MWW: Which publishing lines of Entangled will you hear pitches for?

LP: I’m happy to listen to pitches for any Entangled imprint.

MWW: How should someone best prepare to pitch to you? Should they bring a couple of pages or anything with them? Manuscript should be finished?

LP: The best way to prepare to pitch to me is to relax. Unless your book’s genre is really far off from what we publish, I’m going to request a full regardless of the pitch. Some people have a real talent for pitching a book verbally that doesn’t match the writing, and others fumble through their pitch but have an amazing voice in print. I can’t really tell if a book is going to be great until I read it! So relax, start with word count, genre, and if the book is completed or not, and just tell me the very basics of the conflict and what you love most about the story. The rest we can figure out after I read your manuscript!

MWW: Is there any story genre or sub that is saturated/not appropriate? (Is a mystery without a romance thread acceptable, for example?)

LP: We’re really focused on stories with a strong romantic arc at Entangled. However, we are actively acquiring women’s fiction with a romantic element at this time as long as the main protagonist is 35yo or younger and the tone is humorous. Paranormal is still a bit saturated, but we are looking for vampires and shifters again! Beyond that, I’m just looking for a great story that I can get lost in.

MWW: You were co-founder of Entangled Publishing in 2011, and by 2013, you started collaborating with MacMillan and St. Martin’s. What did it feel like to have this said about you? John Sargent, Macmillan’s CEO, said, “We are hugely impressed with Liz Pelletier’s vision and what she has accomplished in such a short time. We found her out-of-the-box approach to publishing incredibly exciting and saw potential to work together with her on several levels. We think Liz and Entangled have found a new way forward and we think we can help build on that remarkable success.”

LP: John Sargent’s comments were a highlight in my career thus far. He’s truly a visionary in the publishing world, and I’ve been delighted to try to blend a traditional approach to publishing with Entangled’s more out-of-the box approach to digital. Our partnership with Macmillan has been amazing, and we look forward to continuing the relationship for many years to come.

MWW: How would you briefly define episodic writing? How much of a problem is it in manuscripts you see and what’s the cure?

LP: I don’t mind episodic writing in certain genres, the writer just needs to be aware that end of scene hooks are vastly important in today’s saturated market. So ending a scene with a pretty bow, as would happen in most scenes of this style, simply is not strong enough to create a bestseller in the romance market. In addition, stringing together a series of small conflicts that can be resolved within the scene is a good way to lose the attention of a reader as there is no main, overarching and organic conflict pulling the reader forward in the story written as episodic fiction. Chicklit, as an example, can do quite well in this form of writing, however one would still need to address a larger, big picture conflict as well as end of scene hooks to create an unputdownable read.

And just for fun:

Twitter or Facebook?  Facebook

Print or e-book? ebook

Disney or Universal? Disney

Writing platform or story? STORY

As an editor, if you can’t have both, will you choose writing style over content or vice versa? Writing style