What Happens at a Publishing Acquisition Meeting? A Behind-the-Scenes Look

If you are planning on publishing your very first book and you do not have any idea of what the process looks like when your book is getting published, then this blog is going to help you with a very important aspect of publishing.

The publishing process is not as simple as walking in and getting your book selected because there is a very important step in the process of publishing your book by the name of acquisition.

This is a very special kind of meeting that takes place in traditional publishing, which ultimately determines if your book is going to get published with this particular publisher.

The acquisition meeting is so important that nearly every important person of the publishing house gets involved in the meeting in order to decide the fate of your book.

So what happens at this very special meeting that no author or publisher talks about?

Today, we are going to find out what happens at a publishing acquisition meeting as we have a behind-the-scenes look at a publishing house.

In order to do so, we are going to need to understand what a publishing acquisition meeting is, so let us start with that.

What Is a Publishing Acquisition Meeting?

A publishing acquisition meeting or an acquisition meeting, is basically the meeting that determines whether the publishing house is going to publish your book.

This meeting usually consists of many publishing professionals from the publishing house from various departments.

An acquisition meeting is a very formal process where a project in the form of a manuscript is scrutinised from various angles and looked at through different lenses of the publishing house in the form of the editorial lens and the financial and marketing lens, etc.

This kind of meeting usually determines if it is worthwhile for a publishing house to acquire a particular manuscript and whether there is financial incentive to do that.

These kinds of meetings can take place on a regular basis if there is a lot of demand, but this usually happens once or twice a week, with some happening twice or thrice a month if submissions are low.

These people are usually involved in an acquisition meeting:

Acquiring Editor

This is the primary person responsible for championing the manuscript to the other members of the meeting.

Publisher or Editorial Director

This is the final decision maker when it comes to listening to what the editor has to say and discussing everything with the other teams in order to determine the acquisition.

Marketing Team

The marketing team is involved in the meeting as they get to evaluate how the book can be marketed and what kind of marketing channels are going to be utilised and even if it’s marketable and how much.

Sales Team

Similarly, the sales team is involved in the meeting in order to determine the sales potential of the book and which kind of platforms will be willing to sell the book and what the selling strategy will be.

Publicity Team

The publicity team will evaluate publicity techniques for the author and determine if the author is promotable and they will also look at the promotion potential of the book through different media.

Finance Team (in an advisory capacity)

The finance team forms a very important aspect of the meeting as they will lay down the profit and loss projections of the book and make predictions regarding that.

Rights/Foreign Sales Team (if exists)

The rights team will verify and evaluate the rights of the book and determine its processing nationally and internationally.

What Gets Discussed in a Publishing Acquisition Meeting?

The Pitch by the Editor

The meeting starts with the pitch by the editor and this is the editor responsible for selecting the manuscript from a list of other submissions and presenting it to everyone else in the meeting.

The acquisition editor talks about the synopsis of the book and even talks about the author and details regarding them.

He has to do a lot of research for the meeting and also has to present data for comparable titles through market research and present his case on why this book fits with the publisher’s preference.

The acquisition editor also talks about their vision regarding the positioning of the book and marketing of the book, and ultimately the selling potential of the book.

The P&L Statement

Finance is a very big part of the meeting and profit and loss statements are estimated, which include every financial element, such as advance and royalty costs, as well as production and printing expenses and other expenses such as storage and transportation.

Expected sales volumes are discussed, and all revenue streams are discussed, which include domestic sales and foreign sales and even digital sales.

If the sales numbers look promising, then the discussion moves on to marketing and sales feedback. However, if the numbers do not look nice or acceptable to the publishing house, then the book is rejected.

Marketing & Sales Feedback

The meeting then moves on to marketing and sales, where the marketing and sales teams talk about the target audience of the book and the marketability of the book, along with the retail potential of the book.

The development of the author platform is also discussed and the book market is discussed along with the assessment of comparable title performance, which gives a very good indication of the predicted performance of the book.

This is also when the publicity potential is discussed and how the author can be utilised to publicise the book and the potential for media interviews and much more.

Optics remain a very important topic in these meetings in order to vet the topic of the book and find out if it is controversial or not.

Foreign Rights & Subrights Potential

After all of that is discussed, we finally get to foreign rights and this is usually the case with larger publishing houses that have a presence in multiple countries.

Along with that, a publishing acquisition meeting will also see that discussion of subrights potential in the form of prospects for selling translation rights and also film and TV potential of the book and much more.

If merchandise is to be developed and rights sold, then that is also discussed.

A publishing acquisition meeting is one of the most important stages of publishing when it comes to traditional publishers and this can be a very complicated process where the author simply has no say in the meeting.

This can also be quite a difficult process because there is no opportunity for negotiation or any opportunity for the author to place their own perspectives on their table at that meeting.

If you are someone planning on publishing your own book and you do not really want to go through this complicated process of acquisition meetings without any control and you simply want to sit down with the publishing house and discuss everything up front, then we are here for you.

We are Orange Publishers and we are a legacy publishing company and we are one of the fastest-growing publishing houses in the country.

We are the only publishing house in the industry to offer the convenience of self-publishing with the reliability of traditional publishing all under a single name. That is why there are no closed-door acquisition meetings with us and the author can discuss everything directly and as openly as possible.

We welcome you to visit our website and check out everything we do and we would love to publish your books.