Jake Morrissey is an editor at Riverhead who is known for discovering Calvin and Hobbes and editing few books per year from acclaimed authors. He provides intensive editing for debut authors, tailoring his approach based on their needs. Out of hundreds of manuscripts he receives each year, he accepts less than 0.5% to publish. His main advice for writers is to focus on telling their own story and not worry about getting published.

2. Jake Morrissey
Random House’s Executive
Editor on writing and the odds of
getting published

3. Jake Morrissey, my editor at Penguin Random
House’s Riverhead imprint, is a publishing legend.
He discovered Calvin and Hobbes from the slush
pile, edits only six books a year which
includes authors like Marlon James (winner of the
2015 Man Booker prize) and Anne Lamott (Bird by
Bird) among other thespians, and is a critically
acclaimed author himself.

4. For me, he’s been much more than an editor. He’s
taught me how to write fiction. I came to him as a
rookie with a couple of good ideas but a
completely unpolished

5. manuscript and over seven drafts of patient
editing, he gave me an equivalent of a fiction
writing MFA and made THE YOGA OF MAX’S
DISCONTENT a novel I’m proud of. Here he
answers questions I thought would be most
helpful for debut novelists who visit my blog

6. KB: I know you do very little fiction. What makes a
novel stand out for you to consider it for your list?
JM: For a novel to appeal to me, it needs to do
three things: Tell me a story I haven’t heard
before. Tell it well. And surprise me.
-

7. I am an editor and a reader who’s interested
in story: I want things to happen in the novels I
publish and read. I know some very talented, very
successful editors who are primarily interested in
an author’s voice. While I agree that’s important, I
doubt that 10,000

8. years ago our ancestors sat around the fire trying
to come up with a witty turn of phrase or a cogent
metaphor. They told stories to try to understand
the world around them and to understand
themselves a little better. Shakespeare’s language
may be what we

9. remember today, but things happen in his plays:
People go insane; they fall in and out of love; they
fight battles; they kill their enemies, their lovers,
themselves. I want the fiction I publish to be about
engaging reader in what happens next to the
characters they read and (I hope) care about.

10. KB: I was incredibly impressed by and extremely
thankful of how deeply you edited THE YOGA OF
MAX’S DISCONTENT. The book is as much yours as
mine. Is this kind of involvement usual? Is there any
difference between the level of editing you do for debut
authors versus more established authors?

11. JM: I’m glad you enjoyed the editorial process.
Not everyone does. I have two thoughts about
editing.
The first is that good editing is invisible. If you do it
right, the reader can’t see the seams you helped
the author stitch together, the sections you added
or deleted, the tone you helped him/her adapt.

12. At the same time, my editing isn’t the same for
every author I work with. It shouldn’t be, as each
author has different needs. My job, as I see it, is to
try to help the author write the best book he/she
can, and I tailor my own approach to a manuscript
to suit them.

13. For example, if an author needs me to read each
chapter one at a time and offer feedback, I will do
that (always with the proviso that I reserve the
right to change my mind once I’ve seen the
manuscript as a whole). If an author needs to give
me the entire manuscript in one complete dose,
that’s fine, too.

14. No matter how long or short a manuscript is, I
read a manuscript twice before I send it to the
author with my edits: I read it once as an
interested reader, where I try to approach it as
someone who knows very little about the
manuscript other than I’m eager to read it

15. In that read I try to let the manuscript envelope me
as a reader, and I can see where the author
succeeded and where he/she might need a little
bit of help. It’s a little bit like walking into a sneak
preview of a movie not knowing what the movie is
really going to be about but knowing you’re
interested in the people who made it.

16. I mark up the manuscript as I read, noting what I
like and have questions about. When I’m done
with that read, I start again, this time setting aside
any enthusiasm I have for it and intentionally try to
find the flaws in it. It’s a bit like being an English
teacher who has to grade a pile of essays: Where
are the mistakes, the poor turns of phrase, the
logical inconsistencies?

17. I don’t really approach the work of debut novelists
any differently than I do authors I’ve worked with
before, though with them I usually know what to
look for. For example, an author whose work I
know may overuse words or phrases, or rely too
heavily on plot

18. points or insights, or whose work sags in the
middle of a manuscript. Those are the sorts of
potholes that only someone who knows the
author’s previous work might notice.

19. KB: Business strategist Benjamin Gilad writes,
“There are 313.8 million potential writers out of
313.9 million Americans. (The others have real
jobs.) Defying odds lower than winning Powerball,
those starry-eyed hopefuls keep sending their
manuscripts to publishers

20. You can guess the rest! Even out of the filtered list
of submissions that come to you via agents, out of
every 100 manuscripts that cross your desk, how
many would you make an offer to?

21. JM: I see hundreds of manuscripts and proposals
every year and take on less than a half of 1% of
them. I tell prospective authors that if they want to
make it rich as an author, buy a lottery ticket. You
have just as much of a chance of hitting it big as
you do writing books.

22. You shouldn’t write because you want to be the
next Stephen King or see yourself as next week’s
literary sensation. If you do that, you will invariably
disappoint yourself. In my opinion, your goal
should be to write the truth as you see it, be it
fiction or nonfiction, and dig as deep as you can
within yourself to achieve that.

23. And to be clear: I do not claim to have all of the
answers. I can’t publish everything well. I know
that there are very successful books and authors
who are much better published in the hands of
colleagues and at other publishing houses than
they would have been in mine.

24. KB: Do you ever consider a writer’s platform when
you make an offer to an author in fiction? Any
advice you can give a debut author on building a
meaningful platform that can get them noticed
rather than a scattershot approach?

25. JM: An author’s platform is one avenue publishers
use to attract readers to a book. For novelists,
raising awareness about a new book varies widely
depending on both the book’s focus – is it a
thriller? Women’s fiction? Fantasy? – and how the
publisher

26. approaches it. For example, some houses rely on
generating review attention, others on getting the
word out via specific communities (science fiction,
for example), while other use social media. Still
others use a combination of all three.

27. I suppose the short answer is while a “platform” is
helpful in the abstract, it’s important for an author
and a publisher to work together before, during
and post-publication to create ways for readers to
learn about a new book.

28. KB: What’s your one advice to an aspiring writer
who’s just about to embark on writing a
manuscript and wants you to publish him/her?

29. M: My advice to an aspiring writer interested in
having me publish him/her is to ignore me entirely
and to focus on the story he/she wants to tell.
Because in the end, you, the author, must please
yourself. You shouldn’t waste your time wondering
whether I might like something enough to publish
it. Write the book you want to read.

30. KB: Finally, I’m very curious. Would a Calvin and
Hobbes cross your desk now? Your list seems so
much different now.

31. JM: A Calvin & Hobbes wouldn’t come across my
desk today, as the cartooning world now is very
different than it was when Bill Watterson submitted
it. As are print newspapers. Back in the
1980s, the comics page was one of the few
pages in newspapers that every reader read: It
had a wide readership.

32. Today, with much of media migrating online,
readers can avoid vast sections of traditional news
to find what appeals to them. As a result, the
impact of comics, I would argue, is less broad that
it was then.

33. Cartoonists can and do build their own devoted
readerships online, though they tend to be much
narrower in focus than Calvin & Hobbes, The Far
Side and Peanuts were when they appeared
regularly in newspapers

34. You’ve heard it from Jake–focus on writing the
story you want to write this year! And if you need a
little push, don’t forget to sign up for my writing
and publishing course here.

35. For more details
Visit us @
http://www.karanbajaj.com/