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Jordan Hamessley London

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Many authors and agents have written about their experiences with “the call.” That moment when the working relationship truly begins and the author and agent have their first chance to truly get to know each other and figure out if they would make a good team. These stories are always fun to read because there is excitement on both ends. The author starts to feel one step closer to publishing their work and the agent gets a chance to share their love and ideas for the project.

As an editor who receives the 99% of my submissions through agents, I rarely have the opportunity to make a call and say “I want to publish your book!” Nowadays, that call goes to the agent, who then calls the author to say “Jordan wants to publish you book!”

That said, there are times when an editor will speak with an author prior to making an offer or before a deal is closed. I break them down into two kinds of calls.

1. The Editorial Audition Call: If a book has interest from multiple editors, many times an agent will set up calls between the author and all of the interested editors for the author to have an opportunity to get to know the editor and hear any editorial comments they have on the submission. As a former actor, this is the one moment in my editorial career when I still feel like I’m in the audition room. I’m putting myself out there and basically saying “Pick me! I love your book and here’s why!” I give the author a sense of my editorial process and let them know what I love about the book and how I think we can work together to make it even stronger. If they’ve been published before we’ll talk about how they work (Do they like outlining or are they a pantser? Do they like to get an edit letter, have a talk, and then disappear into edits or do they like to check-in while revising?). I also take the opportunity to get to know them and their contacts. If the author is a librarian with tons of contacts or a previously published author who has had great success with certain indies/conferences that information is always handy to me as I go to my team to discuss the offer. In the end, this phone call gives the author a chance to hear from everyone interested so that they know as much as they can before choosing which editor’s offer they’d like to accept.
2. The Revise & Resubmit Call: This call is pretty self-explanatory. There are times when I read a submission and think it is great, but after discussing with my editorial team we feel it needs a good deal of work before we can commit. When that happens, I typically call the agent and give them a quick run down of my editorial thoughts and say “If author X is interested in revising, please let me know and I can get on the phone and detail my thoughts.” Depending on where the book is at in the submission process with other editors, sometimes the agent says “Sure, let’s set up a time to talk ASAP” or they wait until they’ve heard back from more editors. When I do actually get a chance to talk to the author, the content of the call is actually very similar to the Editorial Audition Call. I’m still very passionate about the project and believe in it or I would have just passed in the first place. Many times the R&R calls are with debut authors and this step gives me a chance to see how they respond to critique and how they revise. It also lets me get a sense of how we would work together on the book. After the call, I’m always excited to see how the author does with the revision.

These editorial calls don’t happen with every book I offer on, but they are a helpful part of the acquisitions process on both sides of the table.

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Jordan Hamessley London is an Editor at Egmont USA, where she edits middle grade and YA. Her current titles include Isla J. Bick’s new series, The Dark Passages (#1 White Space), Bree DeSpain’s new series Into the Dark (#1 The Shadow Prince), and more. Prior to Egmont, Jordan worked at Grosset and Dunlap, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers where she edited Adam-Troy Castro’s middle grade horror series Gustav Gloom, Ben H. Winters and Adam F. Watkin’s book of horror poetry Literally Disturbed, Michelle Schusterman’s I Heart Band series, Adam F. Watkins’s alphabet picture book R is for Robot and more. When not editing, Jordan can be found on twitter talking about books, scary movies, and musical theater.

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Jordan Hamessley London

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Earlier this month, my husband Matt London, experienced something as an author that I’ve experienced many times as an editor. He launched his middle grade debut novel, The 8th Continent. In my career I’ve witnessed many book launches and supported my authors through all that goes with the publishing process as their editor. With Matt and The 8th Continent, I finally experienced it as a family member.

Let’s rewind about a decade…

My husband and I both got our starts in the publishing world around the same time. In fact, if it weren’t for him, I might not even be an editor today. I had taken a semester off of college to do a national theatre tour and after I returned, I spent the majority of my time in his dorm room reading a book a day. One day, Matt said “You’re a freakishly fast reader. You really should find out how to be a reader for a publishing house or literary agent.” The next day, I applied for an internship at a lit agency, snagged the job, and started my long journey to becoming an editor.

Matt was always writing. Since college I’ve been his first reader on nearly everything he’s written. We dreamed of the day I would be an editor and he would be a published author and we’d be living in a big penthouse on Central Park West… The realities of publishing salaries and the life of a freelance author have made that last big a tad hard to fulfill, but as of this month, we have the first two boxes checked off.

