reading assignment due for contracts week

Please read for next week, that is, this tuesday

The Editor as Negotiator, p. 110 - Editors on Editing.

Thank you...

different genres | class. 02-.03

the more genres you can fit your book into, the better chance it has of selling in a bookstore because now, bookstores are divided into sections - which wasn't always the case. Now that they are, it behooves you to have more than one section for your book to give it the most "saleability'. Here are some genres for you. If you think of others, write them in the comments section;

• women's literature
• philosophy
• theology
• judaica (why is this separate from other theology?)
• poetry
• religion in general
• general non-fiction
• general fiction
• mystery
• mass-market
• romance
• horror
• science fiction
• childrens
• young adult - y/a
• how to
• self-help
• comic/illustrated books
• illustrated | art books
• coffee table books
• psychology | psychiatry
• occult
• crafts
• biography
• sports
• cooking
• foreign | translation
• lifestyle
• memoir
• business
• audio and e-books
  

That was what I came up with. Can you think of others? Go to Barnes and Noble and see what categories you find and what types of books are in those sections and check the back of the book to see what genres are listed. As an experiment, you might want to see if the book is stocked in all three genres, though I would doubt it. The chain factor tells me it is likely stored in only one and the primary section.

reading assingment due january 29th

The Art of Literary Publishing - through page 12.
Are Editors Necessary by Richard Curtis in Editors on Editing (pgs. 30-39)
Chapter One of Schiffrin, The Business of Books
Chapter One of Epstein, The Book Business

Please come prepared to discuss what you have read...

manuscripts | separating the dreck from the good

The manuscript can be delivered in its whole, or as part of a proposal or query as above. If an author submits a straight manuscript, chances are that it will come through an agent although a lot of good work can come in over the transom and you just don’t know who you’ll discover in the slush pile… Think Joyce or Fitzgerald that came in through the slush pile, essentially. A good editor will be able to separate the "dreck" from the good.

Today, most manuscripts that come in have already been edited by their agent as the agent takes on more and more the role of editor helping shape and mold the manuscript and point the author in the right direction. Chances are, that so much of what you get these days will not need as much editing as it would have about ten years ago . Things have changed with the advent of agents.

Most of the best work will arrive through agents but don't dismiss other works that come in over the transom - as noted above, some of the best work may come in over the transom. The difference between a work that comes in on its own verus an agented book is not the quality of the manuscript, by any means - only that one author was savvy enough to get representation, but it may have little or nothing to do with talent. This is for you and you only to judge as you evaluate work, tho note that it is interns who evaluate much of the slush.

There are ways to determine if there is anything good in the slush pile:

1. have interns write a brief paragraph about what the manuscript is about.
2. whether or not they would publish it and why.

They should do this for virtually every manuscript, barring the real losers, and hand this to the editor with their note. This was a practice used at The Atlantic Monthly and it worked extremely well and we found a lot of work through the slush pile using this method.

the proposal | a brief outline

The first thing you want to look at is how many copies the book can sell and how – so if you’re doing a book on Shakespeare, you’ll want right up front how often he is quoted each year, how many copies sell of his or her collected works, etc etc why he or she is big in the collective conscious or unconscious. This is really the first part of the proposal where the author should persuade you with every marketing reason why you should publish this book and stay in the black if you do so; simply saying it's a "good book" is not enough.

• 
  A marketing section to detail the B&N ranking you expect – where you will help promote this book, which areas you feel you can sell it in, amazon sales ranking, websites that the book can be marketed to, stores, people the author knows who can blurb or help – this sort of thing is important.
• 
  A table of contents with each chapter and what it will be called (rough title) and a synopsis of that chapter.
• 
  Production: your author should have information such as how many pages they expect the book to have, how many illustrations, the sort of rights and permissions they anticipate for images in the book (because as the publisher, you will be the one responsible for paying for this.) The author needs to, as much as possible, realistically assess what they expect the rights for any images in the book.
  
  A full bio, third person, complete with publications and any awards etc.
• 
  
• A complete outline of the book with chapter heads and a synopsis of each chapter - so you're looking at the book as the author expects it to play out. Each chapter should be no more than two or three sentences long and indicate where illustrations will possibly go or if appropriate, any sidebars and the like.
• 
  
• Finally, you want to give the publisher:
• a total estimate of page-count
• number of illustrations
• due date when you think the book will be done etc.
• word count (which should be part of your page count)
• categories this book might fit into - which genre
• names of authors (generally well-known and and with authority, who would back this book by giving a blurb for the back-ad.) This helps more than you know in terms of lending legitimacy to a book.
  
• 
  
• This is what you are looking for in a proposal.

the query letter

The Query Letter

When you query a publisher you may get a faster response as opposed to a full proposal or manuscript but not necessarily a favorable one.

There is such a thing a giving too much information, but query letters tend to provide too little information…you want to include enough to get the editor’s attention – The query should not be too broad ranging or brief. The sort of thing, “I grew up in the former Yugoslavia and I’ve written a book about it…” is not going to pass muster. You need something more solid than this.

As an editor, you’re looking for a writer who is authoritative, has the personal experience if this is a personal story, has a style, which will even show in the letter, and a story that has a real hook. It should be one of the more fascinating letters you read in your life, not just another “I want to write a book about Boston because it’s great…” or some such, but a letter that has some potential at the other end of the line…. overall, there are too many query letters, I think, and most of them are bad. It has become a lazy way out with people writing a one page letter that is milque toast bland.

