One of our long-term veteran editors, Linda Doll (and my coauthor of Heart. Soul. Mind. Strength.), used to tell interns and employees alike in the editorial department that if you wanted to be a writer you came to the wrong place. A book editor’s job is to edit. If you want to write, fine–do that on your own time. But don’t expect to have your cravings, yearnings, desires and dreams for writing fulfilled at the office. A harsh dose of reality? Perhaps. But reality nonetheless.
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What I Like to Read vs. What I Like to Publish
When I read on my own time, I tend to gravitate toward history, science fiction, fantasy and New Testament studies. Sometimes I’ll throw in some literary fiction or theology or management/leadership books. Sometimes I’ll read a bestseller just to see what the buzz is all about. And I always listen closely to the recommendations of friends and colleagues which can lead me into any number of genres. And if you want to see where my reading interests have taken me at any time, just check out the list on the right hand column of this page.
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Be Careful What You Wish For
In my car in recent days, I’ve been listening to Sara Paretsky’s Fire Sale, featuring her favorite detective, V. I. Warshawski.
Many fans of this genre have recommended Paretsky to me, so I thought this would be a pretty painless way to test her out. In ways the book is predictable: evangelical Christians are the bad guys–greedy, hypocritical, even violent. Or they are good-hearted but impossibly naïve.
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Ban the Next Book Clause
Every so often I am talking to an author about a potential book and he or she will say, “Well, I will have to check with my previous publisher first. In my contract I gave them first option on my next book.”
I am always amazed when I hear this. We got rid of the “next book clause” from our contracts thirty years ago. I thought such arrangements disappeared with the era of the dime novel. Apparently not.
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Program Note
You’ve not seen anything from me recently since our tech gurus here at IVP were migrating our blogs to a new hosting service. But I’m back now and bad as ever. . . well, at least I’m back.
Andy
So You Want to Be a Book Editor?
Every so often we at IVP get asked what it takes, or how one prepares, to be an editor. The question came regularly enough that my predecessor at IVP, Jim Sire, jotted down some thoughts which we have since been passing on to folks for over two decades. His comments are just as relevant now as they were then, so here they are.
So you want to be an editor? Or, less boldly, so you want to consider being an editor? Here are some matters to take into account.
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The Frenetic, Jagged Pace
Last week I worked away from the office. I had a project that required large chunks of uninterrupted time. There was no way I was going to find that at work. So I left.
I’ve said before that my job is to be interrupted. And it is. As a manager, one of my primary tasks is to help others get their jobs done. Sometimes they can’t proceed until they have an answer to a question or a piece of information. My job is to grease the wheels of their workload so they can be as productive as possible. But sometimes I’m the one that needs to get something done. So twice in the last six months I’ve taken a week to work alone.
Even though it was work, just the different rhythm was refreshing. (And sometimes getting away is a source of great new ideas.) I find that emails, papers piling on my desk, phone calls, meetings, people at my office door—the frenetic, jagged pace of one hasty thing after another wears me down. Too often I have woken up in the middle of the night and not been able to go back to sleep for an hour or two—even when there are no major problems worrying me.
The feverish demands of work are not likely to diminish. They won’t go away. A fragile economy can only make us feel greater pressure to work harder and longer and faster. But we can control our pace rather than let it control us. Limits and boundaries and discipline are the tricks of that trade.
I have a couple friends who simply don’t do email—one because he won’t and the other because he can’t. (A true troglodyte.) They have the luxury, however, of having assistants through whom all their email come. Not all of us are so fortunate. But I can choose to limit when I do email at two or three times during the day rather than have it open and active every minute of every day.
What about when I’m on the road? The technology exists, of course, for me to be able to check my work email while I’m away from the office–at a conference, for example, or working offsite. But I’ve deliberately set a boundary by not asking our IT department to set me up with this capability. I don’t want to be wired (or, more accurately, wireless) 24/7.
I don’t text. I don’t twitter. Maybe someday I will, but I hope I’ll have limits on them if I do.
Life as a Movie Star
Fame is a difficult burden to bear. I know.
Several times I’ve been asked to be interviewed for videos InterVarsity Press has done to highlight new books. Most recently, I have a starring role for the piece on John Stott’s fiftieth anniversary edition of Basic Christianity.
It had over 250 views on youtube.com in its first month, until I told my extended family about it and it rocketed up to over 260. So you can see the kind of load I am under.
By comparison JibJab’s “Time for Some Campaignin'” has over 1,250,000 views in two months. Now you know why the paparazzi are after me the way they are.
After we showed the Stott video at an all-office meeting, exactly zero people came up to me and told me what a great job I did. And zero told me I had room for improvement. How am I to cope with such an overwhelming response?
I also make a cameo appearance in the video Heart. Soul. Mind. Strength. That one isn’t even on youtube. A good thing too! Who knows what invasions of privacy I might suffer if it were!
Fame, however, is fleeting. I am prepared to deal with that too.
The Perfect Recipe for a Modern American Publisher
One of my favorite quotes about publishing comes from John Tebbel’s Between Covers. Tebbel recounts a conversation Mark Twain had with Frank Nelson Doubleday, in which Twain offered “the perfect recipe for a modern American publisher”:
Take an idiot from a lunatic asylum and marry him to an idiot woman and the fourth generation of this connection should be a good publisher. (p. 138)
As Tebbel’s book chronicles, there is a long, tension-filled and hilarious history of the relationship between authors and publishers. Many examples of strong, constructive and congenial relationships populate the past as well. I suspect that publishing is no more subject to these dynamics than any other endeavor involving more than one human being.
If it is more volatile, perhaps it is due to the often subjective nature of publishing. Predicting sales (and thus advances and royalties) is an art, not a science–thus it can be a point of tension. Knowing how and when to revise a manuscript is an art, not a science–thus also a point of potential tension.
Books have also been compared to being an author’s “baby.” There is a protective, parental concern that can hover over this toddler. As a parent’s identity is wrapped up with what children say or how they perform, the same can be true with an author and their book. Publishers and editors and marketers are wise to take note of these factors.
I like the idea of working in partnership with authors, as a team. We each have strengths to bring to the table and seek to establish a mutual trust that focuses on doing what is best for everyone and for the book. Is that ideal? Perhaps. But it’s an ideal that’s worth the effort.
Publishing for Profit: Redux
Off and on over the past year I’ve been commenting chapter-by-chapter on Tom Woll’s Publishing for Profit. The front cover quotes the Associated Press as calling it “the Bible for the industry.” Almost as good as Holy Writ? Well, you be the judge.
For your convenience, here’s Woll’s table of contents linked to each blog post I’ve made on the book.
I. The World of Publishing
1. C3–Commitment, Consistency, Credibility
2. The Publishing Environment
II. Managerial Organization: Strategy and Techniques
3. Define Your Niche (part one)
3. Define Your Niche (part two)
4. Make Planning Primary
5. Keep Your Staff Lean (But Not Necessarily Mean)
6. Protect Your Assets
III. Functional Organization: Strategy and Techniques
7. The Editorial Process (part one)
7. The Editorial Process (part two)
7. The Editorial Process (part three)
8. Production and Manufacturing
9. Sales . . . and More
10. Subsidiary Rights
11. Direct Response Marketing
12. Operations, Fulfillment, and Accounting
13. Electronic Publishing and Marketing
14. Returns
Conclusion