From Cynthia Sterling's excellent newsletter.

In 2006, NAL had one author who regularly made the NYT printed bestseller list. In 2007, they had 3 authors. So far in 2008, they have had seven authors make the printed NYT list. In 2007, they had 7 total NYT bestsellers. So far this year they’ve had 18 NYT bestsellers. Some of this is due to the separation of mass market and trade paper on the list. But Ms. Zion [Claire Zion, editorial director] attributed some of this growth to NAL’s commitment to romance. “We publish authors as individuals,” Ms Zion said. “When people ask us what we’re looking for, we’re looking for a voice ....we look at the authors as individuals and ask ourselves... ‘how can we grow this particular person?’”

The first part of the Spotlight focused on showing covers and talking about books by some of NAL’s bestselling authors, including New York Times’ bestsellers. NAL has published a number of paranormal romances, but they’ve also had success with traditional contemporary and historical romance and romantic suspense. In historical, they like ever-popular time periods and settings such as Regency England, and Medieval England and Scotland. They’ve done Georgian books. The American West and the American Colonial period are still tough to sell.

NAL also publishes a number of women’s fiction titles. They’ve published a number of successful historical novels based on the lives of real women in history, ranging from Anne Boleyn to the woman who inspired the building of the Taj Mahal. They publish trade paper books under NAL Accent and NAL. They publish 8-10 Accent titles each year, written by and for women featuring “outstanding writing and elements with broad commercial appeal.” The books are geared toward book clubs, with reading guides and other material in the back of the book.

NAL is new to the erotica market, but editors are actively acquiring. They’re looking for “sexy, exciting, erotic romances with high concepts and original voices” for both the NAL Eclipse and NAL Heat imprints. They would like dark, violent, frankly sexual romantic suspense. Their experience has been that novels do better in erotica than anthologies.

The second half of the program was devoted to questions. Among the questions answered: NAL publishes a number of first-time authors each year. They are definitely open to new authors. They do accept unagented queries officially, but the reality is that unsolicited material is in the last place for response and it may be a long time before you hear back on unsolicited material. They also officially accept email submissions, but hard copy is preferable, as their spam filter blocks a great deal of email submissions. They have no set word length for manuscripts, although Ms. Zion said that ‘200,000 words is too many trees and 40,000 words is not enough trees.’

Why do books get rejected? Many very good books get rejected because the publishing program at a house may not be right for that book. The publisher doesn’t know how to sell or hasn’t had success in the past with that particular type of book.

Ms. Zion asked if the members of the audience were buying fewer books because of the economy. The overwhelming opinion of this group was that they were buying more books because it represents cheap entertainment – but they were buying more online to save the money of going out to the store. About half the audience were fans of electronic books, while the rest didn’t seem to like them at all.

Laura Cifelli edits romance. She was not at the conference because she was on maternity leave.

Kara Cesare acquires romance, women’s fiction and historical fiction.

Ellen Edwards edits trade paper women’s fiction in both Accent and NAL, contemporary and historical romance, cozy mysteries and women’s suspense.

Kerry Donovan is interested in romance of all types and erotica, mysteries and women’s fiction.

Send your queries to them at New American Library, 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014