Reading Lists and Frankfurt

The 2010 Publishing MA reading list was sent out on Monday, much to my delight! It is as follows:
Inside Book Publishing
From Pitch to Publication: Everything You Need to Know to Get Your Novel Published
Book Commissioning and Acquisition
How to Market Books: The Essential Guide to Maximizing Profit and Exploiting All Channels to Market 4th edition
Publishing for Profit: Successful Bottom-Line Management for Book Publishers
Getting it Right in Print: Digital Prepress for Graphic Designers
Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works (2nd Edition)

As I mentioned earlier, I've been really quite pleased with myself as I've already started reading Inside Book Publishing, but there's always a but. The reading list made it clear that we're expected to read this before the start of term. I'm still ahead of things, but not as ahead of things as I'd thought. It's still miles ahead of where I'd usually be at this point though (reading? for school? now? ha.) so I'm still happy.


And now, for the most amazing news in the history of the world (which may or may not be a slight exaggeration): I am going to The Frankfurt Book Fair this year. Also known as Frankfurter Buchmesse, it's the world's largest trade fair for books. It's a huge deal in the industry, and I'm going! To say I'm thrilled would be an understatement. This is a fantastic opportunity for me professionally (networking!), academically (getting a better understanding of The Big Picture), and socially (getting to know the people on my course). I've also never been to Germany before, so that's a bonus.

But most of all, what I'm looking forward to the most at Frankfurt is just one thing: books. Books, books, books, and books. So many books I'm pretty sure I'm going to tear up (no joke) when I first walk in.

But in the mean time, I still have 1 month, 3 weeks, 2 days until the start of term, and a few more weeks on top of that for Frankfurt.

Two months!

It's two months until the start of term, and things are moving along sporadically. I've been allocated a place in halls, and though I'm wavering between accepting and declining that offer, it is very nice to know that I most certainly have a place to live in September. On the finance side of things, the US Government has decided to change the way they do stuff with student loans, which is delaying my funding and starting to slightly worry me.

I'm told we (those of us on the course) should be receiving reading lists by email soon, which will be good to hear. When I went to Brookes for my interview, Beverley Tarquini mentioned two books to me, both of which I'm sure will be on the syllabus. The first, Inside Book Publishing, I purchased a couple months ago. I've been reading a few pages here and there and I think I'm on chapter 5 or 6 now. I have never been this interested in a textbook before. Everything I've read so far has been fascinating, which, frankly, is somewhat of a relief as it means I am doing the right course after all. The second recommendation was Alison Baverstock's book on marketing, and now that I'm looking for it I realize she actually has several, but I think it was How to Market Books: The Essential Guide to Maximizing Profit and Exploiting All Channels to Market 4th edition. Alison Baverstock is actually one of the reasons I had a difficult time deciding if I was going to do my MA at Kingston University (where I did my BA) or anywhere else. You see, programmes everywhere but Kingston seem to use Baverstock's book when they cover marketing. When Kingston covers marketing, they use Alison Baverstock the person.

Any way, I digress. I still need to get How to Market Books: The Essential Guide to Maximizing Profit and Exploiting All Channels to Market 4th edition, but I'm holding off on that until I know it's that one and not Marketing Your Book: An Author's Guide: How to target agents, publishers and readers (Writing Handbooks) or Are Books Different?: Marketing in the Book Trade.

In the meantime, I should be done with editing hopefully tonight, but tomorrow at the latest. That's a huge relief as it has been taking up the majority of my limited free time, which has been especially frustrating as I've been dying to write for the past month and just haven't had the time. So I'm looking forward to being able to write again, and to being able to read for fun again. Between January 1st and the end of June I read about 30 books, but this month I have read a big fat zero due to time constraints and impatience brought on by the inability to write.

I've been so busy with work and editing that it honestly seems like grad school is going to be (comparitively) relaxing. Of course, I'm saying that on the slowest day I've had at work in three months, a day so slow I've had ample time to write this entry.

Editing

Last month I was given a fantastic opportunity: a retired Disney artist I'm acquainted with asked me to edit his memoirs. Now, I've never really done any serious editing work for anyone other than myself before; I've read things for friends, but I've never gone through and done a sort of line-by-line thing for someone else, certainly not for someone who's not a friend. I was incredibly flattered, and of course I said yes. I have the chance to get some real editing experience and to read all this behind-the-scenes sort of stuff about some of my favourite movies from childhood. It's great, and it's also been quite a learning experience.

For starters, this is a lot harder than I thought going into it. I thought I'd be through it in a couple days, but it's been about a month now and I still have about 1/4 of the book to go. It's not just reading. It's not even reading and pausing occasionally to say I did/did not like something. It's like making a cross-country road trip in rush-hour traffic. Going going going picking up speed aaaaand stop, comma here. Take out this semi-colon. Going going going going picking up speed aaaaand combine these two sentences, incorrect use of the apostrophe. Going go-- stop, that's not what "literal" means. It's really quite labour intensive. Maybe it's been too long since I've seriously edited any of my own work, but the speed has seriously surprised me. Granted, it doesn't help that I'm working at my regular job between 45 and about 60 hours a week, usually six days a week, but still.

The toughest lesson I've had to learn though is the issue of voice. When I first started, I wanted to rewrite everything. I'd look at something and just be like, "This is wrong, that's not how I'd say it at all. It SHOULD be like THIS." But then I'd stop, take a step back, and struggle to find a less-invasive approach. No, it's not how I'd say it, but that doesn't matter. You know why? Because this isn't my book. I'm helping with it, I'm putting a lot of work into it, but I'm not the writer, I am the editor. My job is not to change the book to my voice, it's to help my writer improve his voice. It can be tough, to the point where sometimes I think I'm about to start bleeding from biting my tongue so hard, but it's worth it. I'm learning how to make less-intrusive edits, how to tell if something really needs to be changed, and how to support my writer as opposed to doing things for my writer/trying to replace my writer.

It has been quite the interesting experience so far, and as I said, there's still a chunk to go. I'm really glad I've had this opportunity, and I think (hope) it will really help me to have a better understanding of things in my Editorial Management module this fall.

Why Publishing

NB: This is part of a scholarship application I recently submitted.

One day when I was six years old, my first grade teacher decided to tell us how books became books. My response could best be described as incredulity. Edits and rewrites? Multiple rewrites? Why not just do it right the first time? Art and design departments? Surely once you had all the pictures together, the rest of that stuff would only take five minutes. Why all this pointless time wasting?

These questions bothered me for years; I thought about them every time I picked up a book. I didn't know what I was missing, but I knew it had to be something. When I became interested in writing at the age of 13, I began to understand a little more. When I was 15 I read The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Published, but while it answered many of my questions, it only raised more.

This course is the culmination of 18 years of curiosity, and I'm approaching it with a mindset that would have given my six-year-old self homicidal thoughts. I don't want all my questions answered. Oh I want some of them answered, of course, but not all. I want to spend my life learning everything I can about books. I want to wake up in the morning with a smile on my face because I know that when I go into work I will discover something new. I don't want a job so easy I can be perfect at it, I want a job where I make mistakes because new things are happening and there's something more for me to learn.

The MA in Publishing will prepare me well for my career in the industry, but it is not my end point. The next year will answer many questions for me, but I expect many more will be raised, which is how it should be. This course is a starting point, both for my career and my continued personal development. I want to learn what I'm good at, and what I'm bad at. I want to learn about things that seem to have nothing to do with editorial work because I think knowing all those different things will only make me a better editor.