Alexandra Aceves hosted our Instagram on November 6th for our weekly #SalaSundays series. Below are a few questions that we asked Alexandra.
Latinx in Pub (LxP): What do you do?
Alexandra Aceves (AA): I'm an Associate Editor at Holiday House Publishing. My job has two distinct sets of responsibilities: on one hand, I'm acquiring and editing new books (primarily MG and YA novels and graphic novels) for the Holiday House list. On the other, I'm overseeing the expansion of Holiday House's Spanish language publishing program. This entails looking through our backlist for books that have translation potential, coordinating with translators on new Spanish editions, steering our upcoming Spanish books through the in-house routing process, researching Spanish publishing industry standards and best practices, and scouting submissions for potential new frontlist titles that we could also publish in Spanish.
LxP: How did you get started?
AA: I had a kind of circuitous path to my publishing career. I did a traditional publishing internship many years ago now and had such a terrible experience that I decided not to pursue publishing and went into academia instead. Eventually, I realized that my heart just wasn't in academia and that kidlit publishing was where I really wanted to be, so I pivoted back. My breakout job in the industry was as an editorial assistant at Junior Library Guild, where I learned the industry from the school and library perspective. And then about a year ago I left JLG for Holiday House--my first anniversary is coming up on November 15th!
LxP: What do you wish you knew before getting into the industry?
AA: I was really not prepared for how much negotiating goes down--across the industry in general, and in editorial specifically. Like, negotiating a book deal with an agent, negotiating over a P&L at an acquisition meeting...I am not a natural haggler and have been kind of dismayed to learn what a big part of my job it is! It's definitely the only aspect of what I do that I don't enjoy, and I always dread having to go through that process to acquire a manuscript I love and want for my list. But passion for and belief in the manuscript gets me through every time. Plus, everyone I've worked with is so nice, and everyone knows it's just business; the issue is really just me being in my head about it.
LxP: What book are you currently working on or reading?
AA: I would love to talk about the books I'm working on right now because I'm incredibly excited about them, but I can't because none of my acquisitions have been announced yet! I did just wrap up editing the Spanish edition of Crystal Maldonado's No Filter and Other Lies, which was such a fun project. And my current non-work read is The Town of Babylon by Alejandro Varela, which is devastatingly lovely.
Alexandra Aceves is a Latine writer and editor originally from Mexico City and currently based in Brooklyn. She works as an associate editor at Holiday House, where she oversees the expansion of the Holiday House Spanish language publishing program while also acquiring YA and middle grade fiction and elementary STEM nonfiction for Holiday House's English language list. Alex is looking for fresh-feeling contemporary realism, soft-genre fiction that draws from non-European traditions, and research-grounded historical fiction with an unusual setting. She is passionate about supporting marginalized creators and is actively seeking stories by and about people typically excluded from representation in children’s literature, particularly stories from the LGBTQ+ and Latine communities. Alex was the 2015 Honor winner of Lee & Low's New Visions Award for previously unpublished YA fiction writers whose work centers characters from marginalized communities; her debut novel is forthcoming from Lee & Low's Tu Books imprint.
