"From the Editors" is a new biweekly series exclusively for AvantGuild members. The first installment is available to all mediabistro.com readers for a limited time. You can learn more about Avant Guild here.

Title: Senior Editor
Age: 30
Previous publishing experience: Muchnick's been in publishing for seven years, four of them as an editor at Little, Brown. She was previously an assistant at Knopf.

Mediabistro: What kinds of books to do you work on?

Muchnick: I do a combination of literary fiction and narrative nonfiction. With nonfiction it's easier to talk about categories. I acquire history, some historical biography; occasionally I'll do literary biography although that's a tough category. I also do some journalism, some memoir, and, believe it or not, I have a book coming up that could probably best be described as philosophy.

In terms of specific kinds of history—American, European—I do some quirky history, history with an unusual slant or hook. I have one book I'm editing now that charts eight different historical vignettes taken over a period of 2000 years, tracking the ways exotic animals were used throughout history to display or shore up power and as tools of diplomacy. That's a great example. It's serious history, it's done in a very literary way, but it's also approaching the subject from a different angle.

Fiction is much harder to say what you like and what you don't like because the range of things I enjoy is quite wide. What I don't like is to be pigeonholed as somebody who only buys books about grief or death or only buys books that are women's books. The quality of the writing and a strong narrative voice are what stand out for me. The book can be about anything. If the writing intrigues and moves me, then I'll be interested in it.

Mediabistro: Where do the manuscripts come from?

Muchnick: From agents. Almost exclusively at the bigger houses, editors only consider agented manuscripts.

Mediabistro: Do you look at everything that lands on your desk?

Muchnick: I look at everything. I don't by any means read everything through, but I do take a look, at least, at the pitch letter and a couple of pages of everything that comes across my desk. I don't know how usual or unusual that is. Some people delegate that first stage of triage to an assistant. But there may be an area that only I know I'm interested in, so I generally will still look at everything first.

After that, usually there'll be a pile of things that I would like to keep reading, a pile of things that I'm pretty sure are not for me, and a pile of maybes that often an assistant or another editor in house will take a look at quickly. There's a lot coming in and you can't read all of it so you have to decide which manuscripts to focus your attention on.

Mediabistro: How many manuscripts do you receive in a given week or month?

Muchnick: It really varies, there are on and off times, when you'll get more or fewer manuscripts. I keep a submissions log. In a year's time, I probably get between 200 and 300 submissions. I may sign up anywhere between four and eight books a year, so that should give you a good idea of what the percentages are.

That's not the way that any of the editors who work here look at it from the outset though. It's not that only a certain percentage of submissions have a chance of being books that we publish. You have to approach every project as a potential book that you will publish, otherwise you're too jaded.

Mediabistro: With the success of the bestsellers you've edited, have you gotten more submissions?

Muchnick: The Lovely Bones was published in June 2002 and Dogs of Babel in June 2003. As a result of those, I think people learned my name and what kind of things I was looking for, and that certainly helped to increase the number of submissions. But there's probably some unwritten average that editors of a certain type of book may get, and once people know you in the industry, you'll probably stay around that number, so it won't increase exponentially year to year.

There's a period of time when a young, new editor has to spend energy letting people know what books you're looking for, and after that you're mostly going to get the submissions you're going to get, though keeping in contact with agents about your interests is always valuable.

Mediabistro: What's your favorite part of your job?

Muchnick: My favorite part of my job is the excitement of discovery, the feeling you get when you're reading something that you're really falling in love with. It's the same feeling that anybody has when they're reading a book that they start to love. The difference is that when you read it after it's published, it's out in the world. You may have read a review or seen it in the bookstore or seen the cover. You have more of an idea of what you're picking up as a consumer.

When we get manuscripts, they come from certain agents and they come with a pitch letter that has a brief description. But the truth is, it's almost like opening a book with a completely white cover. You never really know what you're going to find inside, so there is that thrill when the book inside is something that really entices you, when it's really something unusual and wonderful.

Mediabistro: Do you prefer to work with first-time authors, or do you also work with people you've previously edited?

Muchnick: Both. I've re-signed a number of authors who did at least one book with me and are going to be writing another book. That's what every editor hopes will happen: that you'll build a relationship with an author rather than doing only one-offs.

Mediabistro: What do you look for in the manuscripts you end up choosing?

Muchnick: Number one is the quality of writing. If somebody has a beautiful way of expressing their thoughts, of drawing a character, of setting a scene. If there's a common thread to the books that I have been excited about, I almost feel as though somebody from the outside may see it better than I might see it myself. Some element of the bittersweet, balancing out the sadder, darker sides of life with an element of humor or lightness or optimism or love or what have you. A lot of the books that appeal to me tell a story that on the face of it is a dark story but there's an element there that redeems itself.

Mediabistro: Have you noticed any trends in the publishing world lately?

Muchnick: One example of something that I've noticed recently is that it's harder to publish stories than it used to be. It's harder to buy them, it's harder to publish them. Short stories have traditionally been what publishers called a "tough category." People who are tried and true fans of writing recognize that lots of great writers got their start with stories, and a lot of MFA programs encourage people to start with stories, so you have all these budding writers who want to sell their stories and a marketplace that can only accommodate so many short-story collections.

How do I feel about that? It's a shame, certainly, but I also think that perhaps that can inspire or push young writers to write novels sooner than they otherwise might, which in some cases is a good thing.

Of course, some writers aren't ready to write in the longer format, so it depends on the writer whether the pressure to write a novel is a bonus or a problem. But I hope that the climate for short stories comes back around, that it's one of those things that swings like a pendulum. And there are always exceptions to that rule, there are story collections that get a lot of attention and sell quite well. That readers are still willing to come to story collections means that the art form is not dead.

Mediabistro: Have any editors been particularly inspiring to you?

Muchnick: Michael Pietsch, who's my current boss, publisher of Little, Brown. At Knopf, I worked for Ann Close and Ash Green, so all three have been great influences on me and mentors to me.

Mediabistro: Do you have any advice for writers looking to work with you?

Muchnick: Any writer is best served by writing the kind of books that they love to read and writing what they're interested in, what makes them passionate. Sometimes when I see a manuscript that seems as if the author is trying to write the kind of book he thinks other people will want to read; it comes off as artificial. To stay true to one's own interests and one's own passions, that's the best advice any writer could have.

Mediabistro: Do you have any advice for agents?

Muchnick: I don't think agents need any advice from me, since I've never worked outside of editorial for any significant length of time. And most agents probably have their own mentors. For the most part, all of us are in this business because we love it; otherwise, there are really a lot easier ways of making a buck.

Mediabistro: In terms of trends, how do you feel about the attempts to cash in on a "new" trend or way of storytelling? For example, from now on, every book with a dead narrator will be likened to The Lovely Bones. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Muchnick: I think it's inevitable, it's a shorthand that people use within the industry and then it becomes a shorthand within the marketplace to communicate quickly. For the most part, those comparisons don't hold true. When an agent sends a pitch letter that compares a manuscript to the latest bestseller, it's very rare that you feel that manuscript holds up.

In general, as editors, our reactions are often somewhat cynical because so many people use comparisons to books that have been runaway successes, and nobody wants to say this is the next "blank" which sold 2000 copies. So I think you have to take it with a grain of salt.

But it happens in every area of media; movies that come out are touted as the next this or that. It's just the way in a world where people are overloaded with information to try to get them to make quick evaluations: if you like this, then you'll like that. I don't think there's much we can do about it. Hopefully a good book will be judged on its merits, no matter what has come before.

Rachel Kramer Bussel is an editor, writer and blogger.