Editing Out Oppression: Disability and Narrative

Just two weeks after we discussed oppressive narratives in the context of editing and writing, Lisa Coriale writes in the Tyee about some of the narrative boxes into which she has been unwillingly stuffed:

The way people with disabilities are covered is problematic because it suggests attention is merited only when a person with disabilities can be portrayed as a superhero or a victim.

Don't feel sorry for me

For example, I was labeled a superhero. In an article that appeared in Kamloops This Week in May 2007, shortly before my graduation from Thompson Rivers University's social-work program, the reporter portrayed me as "a climber of a Mayan temple." He said I had been climbing pyramids since the day I was born.

... My portrayal in the story made me feel everyone was placing expectations on me and I had to accomplish them. I could have inspired other people or I could have made them feel they were not capable of accomplishing the same. (On the other hand, sometimes I feel as though I have climbed many mountains, so it is a bit of a contradiction.)

At other points in my life, such as when I was featured in an article in the Elliot Lake Standard, I have been portrayed with pity as well as having superhero status: "Though bound to a wheelchair, unable to move her limbs, her voice silenced by a severe form of cerebral palsy."

When I see myself portrayed this way, I feel uncomfortable because I do not want people to feel sorry for me. I do not feel mentioning my disabilities was necessary. By stating I was wheelchair-bound, the reporter made it sound as though I'm not able to participate in daily activities.

This kind of stereotyping is no mere question of word choice. It's true that words and phrases such as wheelchair-bound and silenced certainly perpetuate the stereotype of Coriale as a victim, who is lacking in agency and ability. Simply changing those terms for more active ones (maybe re-casting the quoted sentence as "Though, owing to her cerebral palsy, she uses a wheelchair and [whatever assistive technology she may use to communicate], ... ") wouldn't repair the conceptual problems with representing a thinking person who has a list of accomplishments and (presumably) setbacks; has ideas, hopes, and dreams; has an identity that may encompass her disability but is unlikely to be defined solely by that (any more than, say, my identity is defined solely by my left-handedness or inability to do higher mathematics). Start thinking of people as, you know, people, and it becomes far more difficult to reduce them to clichés.

Coriale gives some really solid advice, both at the word-and-phrase level and at substantive story-level:

• Use active language that puts the disabled person in control of what they do. Use person-first language (person with a disability/with cerebral palsy/with muscular dystrophy/etc.). Make the condition something the person has or lives with rather than the sum of their existence. Replace verbs that indicate passivity (not always passive verbs) with those that indicate action and agency—a person may use a wheelchair, rather than being confined to it, for example.
• Mention disability and medical details only when they're relevant. This is a big one for me: think about which story you are telling and why you are telling it. Are you discussing barriers to participation for Deaf people in political discourse? Then, yes, it might be relevant that the activist you quote is Deaf. Are you telling a story about quilting? It may not be relevant that a champion quilter uses a wheelchair. As for medical details, dude, those are personal. There are times it makes sense to mention them, but they shouldn't be gratuitous fodder for pity.
• Get it right. I did not know this, but apparently many journalists don't bother to check in with the person they're talking about when they mention a person's disability. So they misrepresent. Which is just not very respectful. People are individuals, not medical statistics. Just because Google tells you that autistic people have trouble making friends, you can't say that the autistic person you are profiling is friendless or even that they have trouble making friends. It may not be true.
  

Needless to say, I'm adding Coriale's article to my required reading list for students.

Witch Editing Skool

Because it's come up a few times in comments to Becoming an Editor and in conversation, I'm putting this disclaimer in a separate post.

The question in question is some variant on "Should I go to Ryerson or George Brown?"*

The answer is "I don't know."

The Certificate in Publishing is offered through Continuing Studies at Ryerson University. It's a comprehensive look at publishing in Canada, with a discernable bias towards trade- and scholarly book publishing. I took several courses there, and I know several of the instructors—they're all professionals I hold in high esteem.

The Certificate in Editing at George Brown College offered through the Continuing Education at George Brown, and focuses on as many different fields and media as the instructors can manage. It is less book-focused, and does not offer courses in publishing per se. I am one of the instructors there, at the moment (full disclosure!), and I have nothing ill to say of my colleagues.

Because I really do respect and esteem people who teach in both programs, I'm not going to say much more about either of them.

In Toronto, Centennial College and Humber College also offer programs in publishing. I know editors who have attended Centennial and the only reason I don't often recommend the Centennial program is that it is a full-time program, and most of the people I meet are not in a position to attend school full-time. I don't know anyone who has attended Humber, so I really can't say much about the program there at all.

Which program is right for you depends on your goals, timeline, budget, circumstances, and personality. I suggest you take the time to compare the calendars and attend the information sessions for each program, talk with instructors about the program of study, and make your own decision. Do bear in mind that there is no one single path to a career in the field, and that there is no clear path from wherever you are now to the career you want. Keep taking steps to get yourself closer to whatever your goal is, keep improving your skills, keep learning about the industry, and accept that certain paths are narrower and rockier than others.




*If you're not living in Toronto, then you can't take editing at George Brown College, and I have even less experience of editing courses and programs offered outside of Toronto.

A Horrible Sign of the Times.

My heart is breaking, and some of my cherished dreams are dying:

Oxford closes Canadian dictionary division

TORONTO - The Oxford University Press has laid off all employees at its Canadian dictionary division in Toronto, shutting down the department due to "changing market conditions," according to a statement released Wednesday. David Stover, the president of the Canadian branch, said the closure will allow the company to refocus its publishing mandate as online sources become more popular than hard-copied dictionaries.

"There's no doubt there is an overall secular decline in print dictionaries, not only in Canada but worldwide," he said from the company's Toronto headquarters. "We remain the market leader but there is a definite downward trend of print dictionaries and a definite upward trend of in the use of online sources, many of which are free to users." ...

"The dictionary program will continue," he said. "In fact, we are investigating new opportunities for print and online reference publishing in various areas, and we are hoping with the restructuring can make those possibilities for viable for us."

The production of future Canadian Oxford dictionaries will be outsourced to freelance editors now that the company has dismissed the two full-time employees and two part-time employees in the dictionary division.

The CanOx, created in 1991, has become a mainstay of Canadian publishing and lexicography. Since the demise of the Nelson Canadian Dictionary, CanOx has been the go-to for Canadian spelling: doughnut, traveller, labour, cheque.

I know there are some excellent freelance editors, but I really don't understand how a freelancer, working offsite, on a project-by-project basis can do the kind of ongoing lexical monitoring and tracking of usage and spelling and linguistic trends that a lexicographer and editor working with the full resources of a company that has made dictionaries for over a hundred years can.

My heart goes out to Katherine Barber, and the other three former OUP employees.

Quotatious!

A friend asked about how to punctuate with quotations, and since I'm pretty happy with the examples I came up with, I'm sharing them here. As always, comments and corrections are welcome. Also, as always, the OWL at Purdue has done it first and better.

We use quotation marks to enclose direct quotations—things other people (who may be published, real, historical, or imaginary) have said. In North America, we use double quotation marks to enclose quotations or speech:

"I know I'm doing a few things wrong," wrote the original poster.
Lady Winterspoon began her letter. "Dear Mr. Rumpole," she wrote. She stared at the paper. She sharpened her pen. "I hope this finds you well." In novels, heroines separated from their suitors always filled sheets of paper. She wondered how they did it.
"Of course," said Lady Winterspoon to herself, "In novels, the heroine herself is the creation of a gifted author. Of course she can write pages and pages."

We don't enclose indirect quotations—paraphrases often introduced by that—in quotation marks:

The original poster wrote that he knew he was doing a few things wrong.