Your author should, if they are smart, provide a good bio of themselves (third person) with their credentials, a few sample pages perhaps, a rough outline or table of contents doesn't hurt, and the letter itself is a writing sample, so pay attention to how that is written as well, because if the author did not, then that's important too.

how to edit |

Can you really improve upon the sentence or paragraph; can you really make the book better? Keep these simple, basic rules in mind while working and use them when you edit during class (and afterward in your career).

What we want to see are how well you apply what you have learned ... that is the objective of this assignment.

Remember the following:

Do no harm – do not try to change the author’s meaning of voice – (whatever voice means these days) keep it in character and tone. Do not be a butcher, but a surgeon if you are to edit. Think of your hands as such… these are your instruments; these and your red pencil or pen. Treat them well.

Economy of Language – no where is this more important in prose or prose-poetry. You do not want a manuscript that repeats a word over and over again, that’s important. I had one that used the word “moon” constantly, but the writer didn’t notice it – writer-blind – I had to edit out many moons.

Change as Little as Possible - Do not rewrite sentences – that’s cheating – but instead try to find the author’s original intent and meaning and stick to this. You should never change the author’s intent. If the author intended to make a character unscrupulous, then don’t try to make the character someone with scruples. It simply follows… And with smaller details query also if you don’t think something makes sense, but in Following Claire several people queried was it possible for the sick narrator to get to the basement to lift the boxes of Claire’s notes – good question; to query that did not change the author’s intent, but helped clarify only what his character creation was capable of doing. So fair enough. To change a character – unless this is biography and truth – then no. You should not try to do that.

Overediting – this is something that young editors and even experienced editors do - ; you need to be careful of this, there’s a fine line. You want to query your author but you don’t want to change the story either or the intent of the author’s story, as I said, you want to change as little as possible but get to the gem of the story or the heart. That said, some pieces DO require a lot of editing – so there is or will be some contradiction here. You may find this in some exercises

Don’t change an author’s style – don’t change an author’s voice. This is their style and trademark. IT would be like changing Jack Kerouac or Marguerite Duras or Shakespeare or Lewis Carroll all of whom who had a particular style of writing, like most writers… or take Annie Proulx whose characters all tend to have unusual names – it would be like changing their names to names that were more ordinary because you felt they didn’t make sense. Think of writing then as music in a way – would you change the composition of a piece of music – rearrange the notes in such a way that the song was totally a different piece?

You may change a piece or a song let’s say – a partita so that it flowed better – take a note out here or there or transpose something or query the author “did you intend this note – it doesn’t seem to fit with the style of the piece because it’s a g. flat in a g. major piece then that would make more sense – and would be a good query. But to take out the actual meaning of the piece would be wrong.

For example, and there are some good ones I can think of; Marguerite Duras’s book The Lover is about a young girl who is not of age and is only fourteen and yet is the lover of an older Chinese man. We may call this statutory rape, and it may be, and we may not like it, but it’s one of the best selling and most famous books or well-known books. If we changed the title to “Statutory” it would put a whole different spin on a highly erotic book – one that the author intended to be a highly erotic book.

The same would be true of any number of books, and I’m sure you can think of a few yourselves. Think, for example of a famous one, such as The Da Vinci Code; what if it were called, The Da Vinci Mystery – wouldn’t that put a whole different spin on it and classify as a whole different genre, and yet there have been editor’s who have done this and changed whole titles of books – so you don’t want to do this.

TACT – As an editor, you will use all of your diplomatic skills, which goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning of the semester when we spoke about author/ editor relations.

Remember, this is someone’s ‘baby’ and although this may be a book that was assigned to you, or maybe even one you acquired, it’s something they’ve been working on for years and now, something you and the author are going to spend the next several years working on together, so you’ll want to get along during this process….

Queries – clear, concise, respectful nonjudgmental. Before you zero in on the negative, try to find something positive to say; Use your common sense, and I think most of you already know this, or all of you actually, but instead of just “cut” say “maybe cut” – so you’re phrasing is everything and this is where your tact and diplomacy come into play. Essentially, all of your editing skills are an amalgam, but it’s important to cover them all…

Keep your queries simple, neat and in the margin and don’t expect the author to agree with everything you say – at the end of the day, it is his or her name, not your name that goes on the book. You have to respect that.

When you query, don’t just query, but be prepared to offer an alternative or option – so what would YOU do in the situation – you’re the editor, so what would your edit then be?

Keep within tone: if something sounds off of tone, then don’t be afraid to say so, For example, a sentence like, And then it occurred to him as he pondered the matter deeply that he really ought to cut the crap… The last part of the sentence is obviously out of character with the first part, so that’s the sort of thing you would query your author on but you don’t want to be obnoxious, so how would you query this?

(This seems out of character for him here… is this correct? STET? or change? Doesn’t seem to fit with the rest).

You'll get a better sense as you go along, but just stick with it and follow simple guidelines and you'll get there.

It's confusing at first especially, but in due course, you will find it easier to edit if you keep in mind a simple checklist - a mental checklist - of what to do and what not to do. What is your goal? This is the real question.