Writers always ponder what type of manuscripts editors want to acquire.
The Andrew Lownie Literary Agency, a London-based organization, posed that question to dozens of different fiction and nonfiction editors from both the UK and the US.
The lists included Simon & Schuster senior editor Michelle Howry, St. Martin’s Press editor Daniela Rapp, and Little Brown & Company editorial director John Parsley.
Here’s more from Rapp at Simon & Schuster: “I work exclusively on non-fiction, with about half my list consisting of narrative non-fiction (science, history, pop culture, memoir) and the other half more prescriptive, practical non-fiction (diet, health, self-help, a little parenting). On the narrative side of things, I had some nice success last year with a book called The Girls of Atomic City , a “hidden” (or at least, little known) story about women in a secret government town during World War II who helped build the atomic bomb … only they didn’t know it at the time. It really straddled the history and popular science audiences nicely, and I’d love to find more books like this.”