Lady Winterspoon remarked to herself that the heroines of novels were often the creations of a gifted author, so it stood to reason that they would be able to fill pages, writing to their suitors.

Enclose all punctuation that belongs with the quoted material. If the quote ends with a period, comma, question mark, exclamation mark, or semi-colon, these marks go inside the quotes.

"Blast!" said Lord Vrul, "Does anyone have a spare battery?"

His subordinates shook their cephalod appendages, until the most junior member of his squad extended a pseudopod.

"Mine has a charge, your Worship," he said.

If the quotation begins mid-sentence, then you don't need to use a capital letter:

Mr. Rumpole had said that he would be gone "months, perhaps years, on a mission so secret" that he should not have even mentioned it to her.

The principle that the quotation marks enclose original the words and punctuation of the speaker or writer being quoted is pretty straightforward. Writers (like me) can get muddled when quotes are interrupted.

When the quoted sentence is interrupted, close the quotes around the interruption, but do not begin the second part with a capital letter:

"I know," continued Lady Winterspoon, "that you will not receive this letter for weeks, or perhaps even months, but I hope that, having received it, you will know that I hold you in my thoughts and heart." She stopped, again. She certainly hoped she would hold Mr. Rumpole faithfully in her heart, but she did not know when she would next see him. Much might happen in a young lady's year, especially when that year would bring her first London Season.

For quoted material inside a quotation, use single quotation marks (inverted commas) to set of the interior quoted material:

Mr. Rumpole folded the missive, regretfully. "She writes 'I will hold you in my thoughts and heart' but how can she know her heart," he mused, musingly.

I find that if I remember that quoted material interrupts a sentence, and may complete it, I can avoid most of the perils of mispunctuation.

Were it Indeed a Subjunctive ...

Claudette Reed-Upton's Notes on the Practical Subjunctive is an excellent look at the use of the subjunctive—the verb form that "expresses what you might call wishful thinking"—and I recommend it highly.

Language of Oppression, Language of Respect, and the Etiquette of Written Prose

Part of an ongoing series of musings about language and oppression, and bias-free* language (or, as I prefer, affirmative language or language of respect).

At the beginning of the semester, one of the students in my Grammar for Writers and Editors class asked me whether we were going to discuss "politically correct language" in the course. I checked the outline, and replied, "I tend to prefer the term 'bias-free' language, or even 'language of respect,' and if you take a look at the outline, you'll see that we're going to cover the topic late in the term, after we've covered most of the structural grammar stuff."

Many class members rolled their eyes or laughed at my substitution of "bias-free language" or "language of respect" for her more loaded "politically correct language." So, when I introduced the topic a couple of classes ago, I started with a discussion of connotative values of words and terms, and how our word choice can betray our assumptions. I explained that I prefer the terms "bias-free language," or "language of respect" to "politically correct language," because the latter implies that we're choosing terms merely to be politic—to placate certain interest groups—rather than from any interest in actually ridding our language of terminology that reflects bias and prejudice, and choosing language that reflects a certain level of respect for everyone.

Frequently, discussions of bias-free language in the context of professional writing and editing** focus on words. We try to find words that won't offend—say "flight attendant," rather than "stewardess"; find out whether someone or some group prefer to be referred to as "black," or as "African-Canadian" or as "of African descent" (should it be necessary to mention that person's or group's race or skin-colour at all); when discussing First Nations and Aboriginal people, whenever possible refer to the specific Nation or band to which the individual belongs, and if that's not possible, because you're talking about a number of people of different First Nations or a group that contains Inuit and Métis people, check whether "Native" is okay. Be specific, be precise, and, whenever possible check with the people about whom you are writing, to make sure you're using the words by which they like to be named.

This is a good start, but I think it's only a start. Also, most of my students already knew this. So I wanted to discuss how our language reflects our attitudes, and how examining our attitudes makes it easier to avoid linguistic gaffes. I wanted to discuss how important it is to examine the assumptions that our language betrays, in full knowledge that we are all prey to some assumptions and prejudices. How, in attempting to avoid oppressive language, we need to have some awareness of how language reflects oppressive attitudes—once you recognize the attitudes, it becomes much easier to consider (or look up) less loaded, less oppressive, and more inclusive words and phrases.

So I gave some examples of gaffes in writing that might alienate a reader, and certainly betrayed prejudice on the part of the writer. Here are a few—I had more in class, covering other thoughtless ways in which people show other prejudices (I'm collecting these, so if you have any good examples, please do feel free to send them to me):

Example 1
May Adopted Children Benefit Receive Benefits From My Insurance Policy?
If you have legally adopted children, they are eligible for the same benefits as your natural children under terms of the policy.
From a FAQ on a life-insurance policy

Example 2
The panel on Industry–Community Relations included three professionals, four blue-collar workers, and two women.
Based on Amy Einsohn,The Copyeditor's Handbook, page 409 (University of California Press, 2000)

Example 3
From the day of their birth, all children long for intimacy and affection from their mother and father.
From an early draft of a chapter on sexual decision-making in a health textbook for grade 9.

Example 4
Encourage students to bring in other ethnic recipes and explore how ratios work in these recipes.
From a teacher's guide for a math textbook.

Example 5
Invite a Native seamstress from the community to discuss making Native clothes without patterns with students.
ibid.

Example 6
Doctors and their wives are invited to the Christmas party.
Based on Amy Einsohn,The Copyeditor's Handbook, page 406.

In most of these examples, the individual words are more or less fine. And it's pretty clear that the authors are well-intentioned. Except for the author of first example (which is admittedly, a weird one, and not one usually found in glossaries of bias-free language), none of these authors has used words that are themselves objectionable. Yet each of these snippets shows us something about how the author sees the world, what the author defines as "normal," or who the author is including in (or excluding from) the writing.

Is adoption really "unnatural," as the juxtaposition of "adopted child" and "natural child" would suggest? What does that suggest about how the author of Example 1 views families, adoption, and adoptees?

Is it impossible for women to be professionals or to work in trades? Why does Example 2 juxtapose "professional" and "blue collar," and what contribution did the apparently unemployed women make to the panel? In other words, how are the class distinctions relevant to the topic at hand, and are women really an entirely separate class, with entirely homogeneous concerns? Did these women have no professions or trades of their own (and here the class digressed into a discussion of whether it was sexist or not to call them homemakers, until someone asked whether we knew the women were homemakers—which of course we didn't.)

Do babies really want affection only from their mothers and fathers, or will they take it from whoever offers it—biological parents (mothers, fathers, and however many of each are available), grandparents, non-parental caregivers, older siblings?

What the heck does "ethnic" mean when you apply it to a recipe, and who is ethnic, anyway? In my family, pasta is a pretty normal food, and latkes are not. Does that mean that I'm practising ethnic cookery when I make latkes? What about curry? Funnel cakes? Bannock? Is "ethnic" simply a politically-correct way of saying "not what my family does"?

In which First Nations or Inuit tradition are clothes made without patterns? All of them? Some of them? Which clothes are we discussing? Who makes these clothes—are all those who preserve this tradition of garment-making female? In order to make the point (which was about ratios and geometry), do we need to tokenize Native people thus, or can we suggest that any garment-making or textile-working will show an application of the skill? Does every community in the province in which this textbook will be adopted have Native seamstresses handy, just waiting to be invited into schools? (Seamstress, incidentally, is, indeed, an inherently gendered word that's really difficult to write around. De-gender it and you get sewer. Tailor doesn't mean the same thing. There's no graceful single word that will get you what you want, so if I have to use it in a bias-free context, I generally go very vague and use a lot more words: "garment-maker," "practitioner of textile- or fibre-arts, such as garment making, theatrical costuming, quilting, or other type of sewing." It's awkward and graceless, but in these contexts I think that's preferable to promoting certain stereotypes. But (as I often do) I digress.) The authors clearly want to include First Nations lore from the province in which the textbook will be used in their coverage of the curriculum, but are they really thinking through the implications of this sort of "inclusion," or are they simply looking for any way to get Native Stuff into the material?

