This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Caroline Hogg has worked in publishing for almost ten years, at Little, Brown Book Group and more recently at Avon, HarperCollins. She's currently at Pan Macmillan as Senior Commissioning Editor for Commercial Women's Fiction. She knows her stuff!
Today's question comes from a Novelicious reader who asks:
Do you have an ideal reader for the books that you edit?
Caroline says: I think my ideal reader is me, which is
rather handy! I look for books that make me really happy, or emotional, or
intrigued and on the edge of my seat. My rule of thumb is that if there’s
something about a book that has me going head over heels, it’s likely that it
will appeal to other women’s fiction fans too, because I read women’s fiction.
I’ve read lots of books over the years, as this readership has, and I know how savvy
women’s fiction readers are, what great taste they have, how thoroughly they
expect to be entertained and engaged by what they’re reading – because I have
really high standards for the books I read too. If I choose four or five books
for my summer holiday, they’d better do the job! There’s nothing worse than
being disappointed by a plot with big holes, a heroine you can’t relate to or a
book that just doesn’t match the cover look it was sold with. I suppose the
readers I imagine in my head have the same expectations I do, so I want to give
them the best books I can, beautifully edited and with exactly the right cover.
Have a writing or publishing related question for Caroline? Just email a question to kirsty@writingtipsoasis.com, ask on our Facebook or Twitter or just leave a comment below!