The publishing industry can sometimes feel secretive or enigmatic, and something we strive to do at The Novelry is break down the walls of publishing and explain how things work.
Every book editor on The Novelry’s in-house editorial team came to us from a Big Five publisher. This means when you edit your novel on our writing courses—including The Finished Novel Course, The Novel Development Course, The Big Edit and The Ultimate Manuscript Assessment—you’ll be working closely with your own personal editor who has direct experience editing novels for a Big Five publishing house. They know exactly what publishers are looking for, and when your manuscript is ready, they will work with you to submit your novel directly to leading literary agents on your behalf!
But what is a ‘Big Five publisher’ or ‘Big Five publishing house’? If you’re wondering, don’t worry—we’ve got you.
There are five major publishing houses in the world: Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan. These publishers have global offices in multiple countries, with headquarters in New York and London. There are plenty of independent publishers, such as Bloomsbury, Oneworld Publications, and Bonnier Books, but the Big Five dominate the publishing landscape. They are each home to multiple imprints: for example, Viking, Vintage, Doubleday, Putnam, Century, Ballantine and more are all imprints of Penguin Random House. HQ, Avon, Harper Fiction and more are all imprints of HarperCollins. Think of the Big Five as umbrellas. All of their imprints are sheltered beneath them. The logo you see on the spine of your favorite book is the imprint; inside the book it will tell you the publishing house.
This gives the Big Five enormous power to shape the publishing industry as we know it—and working at a Big Five publisher means you’re privy to a lot of Big Five secrets and insights.
In this article, The Novelry’s Head of Commercial Fiction Emily Kitchin spills the beans.
Before joining The Novelry, Emily was Editorial Director at HQ, a division of HarperCollins and home to authors including Adele Parks, Linwood Barclay, Sarah Morgan, Carrie Hope Fletcher and Erica James. Over her 15-year publishing career, including 12 years in editorial departments at Headline Publishing, Hodder & Stoughton, and HQ, Emily Kitchin has built up a reputation as a caring and collaborative editor with a passion for commercial fiction and a determination to champion her authors tirelessly. Emily loves the editing process and is known throughout the industry to be incredibly thorough, always with the goal of inspiring the authors she works with to achieve their vision. To her, the editorial process is a two-way conversation where an author feels fully supported and guided by their editor, and she prides herself on developing open and trusting long-term relationships with her authors.
Let’s hand over to Emily for five things she learned as an editorial director at a Big Five publishing house!
1. Publishers are always looking for a compelling package
Publishers often use the term ‘package’ to encompass a book’s title, format, shoutline, cover design and cover copy: essentially, the elements a reader will be looking at when they see the book on a shelf or table that will determine whether or not they pick it up to find out more.
Ideally, these would all pull together in the same direction and immediately signal to a reader what sort of book this is, and why they want to read it, in an exciting and attention-grabbing way. Those elements are what is going to make the book fly off the shelves! It’s also how publishers ‘sell the book in’ to retailers, when they’ll present the book, its proposed cover, and have a few minutes to summarize its pitch in the most pithy and gripping way possible.
While the publisher is responsible for designing a book’s cover and deciding its specification (i.e., the materials used on the cover, whether it has any exciting extra finishes such as sprayed edges, and so on) and an author’s editor will write the copy that ultimately ends up on the cover and on retailer websites, editorial teams are always looking for submissions that have the potential to create an amazing, saleable package.
For authors, this means thinking about your hook—something we talk about a lot at The Novelry!
- How can you distill your novel into a succinct pitch that summarizes its most exciting points?
- How can you indicate clearly what sort of genre your novel belongs in, and add an edge to make the hook feel a little different?
Editorial teams are always hungry for an exciting pitch and anything you can do beforehand to sharpen it will help enormously.
2. Publishing trends are cyclical
Something I’ve learned over the years is that most things come back into fashion eventually. When I started in publishing in 2008, genres such as erotica and cozy crime were very much on the back burner. Erotica had a major boom around the Fifty Shades phenomenon, but then sales tailed off again. Now with TikTok’s influence on the market, romance books containing lots of ‘spice’ are very much in vogue! And cozy crime is still seeing a huge resurgence, inspired largely by the success of Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club series. The ‘locked room’ mystery is always a compelling genre, but Lucy Foley’s take on it over recent years has given the genre a fresh twist and brought it back to the top of the bestseller lists.
Trends are often inspired by one big ‘breakout’ book having enormous success, and its sales paving the way for other books within the genre to break out, too. For example, I firmly believe that, while wonderful books for teenagers have always existed, the global success of the Twilight series has hugely influenced today’s Young Adult genre, and was instrumental in the term ‘Young Adult’ being created.
But these cycles can be influenced by other elements too. The rise of BookTok has had the most profound effect on the book market that I remember seeing in my time in publishing. Personally, I absolutely love the way it’s had such a huge impact on the sales of ‘backlist’ titles exploding (i.e., books published at least six months ago or longer; publishing is traditionally very ‘frontlist’-orientated) and the way it’s rooted in organic, genuine reader-led passion for books.
