An acquisitions editor is a specialized position at most publishing houses, who focuses on finding and acquiring new manuscripts. Depending on the publishing house, this job can include sorting through unsolicited manuscripts, but it may also just involve contacting existing writers about new projects, or interacting with agents exclusively. An acquisitions editor largely guides the direction of a publishing house through the books they acquire, but ultimately they have to defer in their decisions to superiors as well, so they rarely have a completely free hand in acquiring books.

At publishing houses that accept unsolicited manuscripts, an acquisitions editor may devote a fair amount of their time to reading through potential manuscripts from new or emerging authors. Most acquisitions editors have a support staff, either of junior editors or of interns, who help them by reading through the slush pile of unsolicited manuscripts. These subordinates then set aside any manuscripts that they think may be of interest to the acquisitions editor, so that the editor has far fewer manuscripts to work their way through in their search for good material.

At houses that don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts, an acquisitions editor will largely deal only with agents or existing authors. In this case they build relationships with agents who they trust to bring them only work that is suitable for their publishing house, and ideally matches with the acquisitions editor’s tastes as well. Agents act as a sort of preliminary screen to make sure that only things of a certain level of quality get through, making much less detritus for the editor to make their way through.

It is very important that an acquisitions editor find the book personally likable, or that they find some other reason to want to promote it, because once they’ve decided on a book, their work is far from over. Even mid-level publishing houses require a consensus to be built among many different people, including other editors, executives, a marketing department, a legal department, and sales. With enormous publishing houses this list of people grows even longer. When an acquisitions editor finds a book they like, they have to convince a number of other people that the book should be produced.

Generally, a publishing house will spend around $50,000 to $100,000 US Dollars (USD) to minimally produce a book, which is a great deal of expenditure on an established author, much less an unknown. A great deal of responsibility is therefore riding on the acquisitions editor to find books that will ultimately be profitable. Their reputation depends on steadily choosing winners, or at least books that break even, and an editor who finds themselves consistently choosing failing books will soon find themselves out of work.

The best acquisitions editors build close relationships with key people in the business, including a network of agents, authors, and sometimes even smaller presses. They use this network to tap into talent and find golden manuscripts before other publishers discover them. As a result, a truly successful acquisitions editor needs not only to have a keen eye for good, marketable writing, but also needs to have the ability to make connections and keep the trust and respect of the best authors.