A while back I attended the Lone Star RWA meeting in Houston, where Liz Pelletier from Entangled spelled out what her company looks for in a potential novel. I tend to be brief so I’ll give you the gist of it here.

The publishing industry is competitive and difficult. A publisher has to evaluate each manuscript on it’s potential to sell. This is done usually by committee, providing that the manuscript makes it past one or two reviewers.

My best advice to authors based on her words: Be productive. Write well and write in abundance.

They hope to sell at least 12,000 copies of each manuscript that they put under contract. That’s the sales number they aim for. If sales stall on a book they feel real good about, they will often change things up a bit to garner additional coverage. Perhaps they’ll change the cover to make it more appealing, or just different. Sometimes this helps to target a specific market that they missed and thus boosts sales.

What does it take to hit Amazon‘s best seller list? They target 8,000 copies sold in a week (digital only).

Okay, that was the short and sweet version of a lengthy discussion. If you get the chance to hear Liz speak, she’s a wonderful lady. Sharp, savvy, and very enthusiastic about making her authors a success. Here’s a link to her bio on Entangled’s website: http://www.entangledpublishing.com/management/

And here’s a really great blog post written by another author about a similar discussion in Denver. Since, as you may or may not know, I like to share others’ posts when I find a good one, here you go:

http://jessicaaspen.com/2011/10/22/retreat-bijou-elizabeth-pelletier-of-entangled-publishing/