Twice a month, editors Susan McDermott and Alison Hankey share the latest details of what the Nonprofit Community Team is working on to help you navigate your career as a nonprofit professional.

Hello and welcome to the inaugural From the (Book) Editor’s Desk!

To start this column off, we thought we’d begin by telling you a bit about what an acquisitions editor does. We are responsible for negotiating contracts, preparing and meeting budgets, and keeping dozens of projects at a time moving on schedule. Most importantly, however, we sign new projects by thought leaders in the nonprofit sector—print and electronic resources that help a wide variety of professionals at organizations large and small do their jobs better.

We are constantly on the lookout for new ideas and authors: sometimes we see someone at a conference or seminar and think their topic might make a great book. Sometimes it’s an article or white paper on a topic that can be expanded. Other times we get a personal recommendation from an existing author about a colleague with a fresh idea. However we find the author or the author finds us, we remain committed to providing the sector with the best possible resources to help them meet their mission.

Some of you may be thinking “I have an idea for a book, but I have no idea where to begin.” That’s where we come in. We have developed a very straightforward set of proposal guidelines that help potential authors prepare the information we need to properly evaluate any new book project.

Completing this questionnaire can help coalesce your thinking about a particular topic–getting you to examine what else is out there in the marketplace and how your book is different or better. It may seem daunting at first glance, but we have a fantastic team of development editors and production and marketing professionals to guide you every step of the way.

So what kind of topics/authors are we looking for? We have some “wish-list” topics for sure (e.g., cloud computing for nonprofits, enterprise risk management, topics in nonprofit leadership, management, governance, advocacy, collaboration), but we will consider any idea you want to explore. The ideal author is someone who is experienced in the field, and also has an established platform (speaking, blogging, etc.) that can be mined to get the word out.

Whether you have a new way to do something or a better way to tackle and existing task, we’re eager to hear about it. If you’d like to run an idea by one of us before committing to the full proposal, that’s fine too. We are eager to explore your concept and see if we can shape it into a great resource.

Thanks for stopping by–we look forward to hearing from you soon!

Susan McDermott and Alison Hankey