finding your niche | how to establish yourself

Language, love of language and a feel and a natural skill, a writer or a poet’s eye – a rare thing – all of these things come into play when you look for a job and not just the first time, but I think every time. You have to ask yourself whether or not this job can offer you that love of words that you’re looking for or the love of the printed page if that’s what you want – but you have to sometimes compromise this to get to the next step in your career;

Here, the author says that your skills are transferable, but transferring yourself can be another matter and that publishing tends to pigeonhole people early in their careers.

I think this is true to some extent. You need to establish who you are – what you are going to BE with that big capital B. It’s scary because you don’t know until you’ve really tried and I’ve known many editors who have changed careers or moved to different areas, including myself…

I’ve worked in trade publishing- which means the books you see in Barnes and Noble or even now on Amazon or any number of stores or read about in PW for most of my career. This led me a long way, but I started out in fashion –because it was a foot in the door, but boy, those months I was in the Vogue Features department, working for Amy Gross and typing between those non-repro blue lines on an old IBM Selectric, even at fifteen, as nerve-wracking as it was (the pressure of no computer then, to not make a mistake, to type exactly between the lines – for I was essentially the proofreader and typesetter and reader of slush), but the pressure was great to get it Right, just as it would be anywhere only now, the technology is easier so it’s less of a deal if you make a typo because spell-check will likely catch it whereas we had to rely on our own eyes and the eye, in a way, visually corrects what is wrong – we skip over typos, we skip over errors and we ‘fix’ them in our mind so that they do not exist, hence, they do not exist for us, particularly if we ourselves wrote the piece or are editing the piece.

The salient factor here is that since then, it’s true that I’ve worked most of my life in Trade Publishing – both books and well-known magazines- because that’s where I started and got an established reputation.

Despite that, I have written entire web-sites for e-commerce sites, and books to go along with the product that they made. I have written to Mass General Hospital’s Neurology Department, and biggest of all, I was asked by Harvard University Publishing to write several main sections of www.intelihealth.com which was owned by Harvard and is now owned by Aetna, so that’s a huge client even though it does not really jibe with the bulk of my writing or what i really do and wish to do, as a writer or editor, you can or may take on jobs to learn, to pay the bills (because jobs like this tend to pay more than traditional publishing jobs, and more, it is more editing experience. Period.)

I’ve also done a lot of legal writing for Hill & Barlow, now part of Palmer and Dodge – which has had a literary agency for years. I freelanced for Hill and Barlow for ten years and for each of those ten years, and this is while I was working in publishing at Godine and then Lumen fulltime, so this was my ‘free time’ job, I would average just from the Hill Barlow work alone about 60-90 K on any average year and it was work that any of you could do already in this class, I strongly feel, using the skills from your InDesign class and your editing skills from here – you could do this because it is like a whole book, just in-depth.
It’s book-editing lite in a sense and for that, you don’t need a full-class (and we’re halfway through), so you’re already in a position to go after such work.

How do you get this work when you don’t have experience? Friends. Friends at law firms, other publishers, people you know, professors, speakers, anyone you can think of, tap into your resources – people sometimes think this sounds Machiavellian, but I’ve said this before, I think you can apply Machiavelli to bad or good and it’s all in how you go about it. I’m not saying slit the throat of the person in front of you to get what you want, but if you have to glad-hand a bit so get where you want to get, then you should not hesitate, unless it is really hurting someone else or their career. But to further advance your own career through hard work and through determination.... nobody can fault you for this. Drive is good.

* * *

You can sneak in the back way, as I said above – start reviewing books in the niche you want to publish. Start copyediting. I know publishers and at least one agency that are always looking for good, cheap, labor. I’m not insulting you here. You need a way in: this is a way in. You get in the door, you prove yourself, and then you can raise your rate when the time comes.

For now, if you want to edit encyclopedias or reference works let’s say, my advice would be to contact the editor who handles this at a press that prints a fair amount of reference works like Blackwell Scientific or Continuum, which is a trade house but has done several TRADE encyclopedias which is a good cross-over market and doesn’t limit you – contact the head editor there or get to know the EA. Be persistent, and get yourself a copy editing job.

Now, after all that effort to get the job, once you get it, you’re not going to be able to turn down the job for what they want to pay you – which may or may not be fair… it will probably be fair enough, though if they suck, slightly less because they’re testing you for the first time.

Book reviews: so many places are dumped on with books that you can easily find a place to review books for if you are a good writer and have some clips and a good education, which I think you have. Also, you’ve had this class and I’ll write a letter of recommendation for those of you who need it for the right job or reviewing position.

To get into medical writing, I reviewed all of the technical and medical books for the Boston Globe Sunday Arts Section that nobody else wanted to review. I did the same thing for Publisher’s Weekly with the same tactic in mind which was that if a writing job opened up in biotech, or editing job – that I would take it and would be able to say I know something of the market.

It was not just that I had experience reading and reviewing med. tech. books. It’s that I also had experience at Harvard and Trade publishing and had done a few freelance jobs here and there for the money. As such, I became a sort of "expert" and began getting more work from more places as word spread - excellent income, even though it is or was not what I want to do in the final account.

