June 10, 2024
ENCORE: Insider Insights with Editor Sarah Schonfeld
ENCORE EDITION!
(PLEASE NOTE: All comments and opinions in this podcast are strictly Sara's own.)
In the latest episode of Writers with Wrinkles, we're thrilled to host Sara Schonfeld, an editor at HarperCollins, specializing in middle grade and YA literature.
Our discussion spans the joys and challenges of editing, insights into the acquisitions process, and invaluable advice for writers on submissions, social media presence, and the evolving landscape of genre blending in literature. Sara's passion for nurturing authors and her editorial expertise shine through, offering a treasure trove of wisdom for both aspiring and seasoned writers.
In This Episode:
1. Sara's Entry into Publishing: Discover Sara's intriguing start in the publishing industry through a serendipitous project with Dr. Seuss's The Grinch Mad Libs.
2. Editorial Philosophy: Gain insight into Sara's approach to editing, emphasizing the importance of enhancing the author's vision while keeping the reader in mind.
3. Juggling Editorial Projects: Understand the complexity and organization behind managing multiple books at various stages of publication.
4. The Submission Standouts: Learn what makes a manuscript shine in the crowded publishing landscape, including the significance of genre knowledge and the infusion of personal voice.
5. Behind the Acquisitions Veil: Get a rare peek into the acquisitions process, demystifying what happens behind the scenes and how decisions are made.
6. Editing Process Explained: Delve into the detailed and iterative process of editing, from big-picture feedback to line edits, and the collaborative nature of bringing a book to fruition.
7. Social Media for Writers: Hear Sara's thoughts on the role of social media in a writer's career and the importance of authenticity.
8. Genre Blending and Wishlist: Discover Sara's enthusiasm for genre-blended manuscripts, especially those that merge speculative elements with rom-com vibes.
Highlights:
- Advice for Aspiring Authors: Practical tips on standing out in submissions, including the critical role of competitive titles and authentic storytelling.
- Acquisitions Deep Dive: An insider's view on how books are selected for publication and the collective excitement that drives editorial meetings.
- The Future of Genres: Sara's anticipation for innovative genre blends and her call for submissions that push creative boundaries.
Website: https://www.saraschonfeldbooks.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SaraSchon
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Chapters
00:00 - Editor Sarah Schoenfeld Discusses Publishing Process
07:29 - Navigating the Publishing Industry
13:43 - Editorial and Acquisitions Process Explanation
26:00 - Social Media Presence for Authors
32:23 - Authenticity, Dating, and Editing
36:29 - Genre Blends in Children's Book Publishing
Transcript
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Hi everyone.
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While Lisa and I are off doing other things for the next few weeks, we are taking the opportunity to share some of our favorite episodes with you again.
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This one with editor Sarah Schoenfeld is just brilliant.
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Have a listen and you'll see what I mean.
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Here we go.
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Hi friends, I'm Beth McMullen and I'm Lisa Schmid, and we're the co-hosts of Writers with Wrinkles.
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This is season three, episode 12.
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And today we are so excited to welcome Sarah Schoenfeld to the show.
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Sarah is an editor at Harper, working on middle grade and YA.
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As an author herself, Sarah has the editorial style that is all about expressing the author's intentions and helping readers understand and access that vision.
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When she's not reading, she loves watching anything Marvel, kickboxing or baking.
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So welcome, Sarah.
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We're so happy to have you here today.
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Thank you, I'm excited to be here.
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So I wanted to ask you something just really quickly.
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I saw on your website that you did a Dr Seuss's the Grinch Mad Libs.
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I did in another life, yeah, so what is?
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that like I mean.
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I love those.
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I did them all the time with my kids when they were little.
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I'm just curious how that that kind of landed in your lap.
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That is actually a wonderful segue into how I got started in publishing, which was at Penguin Random House at the time and the imprint was called Grosset and Dunlap and I actually ended up working on the team that did primarily licensing.
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So you'll see, I've had experience writing some licensed, eight by eights leveled readers and even ended up in the Mad Libs game, and that one was such an interesting combination of sheer luck and coincidence and circumstance.
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I had been covering for the Mad Libs imprint and I was unofficially the Mad Libs editor for a few months and this project came across our desks.
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But the studio involved was actually very secretive about it and they needed someone to be boots on the ground in California to read the script physically because they weren't comfortable sending it out digitally.