All of this is to say, if a book isn’t ‘right’ for the current market, this absolutely doesn’t mean that it’s not a wonderful book. Publishing is a business and is very trend- and market-led (some publishers and lists more so than others).
If you ever receive positive feedback on your book, but are told it might not be an easy sell in the current market, please don’t be too disheartened.
The market changes all the time, so put your book away in a drawer (or more likely, file it safely!) and its time may well come. It might mean that you’re simply ahead of current trends—they are yet to catch up with you!
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3. It’s always possible to do things differently
Over my time in various publishing houses, I’ve learned that there is no one route to publication, or to success.
While it can be a little frustrating to feel that there isn’t an obvious blueprint, it’s also what makes publishing so exciting! Anything can happen, at any time. A deal can suddenly be struck. A backlist title with low sales can suddenly garner film and TV interest. As in my last point, a book can gain traction and visibility on TikTok. A 99p ebook promotion can suddenly ping a backlist book into the Kindle Top 100 (I noticed that recently a title of Alice Feeney’s, His and Hers, which was published a few years ago, was included in a Kindle Monthly Deal promotion in the U.K. and unexpectedly shot into the top spot, staying there for weeks).
Not all of these things, or even one of them, will necessarily happen—but they can, and that’s what keeps publishing people, and authors, on their toes.
I say this to demonstrate that there are always new opportunities and therefore it’s always possible in publishing to reinvent, or to try a new path.
Over the years I have seen plenty of authors change direction—whether it’s to write in a new genre, to change publisher and/or agent, to write under a different name, to move away from a traditional publishing deal to work with a digital publisher or into self-publishing, and so on.
There are lots of famous examples that support the idea that it’s always possible to make a change. Jojo Moyes’s Me Before You became a huge global hit after she switched to a different publisher, and was her ninth published novel. Paula Hawkins famously wrote women’s fiction under a pseudonym, before switching to psychological suspense and deciding to publish The Girl on the Train under her own name. The bestselling thriller writer Mark Edwards has written about how he tried various avenues with traditional publishers, before turning to self-publishing and seeing enormous sales success. And now he’s back with a traditional publisher!
For authors, this doesn’t mean you should ever feel forced into writing in a genre that you’re not confident in, or to use a pseudonym if you don’t want to—or be forced into doing anything at all.
This is your writing journey, and it’s important that whatever happens feels comfortable for and authentic to you. But in publishing-strategy terms, it’s good to remember there’s always a different way of doing things.
So if something doesn’t work out, regroup and look at how you might do it differently. As they say, it ain’t over until the opera-singing lady sings!
4. There’s an inexplicable alchemy involved in the creation of a bestseller
Throughout the industry, it’s a truth universally acknowledged that no-one really knows quite why a runaway bestseller becomes so (and equally, why a book doesn’t become a bestseller when everyone thought it would). Of course, we can retrospectively analyze the book and its campaign and make educated guesses. But there is no obvious formula: if there was, publishers would create bestsellers all the time!
Over the years, I have seen plenty of books become surprise bestsellers, and there are always many factors involved.
Perhaps genuine word-of-mouth snowballed; the physical or digital editions were in a timely promotion; a particular retailer absolutely loved the book and decided to champion it. Equally, I have seen absolutely brilliant books, backed by big campaigns from publishers, go on to sell fewer copies than everyone expected. Again, this is not because the book itself was in any way faulty—often these books were utterly beloved by their publisher and by readers.
Quite simply, you never really know what may happen. It’s frustrating and exciting in equal measure—and all part of the rollercoaster journey that is writing novels!
5. Most books require a rigorous editing process
Over my publishing career I have worked with a huge range of authors: debuts, established bestselling brands, professional ghostwriters, and so on. What I’ve learned is that editing will almost always be necessary, whether the author is hugely experienced or not.
The process of editing can be challenging, exhilarating, frustrating: I’ve known some authors to love the editing process and absolutely thrive on it, while others adore being in the drafting stage and feel overwhelmed by the process of revising their work.
To feel daunted by edits is perfectly normal—and if an editor suggests substantial edits on your book, it doesn’t mean that your book isn’t brilliant (or en route to being so!).
In fact, as an editor, often the more I believe in a book and its chances, the more I’ll encourage the author to double down on edits so that it achieves its full potential.
I’ve also learned that often the best books, and the ones that go on to have the greatest impact on readers, are the ones that involved the thorniest and more frustrating edits. This is the process that readers don’t see: the blood, sweat and tears that went into creating such an effortless-feeling reading experience for them!
I’ve also learned to have huge respect for authors who get stuck into editing their books. I salute you! It’s a brave process to undertake, and one that’s fundamental to your journey as a writer. I’d encourage you to believe in yourself, believe in your editor, and know that all your hard work will be worth it.
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