Skills Across Publishing: Acquisitions
You don't necessarily need to be a great writer to work in book publishing—but if you want to work in acquisitions, you probably need to be comfortable with spreadsheets, contracts, negotiation, fighting for books you love, and saying no to books you love.
Acquisitions is the egg stage in a book’s life cycle; the starting point of a manuscript's journey as it metamorphoses into a published (and hopefully bestselling) novel. It is where publishing houses discover, evaluate, and buy the rights to publish a new book or manuscript. But what skills do people use in their day-to-day work in acquisitions? I interviewed one of our own, Taylor Gilreth, our mentorship committee co-chair and the Associate Acquisitions Editor at the University of Nebraska Press for Potomac & Bison Books.
She reveals a few skills that are essential for getting started in acquisitions. You can think of these skills as the starting line or egg stage in the life cycle of your acquisitions career. Let’s kick things off with some technical skills and software that Taylor often uses. Three technical skills that every fledgling in acquisitions should learn before or within their first year are computer/software skills, quantitative analysis (aka math), and editing. You will work on a lot of contracts, create profit and loss sheets, and learn how to read, evaluate, and edit incoming manuscripts.
Let’s Get Technical with Tools!
Hard Skill #1: Brush up on your Computer and Software skills, especially Adobe, Excel, and Content Management Systems.
Adobe: Most of the contracts that you will work on will be PDFs, so you will need to learn how to use Adobe to work on drafting, editing, and sending these contracts.
Microsoft Excel: Most of your quantitative analysis work will be done using Excel sheets to create profit and loss reports and more.
Content Management Systems: The CMS is your publisher’s entire database of their backlist, frontlist, rejected proposals, and pending proposals. Publishers have their own CMS that they use, but it is important to get familiar with your team’s system since it is, as Taylor said, “the brain” of your operation.
Familiarizing yourself with this software and learning as much as you can about these systems can help you feel more comfortable when you start your first job in acquisitions.
Hard Skill #2: Get Comfortable with Numbers and Market Analysis. It’s an Unexpected Part of the Job.
While math skills are not what one would typically associate with publishing, it is an integral part of acquisitions. You can love a manuscript, and it can even be a passion project for you, but at the end of the day, the publisher needs to know if it will make money and sell well, states Taylor. Your job in acquisitions is to find the sweet spot where an intriguing story meets a profitable book.
Quantitative Analysis: You will need to create Profit and Loss Sheets. P&L sheets are how you show the publisher what they will make on a book as well as what they will lose in production costs. You will learn how to use word count formulas to determine the cost of a book based on its word count, illustrations, and any charts/graphs, which will ultimately determine the price that publishers will sell the book for.
Market Analysis: You will have to be able to read current trends, analyze sales data, and identify what works in your target market or genre, especially when presenting why a book should be published.
Hard Skill #3: Learn the Basics of Editing!
Editing is a common skill in the publishing world, but using the Chicago Manual of Style may be a new experience for beginner publishing professionals.
Learn the Chicago Manual of Style: Most publishing houses, especially in certain types of trade, academic, and scholarly publishing, use the Chicago Manual of Style for formatting and editing manuscripts. Keep a copy of the Chicago Style manual as well as other style manuals on hand, just in case you need to reference it.
Editing Skills: You may need to provide some light structural editing or notes before moving forward with a book. Not always, but it is better to have and not need than to not know at all.
Those are just a few technical skills that learning in advance can make your first year in acquisitions a lot smoother. Now, let’s move on to some soft skills that are equally important to learn in this role. Three skills that you will need to learn as an acquisitions professional are mastering the art of negotiation and persuasive speaking, a willingness to advocate for books in genres that you usually don’t read, and the ability to work well alone and within a team.
Listen Up, People! We Are Discussing Our People/Soft Skills!
Soft Skill #1: Learn the Art of Negotiation, Presentation, and Direct yet Tactful Communication.
Communication & negotiation skills are unavoidable in acquisitions. Advocating for a project, negotiating contracts, and working directly with authors and their agents is a big part of this role. The one takeaway that I took from Taylor's description of this part of the role is that you need to stand your ground using a combination of confidence, a good grasp of what you are talking about, and a beginner-level understanding of the language of persuasion. Have all of the facts and be able to communicate them well.