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And I happened to be in California visiting my parents and so I got kind of whisked away to Illumination Entertainment Studios, got to go into their offices and read the script and they actually took my notes away and they said you know, we have to review these to make sure it doesn't include any spoilers.
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Said you know, we have to review these to make sure it doesn't include any spoilers.
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And then they sent me the redacted version, which was fascinating to me as someone who grew up reading Dr Seuss and had been familiar with the story, and the movie, of course was so charming I don't know if you guys have seen it and the Mad Libs were such a joy to write.
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It's kind of like writing in a different language and having to write a code.
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You can't just write it and pull words out.
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You have to write intentionally towards the blanks, in the same way that you would write a joke, and I think that holds for a lot of writing experience.
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If you've written a picture book, you also know this process of needing an ending.
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That's inevitable but unexpected, and for Mad Libs you have to do that essentially every other sentence, and it is such a fun challenge.
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If you have an opportunity to write a Mad Libs or to do a Mad Libs or speak with someone who has written one, I highly recommend it.
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It is just so much fun.
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That is fascinating.
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That is so fast Like these are the things that you just never know are going on behind the scenes.
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I always say, like I will find myself, I will find myself in a situation and that is one of my talents and I will look around and I will say you know, I wonder how I got here.
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It's like that freeze frame, like bet, you're wondering how I ended up here, and I love it.
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You know that's one of the joys about publishing you never know what your day is going to be like.
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You could be handling phone calls from an author and talking about the ending of a mystery, or you could be figuring out the secret ending of the Grinch movie.
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You just never know.
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That is.
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I love that.
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I'm so glad I asked that question because that is fascinating.
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How many books are you juggling at any given time when you're editing?
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Sure.
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So most editors will work towards a certain title count per year, with things that are shifting around.
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You know, my grasp of where my titles are is something that I need to be in charge of at all times.
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In a given year, I would say, the average editor has somewhere between five and 15 books, depending on their role and their seniority, and then at any given time, we might be working on maybe two or three years at a time, depending again on that lead time.
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So picture books obviously take longer.
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So we will be looking out further for YA and middle grade.
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It might be closer to a year to two years.
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So at any given moment I might be thinking about, you know, 20 or 30 books and having to keep tabs on them, which is an amazing process, and this is why we have an entire department called Managing Editorial.
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So shout out to all those wonderful editors there who are helping us essentially stay on track and project managing the editors.
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I have so much respect for them and they are the ones who really make sure the books happen.
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Certainly, as editors, we love to steer the ship, but they are the ones who are giving us directions.
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So we are so grateful for them and all the hard work that they do.
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Wow, that is remarkable.
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That's a lot of stuff to keep in your head, just discrete stories and not getting them crisscrossed in your mind.
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I have a lot of grids, I have a lot of charts, everything's color-coded, and then I am relying quite a bit on my colleagues.
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When you think about it.
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And I just went through the editorial process and I was going through the editorial process and I was stressed out.
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And then I was going through the editorial process and I was stressed out and then I was just thinking about my editor thinking, oh my God, she's got probably 10 projects she's working on right now and I'm just one person in her universe.
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Do you know what I mean?
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And so sometimes as the writer, you kind of get so you're in this little myopic bubble where you're just thinking about yourself and you just kind of forget, like she's probably got a bunch of other authors she's dealing with, and so it's good to hear that from an editor's perspective, what's going on behind there?
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Yeah, and I mean I hope that's also encouraging in the sense that while as an author it's very easy to obsess over details in your book, please know that your editor is very much thinking big picture, and we're also thinking bigger than big picture for just your book, but also for what the whole season or the whole year looks like, and very much we do have our eyes on how do we make your book shine the most.
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So I think of this as like a hopeful thing.
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You know, like the universe doesn't care if you brush your hair that morning or if you forget.
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It's kind of the same deal with your manuscript.
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Your editor is going to know about the big things that matter and we're going to be there as a resource.
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But hopefully that helps you feel a little calmer about the things that might be worrying you, because while it can feel like every single thing, especially for a debut, is the life or death of your book, oftentimes it's not, and if you have concerns, definitely raise them to your editor.
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But you know we're really here as kind of like it's okay, like we're going to hold your hand through this process and you really don't need to worry about a lot of it.
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It feels like therapy.
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It does.
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I had like just like a last minute thing where we had done the final pass pages and I was like, no, that's fine.