As you can imagine, life in an apartment with one editor and one author can be tricky, so here’s how we have survived.

• No Crossing the Streams: It was always important to us that we each support each other while keeping up boundaries. When Matt’s book went on submission, there was never a moment when we considered sending it to me or my imprint. In fact, when he received his offer from Razorbill, I was still working at Penguin, and the editor had no idea we were married until he went in for a meeting. Of course, over the years we’ve both made contacts from interactions we’ve had at various parties and book launch parties, but I never sent an email to anyone saying “Hey, my man has a book you should read.” That said, at non-publishing events we often get a side-eye when people ask us what we do. “I’m a children’s book author.” “I’m a children’s book editor.” Quickly followed by an “Uh-huh…”
• Empathy: I have to say having lived with an author on submission, it does make me look at my long list of submissions with more empathy for the writers. They also have family members listening to them freak out over long submission times and why an agent or editor is tweeting about reading (or not reading) submissions. On the other hand, I’m able to say “Hey, editors are human and sometimes just want to spend some time playing video games (yes, we’re nerds) with their husband or watch some Scandal. Chill out.” We’ve both humanized the other side for each other.
• Knowing When to Step Aside: Once Matt got his book deal, I told him that I was going to stand back and leave the editing up to his editor. These days I typically read a first draft before he sends it just to assure him it’s not terrible. I don’t read the book again until it’s finished. I know how it can be as an editor knowing that an author has a bevy of beta-readers and family members reading each draft and how those voices can occasionally muddy the editorial process, so I just don’t insert myself. That said, whenever he starts a new project, I’m always very excited to read his new work.
• Perspective: After spending my entire publishing career living with me, Matt has had a leg up in what to expect as a debut author. He’s been to many events for my authors and has heard all of the behind-the-scenes information on every book I’ve edited, so he went into the publishing process understanding the reality of being a debut middle grade author and did always have me to fall back on if he had a question about part of the process.

So after nearly ten years of working toward our goal, Matt’s book came out this month and it has been amazing and crazy and I couldn’t be more proud of him. I know now firsthand how intense launch week is for an author and their family and want to send hugs to every author and family I’ve ever worked with.

Here’s to many more years of our crazy life in publishing.

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Jordan Hamessley London is an Editor at Egmont USA, where she edits middle grade and YA. Her current titles include Isla J. Bick’s new series, The Dark Passages (#1 White Space), Bree DeSpain’s new series Into the Dark (#1 The Shadow Prince), and more. Prior to Egmont, Jordan worked at Grosset and Dunlap, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers where she edited Adam-Troy Castro’s middle grade horror series Gustav Gloom, Ben H. Winters and Adam F. Watkin’s book of horror poetry Literally Disturbed, Michelle Schusterman’s I Heart Band series, Adam F. Watkins’s alphabet picture book R is for Robot and more. When not editing, Jordan can be found on twitter talking about books, scary movies, and musical theater.

Jordan Hamessley London

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If you are a regular reader of Pub Crawl, my guess is that you are very busy person. Our readers span from full time authors, to authors maintaining day jobs, publishing industry professionals, writers at the start of their career and more. No matter which group you fall under, one thing is clear. We all have a lot on our daily, weekly, monthly, and lifelong to-do lists.

I’m here today to remind all of our readers that every now and then you need to take a break and spend some time simply relaxing.

I recently took an eight day vacation with my husband to celebrate our anniversary. I was out of the office for an entire week and didn’t check my work e-mail until the 7th day. My phone was off the entire trip. It was pretty magical.

My subway ride to and from work every day is when I do the majority of my submission reading. Before I wrote this post on Monday night, I got home and edited for another hour before I let myself catch up on this season of Food Network Star. (I don’t even have the Food Network! Cooking shows are my ultimate chill-out reward.)

When I was on my vacation, I spent a lot of time at the beach, but I also had the chance to read some books outside of my specific area that I edit and acquire. I was finally able to read Daryl Gregory’s latest science fiction novel, AFTERPARTY. I don’t have any science fiction on my list at the moment, so this was a nice break from the YA and all of the wonderful horror I’ve been editing recently. I also read FROM SCRATCH: INSIDE THE FOOD NETWORK, a great non-fiction book about the formation of the Food Network. (Yes, the Food Network is an important aspect of my life.)

