Who decides what books you publish? If I have a book that's good enough to be published, who do I send it to and what are the chances that it might be published by Huntington Press? Or do I have to be well-known in the gambling world (I'm not).
You're asking about what's known in the publishing business as "acquisitions."
As for the question of being a name in the biz, that's not an issue. "Regular" people approach us all the time. When we first heard from them, Max Rubin, Jean Scott, Bob Dancer, Denny Griffin, Andrew Uyal, Ben Rosenthal, Logan Fields, Lacey Lane, Nathaniel Tilton, Dick Odessky, Branch Whitney, Rick Lax, and many others were unknown.
Others, such as Michael Kaplan, Ian Anderson, Lee Nelson, Richard Munchkin, Annie Duke, Mike Shackleford, Michael Konik, and Bob Nersesian, were all at least fairly well known in the gambling firmament.
Las Vegas and gambling writers like Mike Weatherford, Bill Ordine, Eric Raskin, Bill Branon, John L. Smith, Barney Vinson, and Cathy Scott naturally gravitated to a high-profile local publishing company.
To the question of who decides which books we acquire, that would be mostly publisher Anthony Curtis and editor Deke Castleman. Most decisions are fairly straightforward. Being a strictly niche small press, we’re highly selective; our focus has narrowed over the years to books on Las Vegas, gambling, and the Mob. Like all publishing companies, we reject many more proposals than we accept; we field upwards of 50 serious proposals (and another 50 that don’t follow our guidelines) per year, while we can produce at most five or six books in that same period of time.
But ultimately, yes, anyone with a manuscript, or even just a concept, can send us a query letter and/or submit a proposal (click on Submission Guidelines at huntingtonpress.com). Both Anthony and Deke pride themselves on being accessible and approachable — and why wouldn’t they be? Within the scope of their publishing program, they’re always looking for the Next Big Idea.