The class was with me, until we came to Example 6. Oh, they cottoned immediately onto the fact that many doctors are women. They suggested that "wives" be changed to "spouses," then someone commented that, really, there was no need to specify the relationship, and suggested changing "spouses" to "partners." Someone else disagreed with "partner," because of the businesslike sound, but agreed that the doctors in question should feel free to bring someone to whom they might not be married, and suggested "guest." (Nobody suggested that the doctors might want to bring more than one guest; I wasn't going to go there.) Then someone noticed the Christmas in the Christmas party, and suggested that it be changed to "holiday party" or "year-end party."

And just like that, things went off the rails. Some of the women in the class (most of them older than me), thought that we should call a spade a spade. It's Christmas, and it's a Christmas party. So I asked whether this meant that invites should go only to employees of nominally Christian faith, or whether we should ask employees of different faiths to celebrate Christian holidays, without ever providing space to them to celebrate their own holidays. Well, we can't celebrate everyone's holidays. So should we cancel the party, or nod to the fact that not everyone celebrates the same holiday in December, and make it easier for people to feel more comfortable about attending? Or move it to February, and call it a Winter-Blahs Party?

It's weird what people consider inviolable.

From this digression, the same women proceeded to ask me if I didn't think something was lost when we all went "politically correct," especially about Christmas. They themselves don't like it when they are wished "Happy Holidays" by people in stores.

And this is where it became clear to me that my students had lost sight of the point of the class, and of the exercise. Because my class is a class on editing and writing—not a guide to bias-free speech and action (I'm really not qualified to teach such a class). I tried hard to remind them that we were discussing written language, and that my goal was not to tell them, individually, what they are or aren't permitted to say in their daily goings-on. My job was to help them learn to avoid inadvertently writing in ways that will alienate a portion of their readership, and spot and correct, or at least point out, such writing when clients or employers inadvertently commit it. If, having examined their own preferences, they want to wish people who may or may not celebrate the day a merry Christmas, that's none of my concern.

What I forgot to do, I think, was to remind them of what I'd said way back at the beginning of the term, about what we were learning in my Grammar for Editors class: the formal etiquette of written prose.*** If we are being polite, we do not wish to unwittingly alienate our readers. We may choose, for whatever reason, to intentionally alienate a portion of the readership; certain writers have made careers out of alienating people, quite deliberately. But we wish to pay attention to the connotations inherent in our word choice, and to the way our language may exclude some readers, and not assume, uncharitably, that these readers are merely being "picky," or "difficult," but instead assume the burden of ensuring that our prose is welcoming and gracious to our desired readers. In order to be truly gracious in our writing, we need not the "do's" and "don'ts" of politically-correct jargon, but a sensitivity to our readers' backgrounds and experiences, and a very real desire to respect and include those. Once you do that, the words come a great deal more easily.


* Okay, granted, it's not really bias-free. Using a group's chosen language to speak about that group does indeed betoken at least some sympathy for that group, and some respect for the group's goals, which is, in itself, a bias. Nothing's ever really bias-free. I prefer "language of respect," generally, but the trade-term seems to be bias-free.

** Such as this one, at Rainbow Associates, which is a rather decent example of the type, and contains a useful word list:

The bottom line is that some of your readers (potential customers) will be offended by certain terms, and who wants to turn off a customer? Most of us have no desire to offend anyone, but we occasionally do it unintentionally. Most important is to avoid the most offensive terms. We all know what some of these are, but other examples might involve some relearning. If you grew up – as most people did -- hearing some of these words and phrases without realizing their impact for other people, now is the time to start hearing them in a new way.

*** A term I totally ganked from Steven Pinker (The Language Instinct), who uses it, somewhat pejoratively, to describe what prescriptive grammarians and writers of grammar books examine. When we're looking at the rules of grammar for editorial work, we need to know as much about what people think is "correct" as possible. We need to know the rules for everyday use, and the rules for very formal use, and when each set of rules applies. We need to know the linguistic equivalent of when to remove your gloves, and when to eat with your fingers. (Hint: Do the former when you expect to have to do the latter). We're not, in a grammar for editors class, discussing whether we think infinitives should be split; it is enough to know that some abhore a split infinitive, and that, should we be in their company (or employ), it were best not to split the infinitives, whatever our views on the matter of infinitives, split or intact.

Outside My Window

Anyone who works from home is familiar with the perks: flexible hours, the ability to arrange one's office to one's own tastes, complete control over the soundtrack of one's working day (and no headphones!), and generally better comestibles than most publishing offices offer. Of course, all this freedom and flexibility do come at a the cost of, in my case, much less security, and an office that doubles as the cats' bathroom, but in an imperfect world, this strugging freelancer can rarely achieve perfection (though she strives for it in her work, at least).

This week, the home office has also brought me endless entertainment via my office window. My street is busier than one might expect it to be, given that it's a small, tree-lined street populated by houses, low-rise apartment buildings, a church, a stealth synogogue, and a park, but I don't generally look over bustling downtown scenes, or tableaux o mayhem and destruction. Generally, the odd car putters up the street, children play in the park, parents watch them and chat, older kids pass on their way to and from school, the odd jogger jogs by.

Friday, I awoke to screaming and yelling. Thinking it was a domestic argument among the downstairs neighbours (who sometimes have rather noisy altercations, though generally late on Saturday night rather than early Friday morning), I rolled over. Until it penetrated my consciousness that the individual outside my window had been shrieking the same phrase, over and over again, with the odd pause, for about 20 minutes.

At this point I figured it could be one of two things: a film or a crazy person.

So I dragged my naked butt out of bed and over to the casement window to peer down the street.

Then I found my glasses, which greatly facilitated the peering.

And lo, outside the side door to the church, I saw clustered a babe in a suede bikini and high-heeled furry boots; two individuals in black coats with gothy haircuts; and a fellow in green spandex tights, green and white striped tube socks, and a green cape of the "I found a rectangle of fabric and tied it around my neck" variety. I think he might also have had goggles and a swimming cap on. Of course, they were surrounded by a camera, a person with a mister-bottle full of water, a person with a boom, and other film-type personnel.

The suede-bikini'd babe brandished her spear at the goth-types, screaming "Get your hands off my spear!" then stabbed one of them. Then she did it again. And again. And .... well, you get the idea.

Since Friday, this apparently low-budget film has involved another superhero, in a costume without tube socks (maybe this is the real hero, and the other is only a LARPer?), a big, shiny robot, and two dudes in suits. They've filmed outside the church door at the front of the church in the park, and are now congregating in front of the door to the church hall. So far it's only techies and minions, but wondering which cut-rate characters are going to enact their dramas across the street is keeping me amused.

This never happened in-house.

The Freelance Life, Again, and an Instructive Abomination

Alas, my time managing the editorial department at the Little Shop of Textbooks has come to an end, rather sooner than I should have preferred. When publishers want editors to do acquisitions, they should either have an established acquisitions procedure, or hire people who have done acquisitions before. At the very least, they should be prepared to tell the inexperienced editor how they'd like things to be done. Hiring a managing editor to manage your acquisitions process, when you don't have an acquisitions process, is not a recipe for a successful acqusitions programme.

And that is all I shall say about that here, at least for now.

So I'm freelancing again, and embarking on New Literary Adventures!

Among these is my latest assignment corrupting the innocent teaching at one of the local colleges' editing programmes. I'll be teaching Grammar for Editors and I'm really quite happy.

