Size of a publishing company

The size of a publishing company will affect how many people are in each department and whether it even has any departments. One person can run a small publishing company, either doing everything themselves or using freelance workers as needed. Large publishing houses employ hundreds of staff.

The larger the company, the greater the number of people who need to be convinced of the viability of your book in order for it to be accepted. The Assistant Editor has to convince one or two more senior editors, who in turn have to convince an Editorial Director that your book will be right for their list, will increase the company’s reputation and will earn it money.

Offer it to a one-man band and there’s only one obstacle in the way of publication: the owner of the company. The trouble is that the amount of money on offer from a large company will usually be much higher, as will the chances of the book being a success. So how does the size of a publishing house fit into the decision-making process? On one level, the size affects the number of titles they are able to release in a year. Budget and human resource restrictions will mean that some small publishers would be spreading themselves too thinly if they signed up more than ten books a year. Of those ten books, typically two of them might be by authors who have already been published by that firm and one will be a new edition of an older book. Two more might come from publishers in another country (rights purchases). That leaves just five books to be selected from the slush pile each year.

Small firms receive fewer submissions than the big boys, perhaps ten per week instead of a hundred, but that still means they have to reject about 98% of everything they receive, regardless of its quality or suitability. Do the odds get any more favorable for the author when looking at the statistics of large publishers? Actually, no they don’t. Very roughly, 98% of submissions will, in fact, be rejected from all publishers.