As writers carry out their new year’s resolutions to revise their manuscripts, they have to be wondering: what do editors want this year?
The Andrew Lownie Literary Agency, a London-based company, has decided to ask that question to twenty different editors. His list included HarperCollins associate publisher Myles Archibald, Random House publisher Trevor Dolby, Penguin Press/Particular Books editorial director Georgina Laycock, Little, Brown publisher David Shelley and Bantam Press/Doubleday publishing director Susanna Wadeson.
Here’s more from Archibald at HarperCollins: “Ideas or stories with a strong, interesting narrative structure is essential for all media and is what non-fiction now needs. It is also interesting that non-fiction works well with broad subjects, or very specific, illuminating stories. Finally, it is striking how stories that seem to have waned from people’s memories can have a massive resurgence – so perhaps new takes on old stories might be a vein to mine.”