For my first class, I'm supposed to introduce the course, familiarize students with the college's policies, and then cover the topics: What is Grammar? Why is Grammar Important? and Review of Parts of Speech. The short version of this is "Why are you here?"

Rather than beginning with a paen to clarity, correctness, and grace in written language, I thought it might be both fun and instructive to start with a paragraph full of all the common errors that cause would-be grammarians to write in to publishers.

So I wrote an Abominable Paragraph. I'm going to ask students to circle every error of style, grammar, and usage, just to see which ones they notice.

Here it is. It's dreadful, I know. Anyone want to suggest any other common errors? Remember, I'm going for the kinds of errors that even fluent writers make, that editors need to know how to identify and correct.

Welcome to Grammar for Editors! The goal if this course is to enable you guys to function competently as editors. Hopefully you will find it an interesting and rewarding experience, due to both the fascinating nature of the material and your instructor’s charm and wit.

Hopefully, you will be able to come to all classes. If you cannot come to a class, due to illness or other commitments, please contact myself or a classmate to find out what you missed, and make sure that you obtain a copy of any handouts. There will be a large amount of handouts, and material from the handouts will be on the tests.

The handouts and the texts contain many exercises on grammar, usage, punctuation, and style. We will refer to them frequently, but I will only mark the tests. For the exercises which you will be asked to complete everyone will be responsible to check their own work and asking about anything that confuses you in class. If you share your questions with your classmates and I, together we can help sort things out.

I look forward very much to exploring the ins and outs of grammar with you.

My goal was to fit as many of the common errors, gremlins, and hobgoblins of grammar and usage as I could into a short paragraph, using only those errors that are generally acceptable in informal speech and writing. I'd like to get my students talking and thinking about how the etiquette of written prose is different from that of informal writing or speech.

What do you think?

Worse than a Waste of Time

I'm running away for the weekend, but here's a quick, drive-by post:

When James Frey's A Million Little Pieces was revealed to be a work of fiction, rather than the memoir it purported to be, readers respoded with shock and horror. Frey's name was reviled and his publisher, his promoters, Oprah Winfrey, and, well, just about everyone, was called to account for the time and empathy readers felt they had wasted reading his tale of his [protagonist's] heroic battle againt addiction and depression.

When Nouma Khouri's Honor Lost, a memoir of an honour killing in Jordan, was revealed to be wildly inaccurate, (among other things, Khouri writes that the Jordan River once flowed into the Amman, but doesn't any more, and claimed that over 2,000 honour killings take place every year, in Jordan—the BBC reported 12, in 2003) well, I don't recall any cries of outrage. Do you?

Published in the same year that the United States invaded Iraq, Norma Khouri’s memoir of a tragic honor killing in Jordan was a success. Khouri claimed to be living in “exile” in Australia, after a Muslim friend of hers was murdered by her own family in Amman for loving a Christian man. The story of Dalia had all the right ingredients: a violently paternalistic society, an idealistic heroine, a verboten desire, and a bloody, horrific climax.

The marketing was flawless. Both the American, Australian, and UK covers of the book featured a veiled woman, a staple of practically every book or story on the Middle East. The American version shows the partial image of a covered head, one dark eye framed with lush eyelashes staring out forlornly. The Australian and UK covers feature a woman in the process of removing a black face-veil (not commonly worn in Jordan, by the way); her kohl-rimmed eyes somber and defiant.

Khouri gave interviews and lectures. Khouri made a lot of money. Khouri worked on a sequel. Yet in 2004, Jordanian activists such as Rana Husseini and the Sydney Morning Herald with Malcolm Knox at the helm exposed Khouri as a fraud. Khouri, whose real name is Norma Bagain, left Jordan as a child. She grew up in the United States. She barely knew Jordan, and the errors in her narrative, of which there are close to a hundred, were a testament to her ignorance.

Her ignorance and deceit fed into readers' prejudices and politics, and painted a picture of a Muslim country that allows Western readers to feel comfortable and justified in their outrage and horror of Muslim customs—after all, the author herself is a Muslim woman, so her voice must be authentic, right? If we're reacting with shock and horror over what a realy, love Muslim woman is telling us, we're not projecting our own prejudices onto the book, or looking for expiation for guilt over a war in another Muslim country, right?

So where's the outrage over this fraud?

Hey! I think I know that girl! I have no idea what her name is, though.

Heather Corinna gives a good overview of some of the challenges inherent in producing a cover that doesn't make the author want to disown the book:

Here’s the thing: your book cover has to somehow do the miraculous feat of pleasing you, the author (and if you’re not the sole author, also any co-authors), your editor, the art department, the marketing department, the publicity department and the higher-ups (my editor and I call them the Grand Poobahs) of the publishing company. And all of those people need to feel, at the end result and throughout, that yes, this cover very much IS what the book will be judged by, and it needs to create the desired verdict. Obviously, all of us don’t have the same agenda.

That, my friend, is a LOT of cooks in a kitchen not unlike the kitchen of your first apartment: the floor holds a shitload of dirt no matter how often you scrub it, there’s no counter space, and it’s the size of a coffin, with a sink whose drain is incessantly backed up, no matter what you do or don’t put in there.

Heather's in a somewhat unusual position in that she and her publisher agreed that she would have far more imput into the cover design than a lot of authors get (and good for her!). Interestingly, she ran up against some of the same issues we ran up against in choosing photos for the Dread Unit 4 (Sexuality and Sexual Decision-Making) of our Big Health Textbook:

So, I had all sorts of limits if photos or illustrations of people were going to be used: no one naked or half-naked, no one looking unhealthily thin, no couples (unless there were a LOT of photos of couples, in which case I’d want serious diversity when it came to gender, orientation, race and appearance: but ideally, no couples, since sending the message that sexuality only exists when there is another person around isn’t cool by me), no adolescent Jon-Benet’s, no status clothing or the like, no one looking ashamed or like they were making a webcam video to seduce someone with.

While the sport and exercise units of our textbook used photos of teens in the local schools (taken with their permission, and released by their parents), in our chapters on sexuality, drugs, body image, and violence, we mostly chose to use stock photos (in a couple of instances, we set up photos with kids from local schools, telling them what the photos would be used for and what the captions would be, and giving them lots of chances to veto the images or their uses). We figured that adolescence is challenging enough, without being "confused sex poster-teen" in your sibling's health textbook.

Like Heather we wanted to present an inclusive view of sexuality. We needed some couples, because some of the photos were for pages discussing communication with your partner. We certainly didn't want to pornify our textbook—we wanted to show kids who looked, for lack of a better term, "normal"—like someone our readers might go to school with. We wanted to show kids from different ethnic backgrounds, in ways that didn't resort to ethnic stereotypes.

Heather's mission:

to find two girls, one guy, and ideally, none of them would be rail-thin, the majority of them would not be white, they wouldn’t be a simple read in terms of their orientation or economic class, neither of the girls would look like they were going to a beauty pageant, and they would all look like the age of the book readership. Ideally, we were talking headshots, since that solved some of those problems full-stop.

It's not easy. We looked through hundreds of photos from at least five stock agencies, and found couples doing things I don't know the names for, teen girls wearing more makeup than I see on a Saturday night on College St. Healthy teens, who look comfortable in their bodies, just talking, or holding hands? Almost non-existant. Bi-racial couples? Ditto, and, as Heather says:

This may not be news to you — heck, it wasn’t exactly news to me, but the degree of this was a bit of a surprise — but guess what? So far as I can tell, if you are a young adult male of African descent, you may only have your photo taken in a baksetball court or in an alley — apparently you aren’t allowed inside photo studios. You must either look like the weight of the world is smashing you down, or look like a cocky bastard about to throw down or get down.

