Más Crear blog Acceder

Dr. Syntax
Scattered Observations on Books and Publishing

Wednesday, February 21, 2018 Search This Blog

What Editors Do Goes on the Road--and on the Air! A Search

Conversation on BookTV, or Maybe in Your Popular Posts

Neighborhood
Alfred Hitchcock's Bomb: Suspense,
With my book What Editors Do now actually available to buy, I've had the pleasure of Surprise, and Emotion in Narrative
appearing in bookstores to talk about it, so far in the company of very articulate
Do Publishers Deserve to Exist?
contributors and other colleagues. Our first outing, on January 9 was at Politics and
Prose in Washington, D.C., one of the truly great independent stores in America. Why We Should Get Ready for a
Naturally, given their location, P&P is especially strong in politics, history, and Plunge in Print-Book Sales
current events, and they have showcased many books that I've published and hosted
many of my authors over the years. So it was a particular thrill for me to headline a Why Are Publishers Telling Us E-
Books Are So Profitable? Another
book event in my own right. Book-Business Fallacy

A Field Guide to the Flora and Fauna

of BookExpo

About Me

Peter Ginna
I'm the author (with
some colleagues) of
WHAT EDITORS DO:
The Art, Craft, and
Business of Book Editing. I've worked as
a book editor in New York for more than
three decades. I was the founder,
One of the things that makes indie booksellers great is they really know their publisher, and editorial director of
community and their customers, and they did, as usual, a wonderful job of attracting Bloomsbury Press, an imprint of
an audience to our event. We had a standing-room crowd who helped make a very Bloomsbury USA. I have also worked at
lively discussion by asking lots of good questions. I was joined for this event by two Oxford University Press,
Crown/Random House, St. Martin's
contributors to What Editors Do, Cal Morgan of Riverhead Books and Susan Ferber of
Press, and Persea Books. On this page I
Oxford University Press, and by Gail Ross, a veteran Washington agent who has
talk about the book business in general
represented many terrific nonfiction books, often by the capital's heavy hitters and and my own work in particular. I also
top journalists. comment frequently via Twitter:
@DoctorSyntax. I can be reached by
I began by talking about the three phases of editing that I identify in the book, which email at PG [at] doctorsyntax.net. For
provide the organizing principle for it. Cal talked about the "editor as evangelist," more about WHAT EDITORS DO, visit
from his chapter "Start Spreading the News." Susan discussed working with scholarly peterginna.com. In case you're
authors writing for general readers, based on her chapter, "Of Monographs and wondering, Dr. Syntax was the creation
Magnum Opuses." And Gail offered the agent's perspective on the role editors play in of the British cartoonist Thomas
Rowlandson. I've always liked "syntax,"
getting a book from the author's keyboard into the reader's hands. We had a great
the word, and I spend a lot of time
conversation, and happily, it was all recorded on video by C-Span's BookTV, which
worrying about syntax, the thing, so I'm
has already broadcast it a few times. You can watch the whole thing on the BookTV fond of the Doctor. All opinions on this
website--click on this link. page, and possibly some of the facts, are
mine alone.
If you're in the New York City area, heads up: I'll speaking again about editing and View my complete profile
publishing on Thursday, February 22 at another superb indie bookstore, Book Culture
on 112th Street near Columbia University, with another great panel of contributors
Subscribe to Dr Syntax by E-mail
plus a guest star, Shaye Areheart, director of the Columbia Publishing Course, which
has trained people for careers in publishing for three-quarters of a century. Come and Just Click Here.
bring your questions! Info on the event here.
Subscribe via RSS

Posts
No comments:
Labels: Book Culture, BookTV, Cal Morgan, Editing, Gail Ross, independent bookstores, Politics All Comments
and Prose, Publishing, Susan Ferber, VIdeo, What Editors Do

Follow Dr. Syntax

Thursday, June 1, 2017
Seguidores (177) Siguiente

BookExpo Snapshots: Editors’-Eye-Views of the

Publishing Industry, mid-2017
BookExpo, the annual booksellers and publishers convention, has traditionally been
the moment for media and book-business observers to take stock of the industry. Like
many things about traditional publishing, BookExpo has shrunk in size and schedule
in recent years, though it now includes a consumer-oriented portion called BookCon.
But editors, sales reps, and booksellers still walk the floor and ask each other “how’s Seguir
business?”