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And then I had a panic about it and I'm like, wait, no, no, it's not fine, it's not fine.
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She had to like calm me down.
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I'm like, okay, I'm sorry, it's like I just had a moment.
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We're all good now, but it just is.
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You just you get like so caught up and then like hearing you you speak about what you're doing behind the scenes.
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It's just like we're like over here freaking out about this and you're managing all of us.
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Again, we are there definitely as a gut check of if something is actually a crisis, but hopefully this is reassuring that very few things you know changing a word here, changing a line there very few things are actually a crisis.
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So the goal is obviously for writers to end up with you as their editor.
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So what are some of the best things an author can do to make their submissions stand out in this current climate?
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Because it feels like it's kind of the Wild West out there.
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Yeah, we're definitely in an interesting moment for the industry and I think we're figuring out how to stand out in a very crowded marketplace, how to stand out as readers are changing, discoverability is changing.
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Even things like where people buy their books might be changing or how they consume their books.
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I think you'll hear a lot of editors say that we're looking for something that's both fresh and familiar, and I think readers can do two concrete things to fill both those categories.
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The familiar one is perhaps the easiest and I'm sure many people know this.
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The number one thing you can do is read, especially in your category.
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When we talk about comps or competitive titles in the industry, we really rely on those quite a bit through the process.
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So the more that you know your comps and the more that you know what's out there, the more that you're really going to succeed as an author.
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So this is about finding books that will have the same audience as the book that you're writing.
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Finding what you love about your book and what other books also have that same element is really going to give you so much through the querying process about who to query, how to query them, how to position your book.
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It's going to also help editors.
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You know when we get a book, we're going to look at the comps as well, for things like cover design and answering questions during the editorial process.
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So making sure to read widely and fall in love with books.
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I always recommend that readers focus on finding books that they love.
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It's very easy to read as a critic, and I think a lot of times we forget that books should be serving us as inspiration positively, and not just that kind of negative, jealous part of you that says, well, I can do this better.
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Everyone can do everything differently and, as an editor, I am not here to show up and say what's better or worse.
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I'm not making a quality assessment.
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I am trying to find something that makes me feel, and I think if you write from inspiration and positivity, you can also create a book that makes people feel, which brings me to the second thing you can do, about finding something fresh, which is bringing your own voice to something, and I like to work with authors.
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I call it the heart of the story.
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I usually ask authors you know, what did you set out to write?
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What do you want audiences to feel and what inspired you within yourself that you can get onto the page and I think really being true to that inspiration and that feeling of joy and love and excitement about your project is going to come through and it really does shine through.
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I wish there were a way that I could bring a secret microphone into our meetings, our editorial meetings.
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We just had one yesterday and we were sitting in a room with about 10 people and everyone was just gushing about the read of something, about how it drew them along, how they were pulled in, how they were just obsessed with the writing and the characters and just so excited about it.
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And I hope you realize that, again, we're never making an assessment of quality.
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The worst thing that happens in those meetings is someone says like, oh, it didn't pull me in, I wasn't really excited about it.
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And then on the flip side, and generally this is what happens we are ready to go to war for these books, we are hyping each other up and we are just getting excited.
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We are batting around different comps, ideas, we are already envisioning the cover and we are just getting so excited about it.
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So if there are two things that you can do as a writer to really help an editor feel connection, again it's focusing on reading and then focusing on finding that kernel of yourself in the story, that heart of the story that you really want to bring forward.
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Oh my God, that's like the best answer ever.
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No, I already can tell that people are going to be swooning for this, our listeners, because it's concrete, right?
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These are things that you can actually think about, not in the abstract, but concretely about your own work, and we preach on this show all the time that you need to read, read, read, read.
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That's so important.
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It's so important.
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Yeah, and I think people sometimes you know everyone's busy.
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You have limited time in your day.
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People have so many responsibilities and there's so many things drawing your attention nowadays with social media and your phone and videos.
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But you really do have to commit to that or you're going to be, you know, hampering your ability to get anywhere.
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And I've heard some authors say that they, you know comps can be a double-edged sword and you certainly don't have to read as you're writing.
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I don't mean to tell people like get multiple voices in your head, but certainly I really recommend it during idea generation, kind of before you put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, and then certainly as you're thinking about querying and maybe as you're waiting for some beta reads to come in, so comps can serve you at any point in the process.