Eventually, she found a photo of a teen girl with "honky locks," who looked thin, but not underfed for her body, with an interested, engaged expression, and a few other photos. I think we found the same girl.

See here's the thing about sexuality (and many other specialist topics) and stock photography: in general, despite the myriad photos on the sites, there are only a handful of photos that will really work for any given take on a topic. If you have a book about sexuality, and you want to present sexuality in a non-pornified, non-judgmental way, then you're going to have a limited range of photos that will work for you, and everyone else publishing in that area is looking at the same photos. So you get situations where a college-level, hardcover textbook on Human Sexuality from a big textbook publisher will have a cover photo that shows an armchair with four feet sticking off the side, and the same four-feet-entwined photo will grace the cover of a small softcover book about contraception from the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, or where one of the photos from the inside of our textbook may also appear on the cover of a teen sexuality book.

So I'm Supposed to Tell You How Our Book Flerbelsnerps the Wobblejob?

From the curriculum document:

By the end of this course, students will

identify the requirements, including basic equipment standards, preparation (e.g.,warm-up and cool-down exercises, training requirements), and specific safety issues that maximize performance and participation in recreation and sport activities;

Somehow, I need to demonstrate, in tabular form, where our textbook enables students to do this. The only problem is that I can't parse this sentence! How the heck do requirements include issues? And how does a requirement maximize performance?

Okay. So drawing on the skillz I employed when reading ancient Greek texts for class, I am going to isolate the main clause and identify the parts of speech:

Main clause: Students will identify the requirements

(So far so good. Subject: students. Main verb: will identify (third person plural, future, indicative, active). Direct object: the requirements. There must be a subordinate clause in apposition, that will modify the requirements, and tell me which requirements. Let's put a bracket around the participal phrase " including basic equipment standards, preparation (e.g.,warm-up and cool-down exercises, training requirements), and specific safety issues"—it's clearly in apposition to the direct object. So now I need a demonstrative adjective, which will tell me which requirements students will identify. Oh, look, there's a "that," followed by some a subordinate clause. We'll parse that next.)

the requirements that maximize performance and participation.

Yep. That's what the text says. Really. So somehow, some criteria (requirements) are running around enhancing or getting the most (maximizing) activity (performance and participation).

Oookay. If I were reading Lucian right now, I'd be checking what the Loeb said, sure that I'd made some sort of error in my reading. But look, we have a prepositional phrase!

"in recreation and sport activities" goes with "performance and participation" and tells us what the maximized performance and participation pertain to. What the entire subordinate clause means, however, is still kind of unclear to me.

So, the sentence, without the annoying participial phrase, and with synonyms substituted for the unclear terminology is

Students will discover the preconditions that make as great as possibletheir performance and participation in recreation and sports activities.

That's what the text says.

Now for that last appositive, modifying "requirements": We have the gerundive (I think?) "including." So the requirements that maximize performance and participation include a bunch of noun phrases. These noun phrases are basic equipment standards, preparation (e.g.,warm-up and cool-down exercises, training requirements), and specific safety issues

In other words, it really does say that standards, preparation (for example, training requirements) and issues are types of requirement.

I really do feel like I used to when trying to read Euripides. I have all the syntax, and all the vocab., and none of it strings together in a sensical way.

Sigh.

(Yes, I can guess, if I turn off my linguist brain and turn on my editor brain. If I were editing this document, I'd write a comment, like this:

I'm not clear on how the requirements that students need to identify can include things like "safety issues." I think that, in our desire to be complete and to use appropriate language, we have sacrificed clarity. Do we mean that students will indentify what they need, in terms of both equipment and preparation, in order to safely get the most out of their participation in recreational and sports activities? Can we say this? Please clarify.

But I've guessed at what the curriculum team meant. That's not really what the language says. Problem is that I can demonstrate that our resource enables students to do what I wrote, and tell teachers where the exercises that demonstrate this are. Not so much with the requirement as worded.

Bad Advice

Dear Guidance Teachers, Career Counsellors, and other Purveyors of Job-Planning Advice,

Stop with the advice to job-seekers and career-planners to cold call random people in their desired careers to ask for information regarding how to get into that field, already!

I receive at least one call a week from someone who thinks they want to enter the glamorous world of publishing as an editorial assistant. Do you people think I have nothing better to do with my work day?

It's not that I am a self-centred bitch who doesn't want to help earnest job-seekers. I have spent five years as a volunteer executive member of my professional association, attending meetings and answering questions from people who want to enter the field. I have invited the people who demonstrate enough gumption to show up at meetings and ask me questions to e-mail or phone me. I speak at classes. I have written a lengthy blog post (easily found in a google search) about how to get into the field. I have volunteered to mentor people. I'm really grateful for the help people gave me, and I try to pay that around.

But I really dislike receiving phone calls from strangers who want me to do this on their schedule, during my work day. It's not as if they couldn't find information on-line, where people have put it up for anyone to see. It's not as if industry events are a big secret, open only to insiders who know the sekkrit handshake.

It's 2007, people! Phones are passé! They're tools of last recourse, when you're trying to gather information. Google is the job-hunter's friend!

Seriously. You people have jobs, right? The people to whom you're giving your crappy advice may not, but you do, right? And your jobs, presumably, give you lots to do. Of course, since you're career counsellors and their ilk, maybe it's normal for you to spend your days dispensing career advice to strangers. That may well be part of your job description. Let me explain something to you: it's not part of mine. So stop telling people it's a good idea to phone random strangers up and ask them about their jobs. It's not. It interrupts my day, and pisses me off.

Instead, tell them to do what every successful job hunter I know has done: read everything possible about the industry in which they are interested, on-line, and, if possible in printed industry publications. Find out if there's an industry association (have I mentioned yet that Google is a very useful tool for job-hunters career researchers?). E-mail the representative of the industry association who is in charge of outreach, and ask that person if they have time to answer your questions, or if they can point you to someone who can. Attend open industry meetings, where people who answer such questions often congregate and are prepared to do just that. If someone invites the job- or information-seeker to phone, only then should they phone.

But for the love of the letter M, stop telling people that it's a good idea to interrupt people's workdays! It's not. It's especially not when information is more readily available other ways.

Sincerely,
A Harrassed Professional

P.S., If you must give this outdated advice, or if information is not readily available through any other means (because the industry in question is mired in the nineteenth century, or perhaps because your job-seekers cannot read or use a computer, or live in remotest Alert, far from any professional association gatherings, please instruct your clients in correct telephone manners! "Hi, it's Fred," is not a good way to introduce yourself to a stranger on the telephone. She may know other people named Fred, and become confused. She may know nobody named Fred and suffer a brief panic attack, wondering whom she met and forgot and if she should have remembered him, knowing all the while that she doesn't imbibe, and therefore has no reason to have forgotten this contact. Continuing the conversation with "I'm wondering about opportunities for someone with my skills and background in your industry," merely leaves the persion wondering what your skills and background might be, at the very least.

A better introductory gambit would be "Hi, my name is Fred, and I'm a student at August Institution [or I'm a pipe fitter, but I'm contemplating a career change]. I'm looking to get into publishing and was wondering if you or someone at your company could spare me a few moments for an information interview." This way the person on the other end of the line a) knows that she doesn't need to remember who Fred is because she's never met him, b) understands that he seeks information rather than immediate employment, and c) has the opportunity to gracefully inform Fred that now is perhaps not the best time, or she is perhaps not the best person. In this way Fred demonstrates some respect for the possibility that this random professional he has interrupted might just have things other than his career on her mind right now.