Archive
So I thought I’d
honor the tradition ▼ 2018 (1)
and gather some ▼ February (1)
impressions from ▼ Feb 21 (1)
colleagues. The What Editors Do Goes on the
natural place to start Road--and on the Air! ...
was a ready-made
panel of experts—the ► 2017 (2)
contributors to the ► 2015 (2)
forthcoming essay ► 2014 (2)
collection WHAT
► 2013 (2)
EDITORS DO, edited
by yours truly. (For ► 2012 (1)
more on the book, ► 2011 (3)
see yesterday’s post.) I circulated a few questions to my 26 co-authors. Interestingly, ► 2010 (43)
many of those who answered were not attending BookExpo, probably because for
► 2009 (48)
those who are, this is a crazy-busy week. But I got some thoughtful responses from
editors representing Big 5 trade houses, university, and literary indie publishing.
Blogs to visit

Herewith some brief selections from their answer, with a few of my own comments Arts & Letters Daily
thrown in. As usual, different perspectives give us a variegated picture of the industry,
Books on the Nightstand
where cautious optimism is streaked with the awareness of challenges.
Booksquare

Bozo Sapiens
What was the first BEA you attended? What do you remember of BookExpos past or
Critical Mass
present, or what are you looking forward to?
E-Reads
Jane Friedman (Blogger, consultant and industry Follow The Reader
observer at janefriedman.com): My first BEA was
GalleyCat
2004 in Chicago. I don't remember much from that first
year, but I attended every year after that for about 10 MobyLives
years. The best part was always meeting and spending OUPblog
time with authors. The worst part was always the lines,
Publishers Lunch
lines, lines, and crowding—and feeling done with
humanity by the end. I'm not attending this year, but I Publishing in the 21st
know it's partly a mistake. Some serendipitous encounter Century
always happens that makes the discomfort and Publishing Insider
Jane Friedman
exhaustion worthwhile.
Rights of Writers

Susan Ferber (Executive Editor, Oxford University Press): I have actually The Center for Fiction
never attended the BEA! Since I work for a university press, my highest priority is the The Elegant Variation
conferences in my academic discipline.
The Millions

Diana Gill (Executive Editor, Tor/Macmillan): My first ABA was while I was The Shatzkin Files
still in college, courtesy of one of my very first publishing mentors. I remember being Writing on the Ether
so very excited to see the booths and to get ALL THE GALLEYS. I couldn't believe
how cool it was. Your first BEA is a rush, whether it was many years ago or for the new
assistants just starting out.

Peter Ginna: I have written elsewhere of memorable BEA experiences and

characters. One that was happily not my own was a peer of mine who toiled in an
imprint of Random House, back in the days when Random caused a stir by spending a
million dollars on a vast, elaborate BookExpo booth featuring an actual “House” in the
middle of it. Along with other low-riders on the corporate totem pole, he was stocking
the shelves in the booth when an unfamiliar-looking “suit,” cocking his head to
examine the custom-made fixtures, said, “how does it look?” The new recruit said,
candidly, “I think it looks like a French pissoir.” It was then that he found he was
speaking to Alberto Vitale, Random’s CEO.

What is the most underappreciated positive

development in publishing recently, or the most
overhyped negative one? What about the flip side
—what is the most underappreciated threat or
challenge to book publishers?

Carol Fisher Saller (University of Chicago

Press, author of The Subversive Copy
Editor): From the get-go, I was amazed at the
hysteria over e-books and how they were going to
Carol Fisher Saller
destroy publishing. Instead, we've seen publishing
explode in many new directions, with more kinds of things to read in more kinds of
formats than ever before.

PG: One of the most underappreciated challenges to publishing is the dwindling of

mass consumer media—newspapers, magazines, and radio especially—that have long
been a crucial way for publishers to make readers aware of new books. Online
marketing and social media have not yet replaced the reach of, for example, the
vanished book-review sections of major newspapers. Another real problem for
book publishing is its lack of diversity—publishing staffs are far less diverse
than America at large. (In a chapter of What Editors Do, Chris Jackson of One World
writes eloquently of why this is a serious issue.) It is not just a matter of social justice,
when talented candidates don’t get hired or promoted. It’s a problem for the industry,
which is often out of step with the tastes and interests of the reading population.

Katharine O’Moore-Klopf (Freelance editor

specializing in medical & life science books):
I have been concerned about the loss of respect for
or loss of knowledge about the value of
developmental editing, line editing, and
copyediting. As publishing has become more about
the financial bottom line than about quality, editing
has come to be seen as less of a necessity than it
once was. Part of this is because editors in general
have been self-effacing, thinking it almost improper
Katharine O'Moore-Klopf
to talk about the value of their role in publishing.
That must change. Editors of all kinds must speak out in every venue possible to
explain what it is they do and why it’s important to the quality of books.

Diana Gill: I think it's fairly clear that the big 5 will
continue to contract and tighten their programs, with all
the commensurate effects and spinning of publishing's
own wheel of fortune for people at those houses, and for
authors new and old. I hope smaller and indie presses
continue to provide some alternatives and ideally grow to
counteract the contraction.

