AustLit

‘In editing and publishing, the acquisitions environment consists of a series of wide-ranging and overlapping activities involving key people at various stages in the book's life -cycle. Elizabeth Weiss, for example, describes her publishing role at Allen & Unwin as bringing projects to the publishing house, working on developing projects with authors and keeping an overview of books which are being written, are in production or have been published, basically all through their lives'. It is the commissioning editor and publisher who create and develop ideas for new books, assess manuscripts and publishing proposals, negotiate the terms of the publishing agreement and contract authors, then facilitate the book's journey through the publishing house and out into the wider community.’(Introduction 191)