16 May S2 E13: A Conversation with Allison Scott, Acquisitions Editor in Educational Publishing
S2 E13: Being an Acquisitions Editor in the Educational Publishing Market: A Conversation with Allison Scott
By Marleen Seegers, Co-Founder of 2 Seas Agency and Host of The Make Books Travel Podcast
May 16, 2021
Welcome to season 2, episode 13!
Today’s guest is Allison Scott, who works as Senior Acquisitions Editor in the book publishing arm of ASCD, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit education association that provides professional learning products and services for K-12 educators.
That is quite a mouthful! What it boils down to is that Allison works on books that help teachers and school administrators in the K-12 system do their job better.
For non-US listeners, K-12 means from kindergarten to 12th grade, and includes children aged roughly between 5 and 18 years old.
This is the first time I’m interviewing a publishing professional who’s not active in the trade publishing world.
Not only did I want to interview Allison because we have a special connection that I’ll mention at the beginning of the interview, I also wanted to learn more about her specialty field, which was completely unknown territory for me before I interviewed her.
Always be learning!
Curious to hear more? Listen to my conversation with Allison Scott.
Here are some of the questions I asked her:
- What does your job entail on a daily basis?
- How did you end up working in educational publishing?
- How do you find your authors?
- Are authors you work with often represented by literary agents?
- What was the state of the educational publishing market before the pandemic started?
- And what does it look like now, with so much home/remote learning still happening throughout the US?
- Does your company work with a foreign rights agent?
- What are your biggest international markets*?
- What is the one piece of advice you have for people wanting to work in your specific field?
*Allison wanted to make the correction that her company, ASCD, provided professional learning services in Saudi Arabia. During the interview she had mistakenly said that it was the UAE.
Show Notes
Allison’s book recommendations:
- Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve
- Ling Ma, Severance
About Allison:
Allison Scott is a Senior Acquisitions Editor in the book publishing arm of ASCD, a DC-based nonprofit education association that provides professional learning products and services for K-12 educators.
For the past thirteen years, Allison has worked in this area of academic publishing, searching out education experts and developing books that help teachers and school administrators so their jobs better.
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