The Art of Negotiation: In acquisitions, you will have to be able to argue and advocate for a project/manuscript. Be ready to argue for why this project is a good investment. You also need to be able to stand your ground about certain projects and when talking to authors and/or agents, especially during contract negotiations.
Confidence is Key! You will have to know how to present a potential manuscript well, and a lot of that comes from confidence and being able to explain your reasons for suggesting this project. When you want to acquire a new project, you have to present it to your department and colleagues with all of the information that they need in order to make a decision on whether or not to acquire that book. Gaining confidence takes some time and experience, but it is definitely an important skill in this department.
Communication Skills: Communication is one of the most important skills for this role. You will be communicating with authors, agents, your team, and other teams on a daily basis. This role requires that you deliver constructive feedback or even turn down manuscripts tactfully to avoid burning bridges. You will also have to communicate with authors about timelines and deadlines.
Soft Skill #2: Having a Good Mindset
People often say that having the proper mindset in any job is critical, but the mindset that Taylor and I discussed had more to do with being able to compartmentalize your passion for books with the business of working with books. That means that every book that you love won’t get published, and sometimes books written in genres that you don’t typically care for are the best books to advocate for. Once you learn how to balance the business of books with your passion for books, saying no to a book that you absolutely love might hurt less.
Staying Open-minded: Not every project has to be your personal passion project or a project that you absolutely love. If you think the book is good and can see it working for your publisher, then don’t be afraid to take it on. It’s great to be passionate about every book that you work on, but stay open-minded to books outside of your wheelhouse. It’s not always about whether you like a book, but whether this is a good book for your list, for your audience, and for your press. Loving it is a plus!
Be Balanced: There is a sort of weird balance that you have to do in acquisitions. The balance between being able to put aside your personal passions and being able to advocate for your personal passions. Publishers have a certain vision of the type of books that you want to publish, both from a financial perspective and a thematic point of view. If you are passionate about a book that doesn’t align with the publisher’s vision, then you will have to weigh the scale of whether it is close enough to fight for it or whether to let it go.
Soft Skill #3: Learn to Work Alone & Together within a Team
Acquisitions is twofold in the way that it starts pretty solitary and then becomes more involved with feedback and collaboration with other people in your press. Be prepared to work independently and be aware that teamwork is still a part of working in acquisitions.
Teamwork Makes the Dream Work: There is a lot of independent work in acquisitions when you are building your list of acquired books, but you are still part of a press that will carry the manuscript to its next stage through production, design, marketing, etc. Working well with others is a part of the job. Taylor described it as rowing the same boat towards the same goal. The initial stages can be more isolating as you work on acquiring the book, but as we stated earlier, acquisitions is just the beginning of a book’s life cycle. You won’t be alone for too long.
There you have it! These are a few hard and soft skills in acquisitions that you will have to learn in order to have your best chances of succeeding in this role. Acquisitions is more than just a love for books. It’s getting closer than comfortable with contracts and numbers, editing, communication, and knowing when to advocate for a book and when to let one go.
The skills needed for acquisitions may seem surprising at first, but that is part of what makes the role so interesting. You get to combine latent potential with business, independent work with collaboration, and your personal passion for books with the needs of your publisher and its readers. Whether knowing these skills has made you more excited or completely dissuaded from acquisitions, I hope this gave you a better understanding of the skill set needed to kickstart a book’s life cycle.
Pro-Tip: Try to shadow an acquisitions editor for a day.
Acquisitions has some unexpected responsibilities, so just reading about the role in a very entertaining and well-written blog post is not enough. Try to see the job in action. The best insight into any role is by seeing and doing it.
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Iyoniah Teague is the Blog Manager at Young Publishers Association. She also works as an Administrative Assistant in the non-profit industry. She loves to spend her time reading small-town romances with magic or suspense, making new recipes at home, and advocating for social justice.
Taylor Gilreath is an Associate Acquisitions Editor at the University of Nebraska Press for Potomac Books. She works primarily in trade nonfiction and assists with the Bison Books imprint as well. She is also the co-chair for YPA's mentorship committee and helps run the annual mentorship program.
