Reader Reports

Reader report for The Last Stop, Lodestone Books

Reader reports

You do not fill out this section. Once you submit your proposal we send a notification out to our readers to write a report, which usually arrives within a week, though times can vary by up to a week depending on volume of submissions and staff availability.

We aim to have a minimum of three reports on your title but if it's clear from the first one or two that it's not a suitable fit, we may decline at that point.

What do our readers look for?

• We aim to get reports from different people in the company with different perspectives (e.g. Publisher, Editorial, Marketing, Managing Director).
• Readers will offer opinions on how the manuscript is working, and how it can be improved, marketed and published.
• As a way of judging the commercial potential of your proposal, a reader might refer to Nielsen Bookscan figures of competing titles.
• Each reader is asked for a decision on whether we should publish, and if so, their recommended Contract Level.

The Managing Director makes the final decision

The Managing Director makes the final contract decision, taking the reports into account. Although most of the time the decision will follow the reports, there are occasions when it will go against the majority verdict.

Please don’t reply to our reader reports. The comments are there for you to use or not, as you wish, in finalizing the manuscript. There is no need to reply to them, and we don't get into lengthy discussions on them. If there is a particular point you need to comment on that may affect our decision then please feel free to use the Contract queries section of the Author Forum.

What is Nielson Bookscan data?

Nielsen Bookscan tracks sales of all titles through bookshops in North America and the UK as they happen across the till.

Nielsen is only reliable for the last decade or so; titles published prior to that are likely only to have sales recorded since then.

Sales figures do not include ebooks, sales to libraries, sales through supermarkets, purchases by wholesalers such as Ingram, sales of used books, Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) sales, and pre-orders (orders for a book before the book is released).

Overall, it is reckoned to account for 70% of sales, though it varies a lot across different titles – some have a much higher proportion of non-trade sales than others. It has transformed retail buying. Basically, you cannot make up numbers anymore.

Shops buy on sales track records and on the author’s previous sales figures, which takes them just a few seconds to look up.

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