Honing My Sixth Sense for Great Books
I have a sixth sense when it comes to snuffing out story plots.
It’s true!
Most times when my husband and I sit down to watch a television show or a movie, I can predict exactly what will happen, even if it’s far-fetched. For instance, in Only Murders in the Building, I’ve been able to predict the murderer in the last few episodes of each season before they do the reveal. I can almost always tell when a character is pregnant and they haven’t announced it yet, and I know which characters are going to end up together from the beginning (think Nick and Jess).
Some might say that it’s lazy writing if I’m able to figure things out so easily, but it’s actually the opposite. I’ve studied creative writing and storytelling for over ten years at this point so my eye is trained for the formulas writers use and how to detect plot lines. This means I can tell if a book is going to be a good book within the first three chapters of reading it, which is a skill I use for choosing titles for the bookstore. It took time to hone this sixth sense so let’s start at the beginning:
When I was in high school, I took a creative writing class and started to learn about the basics of writing. This was much more than how to use similes and metaphors, but how to craft characters and what a story arc is. We also spent a period of time discussing how to get a book published. I discovered what an advance is (payment for your copyright), who the Big 5 publishers are, and that there are many roles to get a book published like a graphic designer, editor, literary agent, and marketer. Diving into the publishing world opened my eyes to a whole new industry I didn’t even realize I could be a part of without being an author.
The same semester I had the creative writing class, I also had a project for my English class where we had to read a book then “pitch it” to be picked up for a movie. This meant creating a display with a potential cast, synopsis, movie trailer, and answer questions about the book from teachers posing as producers. With that project and the creative writing class, I realized that I could flourish in a job where I pitched books to publishers for them to take on.
As I applied to colleges, I specifically sought out ones with publishing programs. I ended up attending my dream school University of North Carolina Wilmington where I achieved a BFA in creative writing, minor in English, and of course, a publishing certificate. During my publishing courses, I spent time crafting different pitches for books and discovered how competitive the publishing industry is. I was thinking about being a literary agent until I realized that the odds of a publisher accepting anything I pitch is about 1%. Yes, you read that right. Therefore, I decided that I didn’t want to pitch books to publishers anymore. I wanted the books pitched to me.
Being the person who chooses what books to publish comes with the responsibility of recognizing what makes a book a good book. This is where my craft classes came into play as my days were spent reading classmates’ work and picking apart sentence structure, plot lines, foreshadowing, and character development. We studied larger novels like The Last September and The House on Mango Street. Countless short stories were read and many lectures by published authors were listened to. By the time I graduated, I could detect great books from good books from okay books to not great books.
After college, I ended up getting a job in acquisitions at a hybrid publisher. This meant that I achieved my dream of having books pitched to me to decide what will be published only five months after graduation! Over the next six years, I read thousands of book submissions, accepted a few hundred, and rose to Acquisitions Director. Understanding what makes a book good helped me to quickly review submissions and make decisions that would be best for the author and the company.
Now, I use those same skills as I pick out books for the bookstore! A lot of the books I feature are independently published. This means they are not tied to a traditional publisher, but instead are either published from a hybrid publisher or the author self-published their work. There used to be a stigma that if you self-published, your work wasn’t good enough to be actually published.
That’s a load of crap.
With publishers accepting 1% of books, there are so many amazing titles that are passed up because maybe the author doesn’t have a large enough following on social media, the publisher’s catalog is already full for the next two years, or maybe they don’t think the book will sell to the masses even though it might do really well with niche markets. There are so many reasons a publisher might turn down a book, which I witnessed first-hand.
I wanted the bookstore to give independently published authors a larger voice and show that they don’t have to be traditionally published to be placed in a store. My background is perfect to help find those titles that are truly great books and to amplify them here so that they can find their best audience: you.