You can establish yourself as an 'expert or known in the field.' This, again, is where you want to look at the editing that is being done at agents today, not at publishing houses ~ so you're better off being an editor, at least initially, at an agency.

letter to an unpublished writer by Jonathan Farrar - what we can learn | March 20th notes, class no 7

Never hand-deliver a manuscript unless there is some compelling reason to do so, which had better be pretty compelling, but rather, mail it or have it messengered or sent by your agent or these days, most or many manuscripts are sent electronically via email to editors at large houses, particularly the larger houses who print out a few pages and if intrigued, print more or the whole thing. Some may read a few pages on screen if the title doesn’t grab them or the subject matter, but that’s it. These are the ways you communicate with an editor today. Simple, neat, clean. It is an unwritten, unspoken rule of publishing.

And this rule works in reverse. What Farrar has done here in this long letter is prove his point by writing a long-winded letter to an author who has done everything wrong;

1. she has made it personal
2. she has made personal telephone calls
3. she has shown up at the office and made appointments much to the dismay of his secretary who is now becoming upset (you never want to upset the Editor’s EA because he or she is the turn-key to the Editor; the gate-keeper.

One rule of publishing (there are many, but to stick to one), just as in Publicity that you very quickly learn if you are savvy is that to get to the Editor, you must become friends with the secretary or admin or editorial assistant.

The friendlier you are, the more likely you are to get in the door, get read, get seen, esp. in the case of publicity as I told you the story of me and Chip Mc Grath at the New York Times Book Review at the time and his admin and how I was able to get in. This isn't bribery, this is doing your job and getting to know people so that they get to like you and are willing to and gosh, maybe even want to help you in your endeavor to see your books reviewed. This works and you can do it at a very grass-roots level. For those of you interested in non-profit, then you understand how much can come of a grass-roots effort, i would think, or anyone who has been at a start-up.

Keep your rejection, acceptance letters simple, to the point, and never offer editorial or other advice. It's in your and the writer's best interest that you do not.

Exercise on this topic in next week's class - note this is a graded exercise.

small publishing & piecework reading for next week , march 29th

"Small Publishing - Is It Beautiful" by Bessie pg. 106-end
&
"Piecework" by Lenn Fulton & Ellen Ferber p. 163 - end

From the Art of Literary Publishing

example of an edited page

An example of an edited manuscript. This is particularly messy, and has clearly gone through several hands and likely several drafts, but it gives you some idea of the work that goes into real line-editing.

Your work, of course, is expected to be readable, neat, clean, but again, don't be afraid to not only query the author, but make changes where they need to be made. However, do not make changes simply for the sake of making changes. If a manuscript is fine as it is, then let it STET. This is but one example. I'll post a cleaner example as well.

more on the Galassi | the yin & yang of publishing in the literary house

• Galassi reading, The Double Agent: The Role of the Literary Editor in the Commercial Publishing House. P. 79 The Art of Literary Publishing.
  
  1. An effective editor, according to Galassi, is someone who has all the good virtues of;
  Humor, tact, courage etc , what he says, “the primary requirement seems to me to be an eductated and well-defined taste.”
• 
  2. An editor should always have ideas of his own –
  shining light where none has shone before like Verba Mundi,
  and should know about his own culture, but about other cultures as well.
  
  3. What Galassi tells us, and I agree, is that often working for a big conglomerate and publishing trade literature (that is books that are often perceived as Editor’s Books, no necessarily immediate ‘sure things’) is like infiltrating for a purpose – almost a David and Goliath struggle between the Publishing House and the Editor who wants to publish his or her own books.
  
  4. The truth is, you will have to publish other books to support your literary trade books.
  
  a. You’ll have to publish books that, as he says, “pass” for literature –
  b. but when you find a book you TRULY believe in, be prepared to act – we spoke about this before –
  c. Having to fight for your book – at Ed. Board meetings, with the Publisher and so on. You’ll have to prove that the book is worth at least a chance and in doing this, you’ll have to ask yourself seriously how much of your own reputation are you willing to stake on this.
  

galassi's yin theory of publishing - from The Art of Literary Publishing - the yang theory

(above: chinese illustration of yin and yang relationship)


Galassi's YANG theory of the Author Editor relationship

a. This is the active side of the Editor’s role.

It means to reconcile and work the book to fit the reader’s needs and expectations, but mostly, their perceived needs.

To do this you need to clarify the writer’s intentions and get to the HEART OF THE MATTER , that inner core of the manuscript, the zeitgeist, the jewel of it, you want to give it the spit and polish and this is your job.

• 
  To do this well, you MUST inspire confidence in your Author – which is but one part of Author relations – your Author must trust you. They must trust you because you are to be their Editor, and in this way, you are essentially taking their ‘baby’ and reworking it. Remember that for each book, each Author, the book is incredibly close to the Author’s very being (usually). The Author is vested in his or her work in a major way. So this confindence in you is key.
  

galassi's yin theory of publishing - from The Art of Literary Publishing

Galassi and the Author - The Double Agent: The Role of the Literary Editor in Commercial Publishing, p. 79, The Art of Literary Publishing.

YIN

a. An equation of factors that combined equal critical empathy for the book and the Author.

For this you need to know:

• 
  How it feels to the writer (the book)
  How it is experienced by the reader
  Essentially you’re looking at the intent of the Author and how this is parlayed to the reader. As the Editor, it’s your job to make sure the message comes through the way the Author intended.

b. To achieve what he calls Critical Empathy (which are all of these things combined) you need to have a dispassionate distance. In short, you need to be able to work both at a remove as well as be able to put yourself entirely in the project.

• This Critical Empathy – just think of the work empathy – is an empathy and understanding of Author, Book, Intent, What the reader would expect given what the Author is trying for and it is your job to get the manuscript there.