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But I really do recommend read, read as much as you can.
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So the next thing we wanted to ask you about is the acquisition process, which most authors feel is a little bit of a mystery, mostly because, as the author, we're not really involved at all.
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It's really what's happening in the publishing side, and usually that information is coming through your agent.
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So can you give us a little peek behind the scenes?
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What's going on there?
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What can make or break a deal, what are the steps involved?
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Just so that people can kind of get their heads around what, when people say it's in the acquisitions process, what that means?
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Yeah, well, acquisitions might be a bit of a mystery because it does vary a lot from house to house.
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You know, I've worked at a couple places and I can say that it has been very different house to house, even imprint to imprint, so everyone does it a little bit differently.
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I would say the main stages.
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I like to think of them as hurdles, which hopefully is an empowering message of people jumping over the hurdle is an empowering message of people jumping over the hurdle.
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But for me, as an editor, the first step is always the read.
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So I'm going to read it myself and fall head over heels in love with it.
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I have had this happen where I got a submission in the evening and I picked it up and then I looked up and it was dark outside and I didn't know what had happened and I did, at the time, text my boss and she told me to take a deep breath and relax, but I was just so excited about that book and ended up acquiring it.
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So that was a very good feeling, but yeah, so the first step, of course, is to get the editor on board.
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A lot of houses will then have something of.
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They call it different things.
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They might call it a team meeting, they might call it editorial meeting, they might call it a team meeting, they might call it editorial meeting, they might call it something else entirely, but essentially it's a period when the editor gets reads from other people outside of.
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You know just themselves fit with our team, how it would fit with this editor's list and also where we see this book succeeding and how to position it.
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And then some houses will also have after that an acquisitions board, at which point you are meeting with not only editors but also people from other departments.
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So this is a chance for sales and marketing and publicity and design everyone to really weigh in and give their thoughts on the book.
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Not only again, it's not just an assessment of talent or skill as someone who gets so many beautiful books, it's really not a question of that.
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It's more about strategic thinking of what can we do for this book, are we the best house for this book?
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Am I the best editor for this book, and how can we really make it succeed?
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So generally, I would say many editors have between one and three of those different steps to go through, those hoops to jump through.
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And when we say the acquisitions process to an agent.
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Sometimes we are intentionally a little bit vague because we don't want to tell anyone.
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You know like, cross your fingers again today because it's going to another meeting.
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To tell anyone you know like, cross your fingers again today because it's going to another meeting, that's.
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You know.
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We don't want to stress people out unnecessarily and I know how exciting it is.
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I have gone through that process and I had a book of my own die on submission, because it, you know it got almost acquisitions and the editor left the company, which was heartbreaking.
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But you know, these things happen and acquisitions can feel a little bit fuzzy.
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One of the things I do love about where I am at Harper and the team that I have.
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We have just such an incredible team that I know once I go through and I do have an offer and I can hand that to the author, I know that they have so much support not only from me but also from my team and my colleagues in other departments, and I know that offer comes with the full support of HarperCollins and we are going to make this book shine.
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That actually is a really good little view into it.
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Even just saying, okay, my book could be anywhere, my submission could be anywhere in this process is more comforting than feeling as if it is just a black hole and you have no clue.
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You know, as an editor with hundreds of emails, I can say sometimes we are a little bit of a black hole, but yeah.
00:16:31.758 --> 00:16:36.947
So I was wondering how many people on the team actually read the book.
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Like when you go in to pitch it, does everybody on the team read it, or is it just?
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Are you kind of giving a you know reading like a synopsis on what the book's about and why you love it, or does everybody on the team end?
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up reading the book.
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It really varies meeting to meeting and team to team.
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I have been on teams where it was, you know, everyone's dipping in and then reading a synopsis.
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I have been on teams where everyone is reading the whole book and it really depends on the specific room and the specific project, and I love to get reads.
00:17:08.490 --> 00:17:10.218
I also love to pitch books to people.
00:17:10.218 --> 00:17:16.336
So wherever I am, I'm going to adjust and do my best to champion this book.
00:17:16.336 --> 00:17:22.259
I think of myself as like a little knight on a little horse with a I don't have a sword a pen instead.
00:17:22.259 --> 00:17:24.943
Really, you really going to bat for these books?
00:17:24.943 --> 00:17:26.165
I love that image.
