The fine folks over at MediaBistro have fulfilled their promise to add exciting new features. The latest is a series looking into the minds of editors (and, for a short time only, this feature is free to everyone; eventually it will be part of the Avant Guild subscription only). First up is Asya Muchnick of Little, Brown.
We liked this thought:
I think it’s inevitable, it’s a shorthand that people use within the industry and then it becomes a shorthand within the marketplace to communicate quickly. For the most part, those comparisons don’t hold true. When an agent sends a pitch letter that compares a manuscript to the latest bestseller, it’s very rare that you feel that manuscript holds up.
In general, as editors, our reactions are often somewhat cynical because so many people use comparisons to books that have been runaway successes, and nobody wants to say this is the next “blank” which sold 2000 copies. So I think you have to take it with a grain of salt.
- From the Editors @ Little, Brown: Asya Muchnick — Our new, biweekly series takes you inside the minds of a new guard of book editors. In our first installment, Rachel Kramer Bussel talks to the editor of The Lovely Bones