Susan Ferber: I think we have taken for granted what

an incredible development print on demand has meant
Diana Gill
for publishers, authors, and readers. There is no need to
declare books out of print anymore; we can literally make work available forever,
which is a development on par with the printing press in my mind. I think the death
of the print book has been the most overhyped negative in the publishing world. This
has been augured and feared for so long, and for new generations of readers, it is so
heartening to see that they love the print form. It is enduring and old technology can
and does have value.

Jane Friedman: I am encouraged by the new data-

oriented research and tools that help publishers and
authors better speak to, connect, and market directly to
readers. Direct-to-consumer knowledge and marketing has
been the Achilles heel for traditional publishers,
particularly when compared to Amazon's capabilities, but it
really feels like the industry is making some progress.

As an author-advocate, I wish publishers would take more

Susan Ferber
seriously the need to offer authors more communication
and education on book marketing. I know it's not possible for publishers to give all
their titles A-list marketing treatment, but by far the biggest complaint I hear from
authors is that no one told them or prepared them for what the publisher would or
would not do. Greater transparency would be so helpful.

[BookExop photo via Chicago Tribune]

No comments:

Wednesday, May 31, 2017

I Wrote the Book on Editing. (I Had Help.)

This blog has gone unrefreshed for far too long now, but your correspondent has not
been idle. For much of the past couple of years I have been putting together--editing
and partly writing--the book whose cover you see here: What Editors Do: The Art,
Craft, and Business of Book Editing. It was commissioned by the University of
Chicago Press, the publisher of the venerable and indispensable Chicago Manual of
Style, and they'll release it in October. (Feel free to preorder it now!)

It seems ironic that for those who are interested in

going into the book business, or those outside it
who want to understand it, there is a dearth of
published guidance about how editors do what
they do, or why, or what constitutes best practices
in editing. There are a few very good exceptions to
that statement, most notably the late Gerald
Gross's essay collection Editors on Editing, first
published in 1962, updated twice since, and still in
print. I read the second edition avidly when I got
into publishing in the early 1980s, and it is still
well worth reading, with contributions from many
accomplished (in some cases legendary) editors.
But EoE was last updated in the early 90s, before
Amazon and the internet, among other factors,
transformed the industry. It was long past time for
another crack at the subject.

What Editors Do is the result. I'm very grateful to the stellar editors, agents, and other
experts-- 27 in all--who answered the call to explain the many and varied roles that
editors play in connecting writers and readers. The contents cover a broad swath of
the publishing industry, including academic and reference publishing as well as trade,
children's as well as adult, genre fiction as well as literary. And because self-
publishing has become such a vibrant segment of the marketplace and so important
for authors, it addresses what happens when authors become their own editors.

In the coming weeks and months, I'll be posting some material from and about the
book here. For now, in the hope of whetting your appetite, here's the table of contents
and list of essayists. (Click on the images to enlarge.) For further description, see the
publisher's catalogue page, or watch this space.

No comments:
Labels: Book jackets, book publishing, Books, copyeditng, Editing, self-publishing, What Editors
Do

Sunday, August 16, 2015

Podcast: Historian Martha Hodes on Americans'

Responses to the Lincoln Assassination

Peter Ginna
One for the Books: Martha Hod… Share

63
Cookie policy

I am really enjoying my venture in podcasting, which gives me a chance to have

stimulating conversations about history with a variety of authors. This month I
spoke to Martha Hodes of NYU about her new book Mourning Lincoln.

The murder of President Abraham Lincoln, just days after the Union had
triumphed in the Civil War, shocked and horrified people across America—it
was, in its way, a nineteenth century 9/11. This year, 2015, marks the 150th
anniversary of the assassination. Mourning Lincoln is Martha Hodes's
exploration of that traumatic event.

She has combed through the private, unfiltered

writings of Americans from both North and South to
learn how they reacted to news of the assassination.
Their responses both reflected how much Lincoln
meant to his contemporaries and revealed the
profound differences that the Civil War had left
unresolved. Click the arrow above to hear my
conversation with Martha Hodes about her work; you
can also download it at OnefortheBooks.net or via
Soundcloud. Martha Hodes

P.S. If you'd like to listen to my other interviews with historians, past or forthcoming, you can subscribe via RSS feed on my

podcast's home page, OnefortheBooks.net, linked above. You can also follow me at Soundcloud. Or you can subscribe to this blog

by e-mail using the link in the right-hand column here, which will bring you all my posts including announcements of new

podcasts. Access via iTunes coming soon, I hope.

No comments:
Labels: Abraham Lincoln, Assassination, Civil War, History, interview, Martha Hodes,
Mourning Lincoln, Peter Ginna

Home Older Posts

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Simple theme. Powered by Blogger.