00:17:26.307 --> 00:17:31.759
How often do you actually pitch something and it doesn't go through?
00:17:31.759 --> 00:17:33.703
Has it happened quite a bit to you, or is it?
00:17:33.703 --> 00:17:35.516
And it's got to be heartbreaking when it happens.
00:17:36.195 --> 00:17:46.682
Yeah, I think in my experience my team is incredibly helpful in determining what might be worth bringing to acquisitions versus not.
00:17:46.682 --> 00:17:57.307
And it can be heartbreaking to bring it to the team and it's these people that you have worked with and you respect their opinions and you just really want them to like it and see what you see in it.
00:17:57.307 --> 00:18:11.906
It's like you know, bringing a boyfriend home and your parents are like, oh nice, you really want them to fall in love and sometimes it just doesn't happen and it is heartbreaking and I always say the hardest part of my job is giving negative feedback that I don't agree with.
00:18:11.906 --> 00:18:13.861
So that might be the team saying no.
00:18:13.861 --> 00:18:15.300
That might be acquisitions saying no.
00:18:15.300 --> 00:18:20.707
That might be an unnamed reviewer who is very harsh saying no and saying that they don't like this book.
00:18:23.095 --> 00:18:28.048
And rejection is part of the industry and it sucks and we all deal with it and I think you know agents and editors.
00:18:28.048 --> 00:18:33.017
We are unique in that we deal with it from many different directions, which is its own kind of heartbreaking.
00:18:33.017 --> 00:18:43.856
But yeah, please know that there are many times that I'm sending rejections and I am not crying at my desk, but you know I feel sad for it and upset that I can't say yes, it's hard.
00:18:44.117 --> 00:18:44.558
I don't even.
00:18:44.558 --> 00:18:50.722
I was like trying to think of something to say to that and it is like you go through so much, just like writers go through it.
00:18:50.722 --> 00:19:05.898
You know it's just, it's all part of the process, like you said, and I think we all feel it deeply, and it's also good to hear how much you go through it deeply on your end, Because as writers that are on sub or querying, it's a black hole and they just think.
00:19:05.898 --> 00:19:10.680
I think some people have images of people like rejecting this.
00:19:10.680 --> 00:19:11.362
No, we are not.
00:19:11.402 --> 00:19:14.087
We are not cackling or lighting anything on fire.
00:19:14.087 --> 00:19:21.598
The one time that I did laugh while reading submissions, I did get through the slush pile back at Penguin when we were editorial assistants going through the slush pile.
00:19:21.598 --> 00:19:22.656
I did get through the slush pile back at Penguin when we were editorial assistants.
00:19:22.656 --> 00:19:30.804
Going through the slush pile I did get a letter that was written like cutouts from magazines clipped and it accused me of being in the Illuminati.
00:19:30.804 --> 00:19:33.765
It was like, dear editor, we know you're in the Illuminati.
00:19:33.765 --> 00:19:35.580
And I was like, ok, I'm ready.
00:19:35.580 --> 00:19:37.537
Oh, wow, that is.
00:19:37.537 --> 00:19:41.155
That is something else, not a lot of good times.
00:19:41.576 --> 00:19:44.598
Did it scare you, or were you just like, okay, this is crazy.
00:19:44.618 --> 00:19:48.442
No, so it wasn't addressed to me specifically, which is part of the help.
00:19:48.442 --> 00:19:48.721
You know.
00:19:48.721 --> 00:19:55.186
It wasn't someone who knew who I was or was coming after me personally, but it was an oh moment of oh goodness.
00:19:56.228 --> 00:20:02.112
Well, now that we know what your acquisition process is, can you tell us about your editorial?
00:20:02.132 --> 00:20:02.531
process.
00:20:02.531 --> 00:20:09.863
I always say editing is my favorite part of the job and if I just got to edit all day I would be a very, very happy editor, which is?
00:20:09.863 --> 00:20:12.087
It sounds silly, like what else am I doing?
00:20:12.087 --> 00:20:15.507
A lot of email, but editing is such a pleasure.
00:20:15.507 --> 00:20:22.605
It's something between reading and doing a puzzle, but then also, like you guys mentioned, a little bit of therapy, both for myself and for the characters.
00:20:22.684 --> 00:20:28.365
I love to psychoanalyze a character, but I generally start, like many editors do, from big picture down to small.
