catch misunderstandings and inaccuracies, our reports are sent to the writers before they are issued and mailed to publishers. This gives the writers a chance to correct and nuance the summaries in the days previous to publication (we use email for that, another reason to provide an up-to-date email address). See the Flow Chart on our web site for a graphic view of the process. Our confirmation email will flag descriptions of content or marketing that exceed our typical length; the writer will have a chance to edit down to our recommended size. This permits some uniformity in the proposals of any month's report.

Our goal is tight, concise summaries of your book, appealing, if possible, to the publishers' strategy. Of the 85 or 90 publishers we serve, many are delighted with the choices we present each month. A few are locked in to their own author pool, but they receive the reports nonetheless and the day will come when they venture out to find new talent and even a new category of publishing.

For more information, see our Opinions section on the web site.