So You Want to Be a Publisher? Interview With My Publisher, Anna Valdinger
I have wanted to ask my publisher, Anna Valdinger at Harpercollins Publishers Australia about her career for some time. Recently, I got to do just that!
I was fascinated to learn how she became a publisher and hear about life behind the scenes in book publishing. Anna and I have worked closely together for 11 years, starting out with my book Tuscan Rose.
She is one of the top publishers in Australia, so I also took the opportunity to ask her advice for budding writers.
Anna started her publishing career editing for a literary agency in London, before moving to Pan Macmillan where she worked with a range of authors including Kate Morton, Minette Walters and David Baldacci. She moved to Australia in search of some sunshine and worked at Pan Macmillan in Sydney before joining HarperCollins in 2009 to take responsibility for developing the commercial fiction list. Her authors include Dervla McTiernan, Karin Slaughter, Nicola Moriarty, Tara Moss and me, Belinda Alexandra.
Anna publishes strong commercial fiction across most genres – particularly crime and thrillers, family dramas, contemporary women’s and historical fiction.
Here is what she had to say:
How did you become a publisher? Was it something you knew early on in life you would like to do, or has your career path been a delightful surprise?
I was always a voracious reader but I didn’t think of publishing as a possible career until after I finished university and a friend suggested it. I had no idea how to get started so I researched publishers and sent my CV to everyone I could find. Getting a job was a combination of luck, timing and perseverance. Unpaid work experience became a temp job at Bloomsbury, and then I got a call from Jane Gregory’s literary agency about an entry role. It turns out that sometimes when they say they’ll keep your CV on file, they actually do!
What sort of tasks does a publisher do in a typical day or week?
A publisher is an author’s champion inside the publishing house. So on any given day I can be pitching a book in any number of meetings – talking about covers, marketing campaigns, scheduling, sales comparisons, finance and so on – or I can be editing, talking to authors and agents, looking at budgets and costings, or reading manuscripts. It’s a juggle.
I’m also always on the hunt for new books, so as well as reading new submissions from agents I occasionally take pitches at writers’ festivals or do manuscript assessments for aspiring writers.
What do you love most about your work?
Working with authors to help them realise their vision for their books is so rewarding. When everything comes together across the story, the package, and the campaign to get the book into readers’ hands it is the best feeling. My talented authors are so wonderfully creative and inspiring – you’d struggle to find a better, smarter or funnier group of people – and I consider it a privilege to help them bring their characters to life. I can’t write at all, so I always see my role as something like a midwife helping to bring these books into the world.
What do you wish writers knew about publishers?
That we are, first and foremost, readers and fans. I think sometimes publishers get bad press; that we might push an author into a direction they don’t like, that we only care about making money, or that we make decisions at odds with a writer’s creative vision. But in truth we just want to publish good books well, and work in partnership with our authors. After all, without them we’ve got nothing! And if a book doesn’t sell for whatever reason, we are just as heartbroken.
Also, I’m sad to say we don’t spend our whole day with our feet up on the desk, reading! Most of my time is taken up with meetings and admin so I have to fit in the majority of my reading outside office hours (a challenge with small children at home!).
What advice would you give someone just starting out in their writing career?
Read, read and read more. Looking at how your favourite authors have constructed their books – what is working and what is not – is the best way to shape your own writing and find your voice.
The other advice I’d give is to understand that you have to love writing for its own sake. Very few authors make a lot of money from their books – it’s highly competitive out there and profit margins are slimmer than people realise. But if you persevere, hone your craft and keep at it, you can get there.
Finally, a rejection doesn’t always mean the book is not good. It might not quite be ready or you might simply not have found the right champion for your work. Keep going and good luck!
Who is your favourite fictional hero? And who is your favourite fictional villain? Why?
It’s hard to go past Elizabeth Bennet for my hero. Pride and Prejudice was the first book I studied at school where I found myself reading past the allocated chapters to find out what would happen. Lizzie is flawed but fiercely loyal and loving, and she has to go through a really satisfying emotional journey to get her happy ending. Besides, who doesn’t swoon over Mr Darcy?
For my villain I’m going for the Mayor from the Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness. It’s speculative YA, which isn’t my area of publishing, but I enjoy reading. The Mayor is so brilliantly sinister. At first he seems purely evil but as the novels unfold he becomes this ambiguous figure – he does terrible things but he’s also charismatic in that way manipulative people can be, to the point that you start thinking they’re actually quite reasonable. A great villain has to be three-dimensional; after all, everyone is the hero of their own story.
(Quick sidebar shoutout for Caroline in The Invitation by Belinda Alexandra – another fabulously charming manipulator!)
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