Infiltrating a Publishing House...mwahahaHAHA!

I have done it, readers. I'm IN.

I wrote on their blog yesterday, and then I updated their Facebook. I have their passwords. I have the POWER. I could have written ANYTHING! I could have written that the office smells like blue cheese! Or that the Publisher has power naps...in a coffin!

But I didn't. I am sheer professionalism. I also didn't, because the above are not true. Just so you know.

I have also infiltrated their MANUSCRIPTS, everybody. I have read that shiny new American YA with the fancy new cover and written a report with my opinion of it.

I have read the manuscript of an Australian YA they are considering purchasing and written a report with my opinions and RECOMMENDATIONS about what could be edited, and whether or not they should buy it. The commissioning editor (as in the editor commissioning this specific project) has not even read the entire thing yet.

I have nearly finished reading a draft of the first in a series of Junior Fiction books that they are publishing next year and have been line editing and making comments and writing questions in the margins, just as I do with my critique partners.

I will finish it on the train (much more productive than crawling in peak hour traffic on the freeway) and read the second one today - both of which I will write reports on. With OPINIONS. And RECOMMENDATIONS.

As one editor and the two publishers are off in Sydney at a Publishing conference, another editor sits behind me finding images and tinkering with the design of a non-fiction book, and filling up excess pages at the end of a book (for some reason - she doesn't even understand why - it was cheaper to make it with more pages than less) with awesomeness, I will be growing bolder, still.

Not only are my opinions (perhaps) going to sway how already under consideration and commissioned books will turn out, but today...today I will attack THE SLUSH PILE*.

MwahahahAHAHA indeed**.

Sairz

*If you are IN the slush pile at Black Dog Books, don't worry, nothing I read will be deleted before being seen by an editor, but I do have 2 fancy inboxes, 'Sarah - Consider' and 'Sarah - Reject' (I don't think those are the actual names, but that's what they mean).

**I am not a coffee drinker in my daily life but with all of this reading, I have had to indulge in a foamy cup or two and I don't think it's doing any favours to the stability of my mind.