Tom: Thoughts on Acquisitions

Who would have thought the For Dummies series was born out of the need for someone to learn about DOS? It was interesting to see how a relatively niche computer science topic could have sparked such a successful publishing phenomenon. 

I also noticed how in Rule 6, it states that acquisition editors should stay away from sequels, especially they are memoirs. This made me think of Jay and his disdain for memoirs -- Jay, have you ever tried a sequel to a memoir? I wonder how many of these exist?.

My favorite excerpt from the reading: "An agent once submitted a book proposal on procrastination to me, and I decided not to acquire it on the assumption that readers would never get around to buying it."

I thought this was pretty hilarious, but it was quite interesting to see the unique perspectives some of the acquisition editors must possess to effectively choose what to acquire.