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:
Which book do you wish you'd published?
Caroline says: That’s a really tricky one. Occasionally you do look at other
publishers’ books doing well and think, ‘I wish I had that on my list!’ but in
reality, the book is doing well because of how that particular publisher put it
out onto the shelves and you may not have made the exact same magic combination
of decisions to get it there (cover design, title, price, marketing and
publicity strategies, retail promotions…). So mostly, you just feel generally
happy that something is taking off so well for the industry overall – with a tiny side
order of jealousy. If I was forced to pick one from the last handful of years,
it would probably be Unsticky by Sarra Manning. I remember
reading it alongside a former boss of mine when it was on submission and we
were gutted (there’s no other word for it) that our imprint didn’t win the
auction. It had such a great voice and a completely engaging storyline. When
you get excited about a new book you have to brace yourself for the possibility
that you won’t be the successful editor in the end, but so far – touch wood –
I’ve been rather lucky in signing all the authors I’ve set out to, and only
having one pinched from me by another publisher!
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