Publishing 102: Publishing is a Business—Advances, Royalties, and Costing

It's time for another Basics of Publishing post! Cue the frenzied crowd.

This started in response to James D. Macdonald’s true but less than explicit statement over at Making Light:

I see that faux-statistic that 70% of books don't earn out, therefore 70% of books don't make a profit all over the place, and it's equally false all over the place. Publishers start making a profit on their books long before that book earns out.

But my explanation got rather long, so I brought it over here, rather than going on and on and on in the comments to Teresa’s post.*

It seems logical that if a book doesn't start earning the author royalties above the advance that the publisher paid, it must not have been a profitable endeavour for the publisher. At least, this seems logical until you consider the costs of making a book.

First, some of what we in the textbook publishing world call Key Terms, and list at the beginning of every chapter:

Royalties are a percentage of the sale price of the book that the author earns for each copy sold. So if a book has a sale price of $20, and the author recieves 15% of that, then for every copy of the book sold, the author will receive $3.

The author's advance is a sum that the publisher pays up front, before the book has been published. It's kind of a bet that the publisher makes that the book will earn more than that—the advance goes against the royalties. So if the author of our hypothetical $20 book was paid a $10,000 advance, he or she wouldn't see a royalty cheque until more than 3,334 copies had sold.

When our hypothetical book sells its 3,334th copy it has earned out the advance the publisher paid to the author.

Most authors’ contracts are more complicated than my example—I chose round numbers because I’m lazy and didn’t want to do too much arithmetic, and didn’t mention anything about sales of subsidiary rights because I wanted to keep the example straightforward—and most books don’t sell for $20, but you can still see that the author’s advance is a cost the publisher pays in order to get a manuscript, and that the amount that the author can earn from his or her work is advance + royalties after the book earns out its advance.

The author’s advance represents only a tiny fraction of the costs the publisher pays in order publish a book. If we just paid the author an advance and never spent any more money on a book, we’d have a manuscript, which may or may not be remotely publishable. In other words, we’d have a Word or .rtf file (unformatted, or possibly weirdly formatted), or maybe (if we’re a really old-fashioned publisher, or we have a much-beloved really old-fashioned author) and possibly some sketches or blurry copies of photos. In order to make a book out of these files or pages, the publisher is going to have to pay some people to work some magic.

These costs fall into two categories**: recurring costs and non-recurring costs.

Paper, print, and binding (PPB) represent the other major recurring cost centres. We have to pay for every copy of a book we print. As the number of books we print goes up, the cost to print each book goes down, because of economies of scale.

Editing (substantive/line editing, copy editing, and proofreading), design (interior and cover), formatting, permissions, and illustrations constitute some of the major non-recurring costs on an edition of a book—once we've paid a copy editor, we can print as many copies as we think will sell for a given book.

Then there are costs for marketing and sales, promotions, publisher's overhead (paying for premises, warehousing, staff salaries—which, I feel compelled to point out, are not extravagant—equipment, and all the other things the publisher needs in order to keep making books), keeping a lawyer on retainer, and probably some stuff I’m forgetting.

When deciding whether to publish a book, how much to spend on said book, and how much to charge the reader (and the booksellers, who get a discount) for the book, the publisher prepares a Profit & Loss statement (a P&L) (see the redoubtable Anna Louise Genoese's breakdown of how this works for trade books) to figure out whether the book is likely to make a profit given what the publisher believes the sales are likely to be (we use a variety of divinatory methods to predicts sales, including looking at sales of the author’s previous books, acquiring advance sales of the book, guessing at the number of potential buyers—in textbook publishing this includes all the schools that offer the course for which a textbook is being created; in trade it’s more nebulous than that—and factoring any external factors that might drive people to buy that book, such as the book’s being about a current hot topic, or the author doing something scandalous that might generate interest). The publisher calculates all the non-recurring costs, then estimates the recurring costs based on how many copies it thinks it should print (based on what the divinations have revealed that sales are likely to be). Overhead or operational costs don’t get factored into the P&L; however, it should be clear that publishers use the profits from their sales to pay their overhead, just as most sales-based businesses do. This is why we want books to make a decent profit: If they don’t, then nobody gets paid, and our computers die and we have to make them work with duct tape and paperclips, and we have to edit in the dark and cold with aged computer running obsolete software, and it’s just miserable. Publishing is a Business.

So, no matter how much an editor loves a book, no matter how badly an editor thinks that the world needs this book, if the editor doesn’t think that they can make it a profitable book, they’re probably not going to publish it. Because we have to pay the author’s advance, and the fees for all the costs associated with making the book and getting it to market, and we’d really prefer to have money left over to pay the staff (like me!), and maybe change the lightbulbs and upgrade some software.

So, as any business does before setting out on a new venture, we look at the probable costs, the likely profits, do what we can to minimize the former and maximize the latter, and hope that good things happen and bad things don’t.

Today’s Lessons

An author receives an advance when the publisher agrees to publish the book, whether the book sells or not.

The advance against royalties works kind of like a loan to keep the author in cheezedoodles and intarwebs while he or she finishes the book and until the sales start coming in—we all hope that sales will be enough to keep the cheesedoodles doodling after the advance has run out (pace authors, I know that the advance frequently runs out before the royalties start rolling in, if they ever do. It’s not a perfect system.)

When a book earns out the advance, that means that the book has sold enough copies to have “paid back” the publisher for the advance, and the author will now receive a percentage of the cover price of each book sold.

The publisher starts to make a profit on a book long before the book has earned out its advance.

The publisher incurs many many costs in addition to the author’s advance, in order to publish a book. Because Publishing is a Business, publishers try to divine whether a book will earn a profit before publishing the book, and do whatever they can to maximize the profit and minimize the costs.

The costs to publish a book can be non-recurring, and need paying only once no matter how many copies of the book are printed, or recurring, meaning that they apply to each copy of the book printed. Similarly, the author’s advance stays the same regardless of what the publisher decides the print-run will be, but the eventual sales will affect the author’s total royalties.

The publisher’s profit is only loosely connected to whether the book earns out the author’s advance

* About Nicholas Borelli, to whom Jim is responding, and his blog post positing a feminist conspiracy that keeps his writing from being published I will say little, right now. I’ve said most of what I need to say about the Nicholas Borellis of the world.

** Three, if you consider overhead a cost, but people generally don’t. Overhead represents several different cost centres, but they float over all the income-generating projects, so don’t get addressed in project-specific budgeting or P&Ls.

Miss Snark Sets Everyone Straight

It seems that Miss Snark's mailbag has been unusually full of imperfect submissions.

So she's setting people straight, with some advice about submitting and writing that anyone who is submitting a manuscript or writing anything that they intend to publish would do well to study, memorize, apply, and copy onto their bathroom walls so that they must consider the wisdom of Miss Snark. Not being agent, I care especially about the following two:

2. Sitting in a car/truck/bus, telling me about the weather you're having is not not not compelling. Not now, not ever. Go rent a copy of the movie Jaws. Watch the beach scenes without sound. Not quite as scary is it? Here's the thing about novels. You have to show me the sound effects. Your writing, your diction, your pacing, your POV, your choice of focus, all have to get my attention and point me at the shark. You don't have to show me the shark, but I have to get a sense it's there.

In general, avoid descriptions of the weather, the scenery, or anything else that doesn't make me wonder "What's going on? What next? Who are these people?" and also make me want to know the answers to these questions.

7. Look at every use of the word "was" and "that". 90% of the time you can take them out. That edit alone will jump you over about half the stuff I look at every day. Prune ruthlessly.

In other words: Rule 17*: Omit Needless Words. Scrutinize every modifier: Does it need to be there? Examine every verb: Could it be more lively, more precise? Is it in the active voice? Could it be? Never use three words when you could use one.** Make every word, every phrase work.

