Georgia McBride, my partner-in-crime in organizing the “New Adult” contest, has kindly interviewed me about the entire process, my responses to some criticisms, and whether or not there will be another contest in the near future.
GM: Back to the contest itself. It’s simply unheard of for a large publisher to read and vet that many submissions in such a short period of time. It’s quite ambitious. Can you explain how you were able to do it?
JJ: I have a lot of practice reading slush. I worked at a literary agency before coming to St. Martin’s Press. In all honesty, if it weren’t for the business aspects of publishing (administrative things such as emails, phone calls, etc.), slush reading wouldn’t take as long as it does. I carved out a few hours after work every night to go through the submissions and divided them into Yes, No, and Maybe. At the end of it all, I went through all the Maybes and divided them into Yes and No. I did the same with the Yes pile until I had a final Yes pile. I also ran them by a few editorial assistants at work for second opinions, as well as taking into considering Georgia’s recommendations. I tried to get them down to 10-15 final Yeses (I am only human after all), but they were so good, I ended up with 18 final Yeses.
Read the rest of the interview here.
