publishing 101: when a book goes to auction

There’s an interesting post about book auctions over at the Blue Rose Girls’ blog. (The Blue Rose Girls are an informal conglomerate of children’s book illustrators, writers and editor; they named themselves in homage to the Red Rose Girls, who I recently mentioned in my post about Brandywine.)

What exactly is a book auction? Well, they’re probably something you haven’t heard of unless you happen to work in the publishing industry (though occasionally you might read in the New York Times something along the lines of “Stephen King’s latest book was sold at auction to so-and-so-imprint”). Frankly, most books aren’t sold this way. But those that are usually considered to be very commercially viable — potential bestsellers, in other words. And they do happen to first time authors. Think The Devil Wears Prada, Nanny Diaries, that sort of thing.

Here’s a brief description of a book auction from the BRG:

“An auction occurs when a submission has been sent out by an [literary] agent to multiple editors, and more than one editor is interested in making an offer. When the first editor expresses interest and/or makes an offer, the agent will go to the other editors to see what their interest level is. If two or more editors are interested in making an offer, the agent will usually hold an official auction.”

As in real estate, usually the highest bidder prevails, though there are sometimes other considerations in play. For example, one publisher might offer a larger advance, but another house might offer a more attractive advertising budget, or be better positioned to place a book in the marketplace.

However, a book auction gets tricky when multiple imprints of the same publishing house express interest in the same book. (A publishing house can have numerous small imprints under their umbrella. For example, Penguin Putnam Group is made up of Viking Books, Viking Studio Books, Putnam Books, Penguin Books and so on.) In these situations, there is usually a house bid policy in place, which means that the imprints can’t bid against each other. The way this works is that the publishing house itself bids for the book; if they win it, the house then decides which imprint gets the book. (At least that’s how I understand it — any agents out there want to clarify this for me?)

Sometimes, even if there are several publishing companies interested in a book, one publishing house will decide to avoid an auction by offering a preemptive bid. This bid is intended to be large enough wipe all the other competitors off the block and often does. That’s what happened with the New Book, which was very nice indeed.

But 99% of book acquisitions don’t end in an auction. They just end up published — which is a happy event in itself.

To learn more about book auctions, visit the Blue Rose Girls’s blog.

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Have a question about publishing, writing or illustrating books you’d like answered on Publishing 101? Send it to Kris: e-comment at artandwords dot com.

Technorati Tags: publishing, book auctions, how to sell a book to a publisher, how editors acquire books

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