In addition to reading some awesome books, I finally started watching Band of Brothers. Now that I’m home, I’m not sure when I’ll finish it, but it was a nice addition to my vacation relaxation time, even if it could get intense at times. And like many people the second weekend of June, I started the second season of Orange is the New Black.

And to be honest, I caught up on a lot of sleep.

When I came back to work last week, I was refreshed and excited to get back to work on my list and had a renewed sense of energy. I know not everyone can take a week off of work, but I do believe that finding those quiet moments each week to have for yourself, not related to your work, is important to keeping your creative endeavors fresh. I have a regular Saturday morning routine that is all about giving me some time for myself. It involves watching a lot of Chopped. (I promise, I am not a paid Food Network shill. I just love competitive cooking shows.)

We all spend so much time devoted to our careers that it’s important to find time for ourselves, as well.

What are some of the ways you give yourself a break? 

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Jordan Hamessley London is an Editor at Egmont USA, where she edits middle grade and YA. Her current titles include Isla J. Bick’s new series, The Dark Passages (#1 White Space), Bree DeSpain’s new series Into the Dark (#1 The Shadow Prince), and more. Prior to Egmont, Jordan worked at Grosset and Dunlap, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers where she edited Adam-Troy Castro’s middle grade horror series Gustav Gloom, Ben H. Winters and Adam F. Watkin’s book of horror poetry Literally Disturbed, Michelle Schusterman’s I Heart Band series, Adam F. Watkins’s alphabet picture book R is for Robot and more. When not editing, Jordan can be found on twitter talking about books, scary movies, and musical theater.

Jordan Hamessley London

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Last month I talked about how editors approach the submission pile hoping that the next submission they read will make them fall in love. This month I’m going to discuss what happens next.
An editor falling in love with a submission is the first of many steps to making an offer on the project. Every publishing house handles acquisitions differently, but I’m going to describe the typical steps I go through to make an offer.
Get Others Reading

Once I’ve fallen in love with a book, I pass it along to other members of the editorial team to get their thoughts on the book. In most cases, we discuss the book at an editorial meeting and talk about what’s working, what’s not working, and where it fits on our list. Depending on how the discussion goes, I’ll get in touch with the agent to say that we’re passing or that I’m moving along to the acquisitions stage. One other option after this meeting is to have a call with the author to talk our editorial thoughts. The call with the author can come at multiple stages in the process.

Call with the author

One of my favorite parts of my job is having editorial discussions with my authors. I’m a huge fan of the phone. My pre-offer phone calls with authors allow me to get to know the author beyond their bio and twitter feed (yes, we twitter stalk you) and get a sense of their process. I’ll go over specific things I love about the submission and discuss parts that need work and how I see the two of us working together to make the book even stronger. Much like getting “the call” from an agent, an author should use these editorial phone calls to ask the editor any questions about the editor’s process and approach and get a sense of how the imprint works.

Comps

A good chunk of my time after I’ve decided to move forward with a project is spent looking for comp titles. Comp titles are books that are similar in tone/content to the submission. Sometimes an agent will list comps in their pitch and that makes this part a little easier. Other times, I’ll spend hours looking up books with similar themes and running sales numbers to see how my submission will stand up in the marketplace.

Acquisitions!

Acquisitions meetings vary from house to house. Sometimes the acquisitions meeting is truly a large meeting of various sales, marketing, publicity team members discussing the project while other times this step is simply a conversation between the editor and their publisher. This is the point where the book is discussed in the big picture of the list and the editor gets a good idea of the level of sales everyone thinks the book can reach.

The Nitty Gritty of the P&L

There are so many little things that go into creating the profit and loss statement that the editor creates to show how much money they can offer.

The physical cost of the book: In addition to including how many copies of the book we think we can sell, we have to know how much each copy will cost to produce. This involves coming up with a page count and getting pricing on various effects to the cover/jacket. If I’m working on a submission based on a proposal, I won’t have a word count to go off of, so this is a question I ask in those author calls. “What is your anticipated word count for the final book?” Depending on if the book is YA or middle grade, I’ll have to take font into account when coming up with page count.

Return rate: Every book gets returns. It’s a fact of life. Most imprints have a standard return rate for their books that they use in the P&Ls.

Marketing budget: Some P&Ls have a standard percentage set aside for the marketing budget, others account for specific marketing plans.

