Nobody knows anything, really

It is nice to be reminded from time to time that much of publishing is a series of educated guesses based on what little information we have and our instincts about what readers might want. While reading Publishers Lunch, I encountered a reminder. I noticed the other day that another editor and I probably traded authors. I don't mean traded like baseball cards, more like ships passing in the night. Essentially, it looks like we both were looking at the same two projects and we both passed on one project and bid for another--just not the same one and not from the author we'd already worked with. There's no easy way to verify this (don't know the other editor), but I'm pretty sure it's true.

This is actually a more pleasant version of another Publishers-Lunch-based reminder, the one where a manuscript you hated and dismissed as unpublishable sells for a fabulous sum at auction. Those keep me up nights, too.

These stories are especially useful to have on hand when people outside of publishing ask "So, how much time do you spend focus-grouping those kids' books?" It's not quite as funny as the Stephen Cobert-esque "focus-group-in-your-gut" answer.

I love it when a plan comes together

Sometimes half-baked Friday-afternoon ideas work out. The Fat Girl did.

In addition to acquiring books through the normal author/agent-manuscript channels, I'm always looking for reprint opportunities, particularly with books that have gone out of print but deserve an opportunity to be rediscovered by a new audience (this is a particular advantage of rapid audience turnover).

Last November, Horn Book editor Roger Sutton blogged about Chris Lynch's wonderful novel, Inexcusable, a book which affected me for days after I read it. In his blog about Lynch's novel, Sutton mentioned another, older book with a "fabulously unreliable narrator," The Fat Girl by Marilyn Sachs. I coveted more of these unreliable narrators for Flux (still do; there's a whole other blog entry someday about why I like unreliable YA) and was reading all I could, so naturally I tried to find Sachs' novel. I couldn't; it was out of print. My excitement increased. I found a used copy (twice the cover price for a massacred old paperback), read it, loved it, and decided we needed to publish it (and fortunately my superiors agreed).

To make a long story short, Ms. Sachs was easy to reach and eventually agreeable (in the course of negotiation, we had a wonderful conversation about Jane Austen, and she very graciously sent me a signed copy of her then-new book, First Impressions). And now, today, an early copy of the actual Flux edition of The Fat Girl landed on my desk. I'm obviously very excited, but perhaps not nearly as much as Flux publicist Brian, who may actually do a Green Brothers Happy Dance when he gets his copies.