00:20:28.365 --> 00:20:43.385
So I will do a series of rounds with my authors, often somewhere between, I would say, you know, four to six times reading a manuscript, and the goal is to start with a completely open mind and work on, you know, reacting.
00:20:43.385 --> 00:20:45.690
So I will do a report to start with.
00:20:45.690 --> 00:21:08.039
I will not be getting into line edits, I will not be fixing grammar and I'll mostly just be writing down questions as I read and gut reactions, not trying to judge, not trying to form a conclusion, but just saying okay, in this scene I really am missing the through line or what's propelling me, or I'm confused about who this character is and what they're doing, and maybe by the end of my read I've answered that question.
00:21:08.039 --> 00:21:13.180
But it might also be helpful to consider what a reader feels during that scene, and is that a constructive confusion?
00:21:13.180 --> 00:21:15.707
Is that a useful question to have at that stage?
00:21:15.707 --> 00:21:17.917
So usually I'll do one round.
00:21:17.917 --> 00:21:25.329
That's, you know, an assessment or a report or a letter, whatever you want to call it, and this can be, you know, 10 pages typed up of me.
00:21:25.329 --> 00:21:31.281
I tend to ramble, as you guys probably have noticed, and I like to give my authors lots to work with.
00:21:31.281 --> 00:21:35.257
So it's a lot of spitballing, it's a lot of okay, this character really confused me.
00:21:35.257 --> 00:21:36.459
Are they more like this?
00:21:36.459 --> 00:21:44.450
And I might reference another character or another character from a different piece of media, and then I'll say or are they maybe like this and how would that serve the story?
00:21:44.450 --> 00:21:45.510
Let's think of some ideas.
00:21:45.510 --> 00:21:59.122
Usually after that I'll have a call with the author and we will then start working on either another round for another assessment or down to line edits, and it'll depend somehow sometimes where the author is and how they're feeling.
00:21:59.122 --> 00:22:06.505
So sometimes after a first call, authors will say you know, you pointed out a lot of things that I'm worried about and I would like to make changes.
00:22:06.505 --> 00:22:12.057
So I'm going to do a heavy rewrite, in which case I'll say like cool, let's talk about that, let's think about how that'll work.
00:22:12.057 --> 00:22:17.096
And sometimes they'll say you know, I'm really feeling good about this, I'm just going to change a few chapters.
00:22:17.096 --> 00:22:19.622
So it really varies and depends.
00:22:19.982 --> 00:22:28.325
I oftentimes, if it is something that I've acquired, I do like to kind of cover those big things before I acquire it, so that I'm not surprising anyone.
00:22:28.325 --> 00:22:32.500
I don't want to show up to a book and say let's rewrite the whole thing.
00:22:32.500 --> 00:22:33.644
I never want to do that.
00:22:33.644 --> 00:22:42.643
But oftentimes I am working on books that I didn't personally acquire either, because they're second books in a contract, they're part of a series, they come from another editor.
00:22:43.464 --> 00:22:58.578
It's becoming more and more common for me to have books on my list that I didn't necessarily get the first read on, and in that case I do like to start with a lot of those questions and leave it open-ended for the author, and then, after doing maybe one or two rounds of those, I do like to start doing line edits.
00:22:58.979 --> 00:23:12.523
So this does get to be a little bit more granular, and it can be things like this line of dialogue is not ringing true and doesn't sound kid-like to me yet, but it can also still be things like I'm really confused about why he would say this right now.
00:23:12.964 --> 00:23:14.388
I just don't understand.
00:23:14.855 --> 00:23:34.884
And sometimes those do pop up still in the line edit stage, and then after that, after we've gone back four or five, maybe six times, we will end up going to copy editing, in which case we will all take another look and then, after copy editing, we are getting into proof pages which are interiors that do look like a book, and then I'll probably see it another five or six times.
00:23:34.884 --> 00:23:41.700
At that point I'm not going to be clean reading it, because at that point I do have a very good memory of the book because I have read it many times.
00:23:41.700 --> 00:23:59.172
But you know, I do hope this is also a calming thing for authors, which is that the books that you see on shelves, that you're comparing yourselves to, have probably been edited somewhere in the range of 10 to 15 times by probably four or five people who are professional editors.
00:23:59.172 --> 00:24:09.240
So we're talking agents there are so many incredible editorial agents out there and then editors like myself, copy editors, proofreaders.
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