Advance and royalties: This is the fun part where editors see how much they can offer on the project and still make a profit.

Making the offer

Once I have a fully approved P&L, it is time to make the offer! I usually call the agent with the good news and then follow up with an email breaking out all of the specifics (advance, royalty rates, subrights, etc). Then it’s my turn to wait and find out if the author wants to go with me or not! If there are multiple offers, the agent will go into an auction, but that is a whole different post for another day!

Making an offer is an exciting and time consuming process. From the initial submission to the time I make the offer, I probably have exchanged at least 20 emails with members of the team in-house and had multiple conversations in person about a single book. This is why we have to love a submission. Before we even get to edit it, we have to support it and discuss it at length before the offer is ever made. It all goes back to the love of the project.

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Jordan Hamessley London is an Editor at Egmont USA, where she edits middle grade and YA. Her current titles include Isla J. Bick’s new series, The Dark Passages (#1 White Space), Bree DeSpain’s new series Into the Dark (#1 The Shadow Prince), and more. Prior to Egmont, Jordan worked at  Grosset and Dunlap, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers where she edited Adam-Troy Castro’s middle grade horror series Gustav Gloom, Ben H. Winters and Adam F. Watkin’s book of horror poetry Literally Disturbed, Michelle Schusterman’s I Heart Band series, Adam F. Watkins’s alphabet picture book R is for Robot and more. When not editing, Jordan can be found on twitter talking about books, scary movies, and musical theater.

by

Jordan Hamessley London

and the Pub(lishing) Crawl Gang!

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About three months ago, I had a life change. I left my job at Grosset & Dunlap at Penguin to become an Editor at Egmont USA. It was a very exciting move for me, if a bit scary. Grosset had been my first publishing job and my first “real job” out of college. I had a ton of memories there and it felt like my second home.

When I arrived at Egmont in December, I was thrilled to begin working on a new list and with a new team, but I realized something was missing. Now, this may sound crazy, but hear me out.

My desk at Grosset had been very lived over the course of my five years there, I had acquired numerous action figures, plush toys, photos, and trinkets from my authors. When I got home from my first day at Egmont, I knew I needed to bring in the little things that would make my desk feel like “home” again. What are those things?

Well, my Benjamin Linus bobblehead, of course.

And my paper machete, inspired by an amazing typo written by one of authors (attempting to spell papier mâché) and what I use on particularly intense edits!

At last, my workspace was complete!

My journey to complete my new workspace made me wonder where all of the other Pub(lishing) Crawl members do their work. Here’s a sneak peek at where they write/agent/and sell their books!

Erin Bowman’s amazing workspace

Susan Dennard’s desk

Julie Eshbaugh’s writing space

JJ’s workspace

Amie Kaufman – I usually work in my study, but I love to move around as well — this is the view of my writing spot at one of my favourite bars in Melbourne, where I can sit right on the river and watch the world go by!

Biljana Likic’s workspace

Jodi Meadows – You might think there’s a lot of yarn on this desk. You’d be right. You’re probably also overlooking some. There’s more than you think. No, another one besides those.

E.C. Myers – Basically, I write 95% of the time on my netbook, even when I’m at home, and I mostly use my larger laptop and keyboard for other work — graphics, video editing, e-mail — and blogging. I work best outside of my apartment.

Adam Silvera’s desk at work

Adam Silvera’s workspace for writing

Joanna Volpe’s desk

Joanna Volpe’s bookshelf

Kat Zhang – Here’s where I’m writing right now (local B&N). Only add in half a dozen toddlers running around.

 The Pub(lishing) Crawl team is a great example of how everyone has a different place where they work. What makes your workspace unique and special to you? 

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Jordan Hamessley London is an Editor at Egmont USA, where she edits middle grade and YA. Her current titles include Isla J. Bick’s new series, The Dark Passages (#1 White Space), Bree DeSpain’s new series Into the Dark (#1 The Shadow Prince), and more. Prior to Egmont, Jordan worked at  Grosset and Dunlap, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers where she edited Adam-Troy Castro’s middle grade horror series Gustav Gloom, Ben H. Winters and Adam F. Watkin’s series of horror poetry Literally Disturbed, Michelle Schusterman’s I Heart Band series, Adam F. Watkins’s alphabet picture book R is for Robot and more. When not editing, Jordan can be found on twitter talking about books, scary movies, and musical theater.