Writing is work. It's hard. It's more than putting words down, as they crawl out from under your fingers. It's a craft, and it can be learned, and if you want to write, you need to apply yourself to learning how to do it well. Nobody wants to read mediocre, overstuffed prose. Trust me: I do it all day, some days, but someone pays me to make sure other people don't have to suffer.

And Miss Snark knows from writing, so heed her words.




* Also known as the battle cry of the line editor.
** Of course, you should omit only the needless words. Keep the other ones, but make sure they're the ones you need.

Did I Say Write That? I'm Sure I'd Remember!

Jim Crace was fascinated to discover that his latest novel Useless America was available via Amazon.

Especially since he had no memory of having written it.

During the few minutes it took me to access Useless America's details on Amazon's web pages, the novel's sales rank jumped from 70,301 to 69,844. It jumped another 60,000 places when I submitted my own order. Sadly, sales have tailed off a bit in the last few days - down to 219,986 at the last check. Maybe Amazon have sold out and Viking Penguin are reprinting. But my copy must be on its way by now. As the named author of Useless America, I'm looking forward to my first sight of it.

The only hitch is that Useless America is a phantom book - and its not even a phantom of my own creation.

Crace explains that he was in talks with Viking Penguin several years ago, to write a novel, and the novel was signed and entered into somebody's catalogue, complete with ISBN. That marketing information made its way to Amazon's database, and there Useless America remains, for anyone to order.

They're going to be waiting a long time for delivery, though.

via Bookninja

Technorati Profile

TCI has a Technorati Profile.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Important Note to All Authors

Make your will.

Neil Gaiman has explained why this is a good idea: While you may not care about your possessions, consider what may happen to the rights to your work after you die. Having your literary executor named in your will helps your survivors respect your wishes with respect to your work.

Neil's also provided a form that U.S. authors can use to create their own wills. Canadians, consider visiting a lawyer, or, if you're skint, you can buy one of the many kits that are available, or use a free one. Do take into account what will happen to your literary estate (an entity that is, as Neil points out " a separate thing from the disposition of our second-best beds".)

And Then There Were ... ?

I'm a bit behind on noting this: Educational publisher Nelson Thomson is selling off its textbook division. Or, as the biz-jargon-laden report on CBC says, Thomson is undertaking a sweeping revamp, and completing its "transformation into a provider of high-value electronic-based 'workflow solutions.'"

This leaves the number of publishers providing core materials for the elementary, secondary, and post-secondary markets down to two: Pearson and McGraw Hill Ryerson.

I think this is very bad for everyone concerned. Well, it might be okay for Nelson, who seem to think that their profitable educational publishing business is limiting their success as a provide of e-solutions, but for schools and colleges, who have few enough choices for textbooks as it is, and for publishing professionals e (both freelance and in-house), who compete for an ever dwindling number of jobs and freelance contracts from an ever smaller number of ever stingier publishers.

Over the years, the number of educational publishers creating resources for core courses has dwindled, as the survivors gobbled up everyone else. When I was at Nelson, they finished digesting Harcourt, and gobbled up Gage, they've since swallowed a couple of other publishers. Pearson has engulfed several: they publish under Addison Wesley, Prentice Hall, Pearson, Longman, and a few other imprints. Now one of the Big Fish is selling off its publishing division. I can't really see either of the other publishers buying Thomson Learning intact, but maybe someone'll prove me wrong.

I Don't Think This is What PublisherDude* Means When He Says Our Books Should Be Bullet-proof

A candidate for State Superintendent of Schools has proposed giving used textbooks to students to use as shields in case of a school shooting:

"People might think it's kind of weird, crazy," said Republican Bill Crozier of Union City, Oklahoma, a teacher and former Air Force security officer.

You don't say.

Crozier and a group of aides produced a 10-minute video Tuesday in which they shoot math, language and telephone books with a variety of weapons, including an AK-47 assault rifle and a 9mm pistol. The rifle bullet penetrated two books, including a calculus textbook, but the pistol bullet was stopped by a single book.

Might think it's kind of weird? I mean, granted it addresses the problem of what to do with outdated textbooks, and may provide those living in the culture of fear with some illusion of "doing something," but I kevlar dustjackets are not a standard publishing specification for textbooks.

Memo to PublisherDude*: When you said you wanted our books to be bulletproof, this isn't what you meant, right? 'Cause if so, I need to talk with the printers, pronto.

* My boss

via Bookninja

From the Mailbag: Publishing Is Weird (Publishing 101, with Helpful Digressions)

I had an e-mail from an old acquaintance asking for some basic publishing information, which highlit some of the common bits of mystification. Since my response was ... erm ... comprehensive, I figured, I'd share.

I have an editing/publishing industry question for you from a friend of a friend, and I hoping that you can at least point him in the right direction.

The guy's an artist and musician with shows under his belt, has a couple of self published books, and is looking to widen his exposure and/or talk to someone about starting to look around for some merch licensing opportunities (yeah, I know whole different ballgame). He lives in [US CITY], but is wondering if it's possible/and or suitable to find a literary rep (or other agent) in Toronto as it's closer than New York.

I haven't a clue, beyond thinking that New York is a more appropriate place to start as a) he's American and b) dealing with regional or American rights is a better place to start than Canada. I don't know if you're dealing with this sort of stuff in your editing gig. I figured at least you could point him in the right direction.

Have to admit, I'm kind of curious about the whole process myself. :)

—Friend of jennie's

My response
Okay. This is long. Sorry. Publishing never works the way people think it does.

First: He doesn't want a literary agent. He may think he does, but that's not what a literary agent does.

A literary agent takes a manuscript and tries to sell it to a publisher. When the agent sells it, he or she negotiates the author's contract and receives a commission on the author's advance and royalties.

Agents do not deal with sales of already-published materials. They may have something to do with negotiating an author's share of subsidiary rights sales, but that's done at the time the agent, the author, and the publisher negotiate the author's contract. I think. We don't deal much with subsidiary rights-sales in educational publishing, so I'm less conversant with that part of the biz.

But your friend wants a marketing and sales department.

Here Begins the First Digression: Publishing 101—Getting Books to Readers

Publishers employ salespeople to sell books to retail outlets and have warehousing and distribution departments to make sure the books get to the bookstores. This is the unglamorous, hard work of publishing that nobody ever thinks about, and it's why publishers are picky about whom they publish—they're going to have to convince people that this book will sell.

Some self-publishing outfits offer distribution support (they'll take orders for the self-published author's books and ensure that the books get to the buyers); however, they don't do marketing, publicity, or any of the hard work of sales (any moron, me included, can make a website saying THIS BOOK IS THE BEST BOOK EVER!! That's not what sells books, alas. What sells books is getting the books to where the right readers can find them, and having a good book (where "good" means "what the reader wants to read."))

Publicity departments comprise the people who think "Gee, I bet this book would sell well if John Grisham wrote a cover blurb!" and have the connections to send it to JG for the blurb (sometimes other networks come into play there, too). They send it to the various trade review outlets (Publisher's Weekly, Quill&Quire, etc.), and to the mainstream review outlets too (CBC, Globe&Mail, etc.), arrange interviews with the author, and do anything else they can to make the public aware of the book, without spending a lot of money to do so (that's the working rule for "publicity": it's free.)

Marketing departments write the cover copy and ensure that the book gets into the publisher's catalogue; they also come up with marketing plans (possibly getting the book into a non-traditional sales niche), and do all sorts of other stuff that I don't touch (such as arrange for prime placement (face-out, front-of-store, with a display rack, whatever) for the book in the bookstore), designed to make the book attractive to buyers. (Remember that there are two stages of sales for a book: the publisher-to-vendor sales, and the vendor-to-reader sales. Most publishers sell to vendors (bookstores and other retail outlets), rather than directly to readers).

