What is an Acquisitions Editor?
An acquisitions editor is a specialized position at most publishing houses, who focuses on finding and acquiring new manuscripts. Depending on the publishing house, this job can include sorting through unsolicited manuscripts, but it may also just involve contacting existing writers about new projects, or interacting with agents exclusively. An acquisitions editor largely guides the direction of a publishing house through the books they acquire, but ultimately they have to defer in their decisions to superiors as well, so they rarely have a completely free hand in acquiring books. At publishing houses that accept unsolicited manuscripts, an acquisitions editor may devote a fair amount of their time to reading through potential manuscripts from new or emerging authors. Most acquisitions editors have a support staff, either of junior editors or of interns, who help them by reading through the slush pile of unsolicited manuscripts. These subordinates then set aside any manuscripts that th
