An Interview with Harlequin Editor Joanne Carr - Part 1

While I’m hacking away at my manuscript and reinventing it, I thought I’d share with you some thoughts from my Harlequin Editor, Joanne Carr. She graciously agreed to be interviewed for the panel I did with Christopher Newport University, and here are the answers to some of the questions I asked. I thought several of you might be interested.

When writers submit material to you, what things have made you want to throw up your hands in despair? Have there been any submissions that made you groan? Anything funny or horrible to share?

Clichéd openings and premises are one of things that can make me throw my hands up in despair and groan! Here are some of the most common: the heroine is on a plane, off to start a new life after the end of a terrible relationship, or the heroine is late for her new job, everything that could possibly go wrong does, she turns up to find her new boss is the mysterious stranger she kissed/had a one night stand with/threw coffee all over on the train or another common opening at a funeral.

Sometimes I read through a pile of submissions, say about ten in total, and can count up the number of stories that start in this way and end up with a tally of: three ‘heroines on a plane’, two ‘bumped into the boss’ and one funeral!

All of these premises can of course work and we have and still do publish stories with such openings, but if you want to catch an editor’s eye, there must be something original and attention grabbing from that first page!

What sorts of things would make you stop reading material? Boring plots? Bad grammar? Cliches?

See previous point regarding clichés.

Bad grammar is something that can be fixed, so unless it is completely unreadable, this wouldn’t necessarily put me off if the submission had something about it. Similarly, boring plots can sometimes be forgivable if the author has a strong and unique voice and great characters. Plot and grammar can be worked on – real talent is often something born, not made.

In an average week, how many submissions do you receive? Out of that group, roughly how many full manuscripts do you request? (again, on average, since there will be good weeks and bad weeks)

It is probably easier to answer this in relation to submissions per month, because of our rota system; editors do not receive submissions every week…

We currently receive on average 100 submissions a month and each editor receives their share, say about ten a month. In a good batch out of those ten, about one will be a send for, but it is really hard to put numbers on this…

**Note to blog readers: This is on top of the 55+ manuscripts that Joanne has to read, that are written by contracted authors. Editors have to read and edit at least one full manuscript per week and attend numerous meetings, as well as handle submissions by unpublished authors.**

I’ll be back with part II next week. In the meantime, have a very Happy Easter!