Salespeople get out there and sell the book to distribution outlets (except in educational publishing, where they sell it to school boards or institutions of higher education. But I'm mostly talking about trade publishing here, because that's what everyone thinks of when they think they want to publish a book). Then it's up to the adoring public and the book itself, assisted by the efforts of the marketing team, the publicist, the cover designer, the blurber, the reviews, and every other bit of incentive the publisher can provide the buyer to pick up this particular book.

Once the book is a Literary Sensation OMG!!! then the subsidiary rights people at the publisher get to sell rights to other publishers, screenplay people, and tie-in people. If you're Franklin the Turtle's publisher, this will keep your publishing company in interns, your author in cheezedoodles, and your author's agent in letterhead for a very long time.

Suggested readings for the keen student (actually, if you want a notion of how this crazy industry works, these are damn' near required readings.):

Teresa Nielsen Hayden On the Getting of Agents. Actually, everything Teresa's written on Making Light, and probably off, about the publishing industry is well worth reading for anyone venturing into print. While you're on Making Light, don't neglect Patrick's publishing posts (also very useful), and remember that the commenters are often pros, too.

[Wah! I can't find the post in which Teresa collected many of her publishing posts! Bother!]

Teresa on Neil Gaiman's blog: Everything You Wanted to Know About Literary Agents...

Agentobscura's Livejournal: Nadia's a literary agent, and her LJ is the usual mix of personal and professional, with a fair bit of valuable information about How Agents Work mixed in.

I've been remiss in not mentioning the redoutable and engaging Miss Snark: Lots of delightful snark and good information on what agents do, and how this particular one does it.

Anna Louise Genoese's livejournal: if you click on the "demystifying publishing" tag, she's collected all her informative entries on publishing. I am especially fond of this overview of the publishing industry.

End of digression

So, very few (if any) agents will touch a self-published book, and I can't think of an agent who does the kind of work your friend needs (I would say "no agents do that, but I haven't taken a complete survey. There may be someone out there working on a non-traditional business model, who isn't a scam artist. But it seems unlikely to me). There're no commissions in that. As a self-published author your friend is responsible for his own sales and distribution, which means that instead of having a trained and connected sales department at his disposal and a warehouse and distribution vector, he gets to do it all himself, which, I gather is what he's been doing, and it's a pain, and authors aren't generally salespeople, so he very cleverly wants someone else to do it for him.

(Short digression: In general, publishers don't do this for self-published material. There have been instances—David Chilton's The Wealthy Barber springs to mind—where an established publisher has bought the rights to a successful self-published book and been able to capitalize on the author's work, and market the book to even greater success.These are rare, and usually happen because the self-published book demonstrated remarkable success as a self-published book.)

So your self-published author/artist friend needs to find a freelance marketing and salesperson, or get together with other people who have similar books and stuff, and form a sales and marketing collective, or something. Or he needs to enter into some sort of arrangement with a distributor of self-published books, but that's really outside my ken.

If he thinks he's found an agent, he should tread with extreme caution. I can't think of any legit literary agents who will do the sort of thing you say he's looking for, and there are a lot of dodgy people out there, who will take those who know less than they do about the publishing industry for a ride. But, I repeat, he's not really looking for an agent. He's looking for a publicist, marketing guru, and sales force.

Given that I've mostly worked in traditional publishing, I don't know where one finds those, other than down the hall, and he can't have ours.

Second: If he did have a manuscript to sell, it wouldn't matter where his agent was, if they were a good agent. A good agent is connected to the people who buy the kinds of books that the authors that agent represents write. They can be connected from NYC, Toronto, London, or Tucson. Much of the agent's work takes place via e-mail and phone, and at book fairs (Book Expo America, the Frankfurt Book Fair, and others), and if an agent wants to meet with an author, they'll make it happen.

But, I repeat, he's not looking for an agent.

Here Begins the Second Digression: Publishing 101—Successful Self-publishing Models, and What Publishing Is

When an author self-publishes he (or she, but this guy's a he, so I'll stick with the masculine pronoun. Rest assured that what I write pertains equally to female self-published authors.) is assuming the publisher's role. Now, as noted above, a publisher does a lot of things: A publisher finds or creates books to publish, buys those books from authors or packagers, produces the books, and sells the books, and gets the physical books to the bookstores.

I work in the creating-books end of this process, and this and the supposedly glamorous process of finding books to publish is the part that most of the world thinks of when they think of publishing. However, if I just did my job, and we didn't hire marketing and sales people, I'd be lonely and broke (and probably unemployed) with a pile of books that only a few people knew about, selling, like 20 books a year, even if I had a spiffo website.

Most self-published authors do the making-book part of the publishing process, with a greater or lesser degree of success. Then they think "I've made the book, my work is done."

But the self-publishing author is the book's PUBLISHER. That means that his job is just beginning, because if nobody knows a book is there, nobody will buy it. He gets to try to get it into stores and other distribution outlets. He gets to create buzz, he gets to put the book into the paths of people who might want to read the book. He gets to convince retail outlets to take copies of their book (which usually means they'd better be prepared to offer a returns program, the way a publisher does, but that's another long digression, and we're already in the middle of a digression.)

(Shall I tell you a secret? In most publishing companies, sales people are better paid than editors. This should tell you something about the relative value of our jobs to the publishing company.)

Stay with me, I'm going somewhere with this.

In recent years (and possibly longer, but I've only been in the industry for about five years, remember), we've been hearing a lot about how "traditional publishing" is breaking down, and savvy self-published authors are capitalizing on easily available publishing technologies to succeed where traditional publishers are not taking risks. Smart people who have a book in them no longer need to gain the acceptance of some elitist gatekeeper who's only interested in publishing established names. Blah blah blah David Chilton, The Wealthy Barber, blah blah blah, The Celestine Prophecies blah blah blah.

Inside the hyperbole is a kernel of truth. A savvy marketer with a good idea who takes the time to do it right can publish a book, and successfully get the book into the hands of readers who are willing to pay for it. What these stories often neglect to mention is that these self-published authors are, as I said savvy marketers. Some of them have an established audience because they're well known in their established fields—they have built-in publicity, marketing, and distribution fields (people who are public figures or speakers, for example). Others just devote themselves full-time to marketing their books, and because they have a good book and a good marketing plan, they get the book into enough good distribution outlets that the right readers find it.

Other successful self-publishing models involve an author who publishes in a field so specialized that it wouldn't be worth a conventional publisher's while to publish for the 1000 people worldwide who care about this book, but in which this author is well connected, and for which this author is writing the book that all 1000 of these people have been waiting all their lives for. Or, in more general terms, when an author is better connected to the small market for his book than a publisher would be (afficionados of esoteric subjects, family historians sorta thing), then the author can do a better job of getting the book to its market.

End of Digression

Ummm ... this is a really long-winded way of saying "sorry, I can't help your friend," but I figured that if I could at least tell him why what he thinks he's looking for is not what he's looking for, he'd be better off.

Today's lessons:

Agents do not sell self-published books, usually.

Making books is only a small part of what a publisher does. If nobody sells the books, we're left with a pile o'books and no money.

Self-publishers take on multiple roles: author, editor-in-chief, permissions coordinator, designer, publicist, marketing department, and sales force. Any one of these jobs is challenging. This is one reason that self-publishing bestsellers are rare (but not unheard of, because some people are just that good, that lucky, or some combination of good and lucky).

Publishing is weirder than you think. If you are thinking of trying it, it's a good idea to become acquainted with how it works, and marvel that it does.