bookpublishing

A very interesting thing happened this week in regard to my recent promotion (if that’s what you call it) in my company. As explained in an earlier post, I was recently offered a job that’s more aligned with my interests at the company and offers a greater challenge and more responsibility. I had been working part of the Copy Desk, reviewing a copy of each book before it went to the printer. As part of a two-person team, my superiors were worried about finding a replacement. Therefore, I offered to continue my work on the Copy Desk until they found a replacement. After about a month or two (it sure felt like a long time), they hired someone–then we had layoffs and a hiring freeze and they had to tell the girl they could no longer hire her. So since then they’ve been kind of scrambling to figure out what to do.

On Friday I learned that my colleague, Meredith (who I’ve mentioned before on this blog), was asked by two of my superiors if she would take my job at the Copy Desk. This was a bit of a surprise because Meredith has never expressed interest in that side of the editorial department, but not a big surprise because of the current flustered state of the company. So it puts her in a bit of a bind. In her current job, she has had a hand in acquiring new books and has successfully published an intriguing new true crime book about the Cheshire, Connecticut, home invasion that occurred last year. She has been gaining ground her in acquisitions experience, but if she were to move to the Copy Desk, she would be forced to give that up. On the other hand, working on the Copy Desk gives you direct contact with every book we publish. It’s very detail-oriented as you are the last person to make manuscript corrections and are responsible for finding any remaining errors. You are also the first one to blame if errors sneak through. As a detail-oriented person myself, I’ve really enjoyed this job. Meredith and I have discussed it, however, and it’s not really the job she hoped to be doing at this stage, especially because it takes her away from the work she enjoyed.

Despite the fact that if she stepped in my old job, it would really help me to move on to my new one, I told her that in truth I would be upset if they asked me to give up the job I liked to take on one I didn’t. They didn’t offer any incentive for her to switch, other than she’d move from hourly to salaried (which doesn’t affect her pay or benefits). But turning it down is a risk because it may look like she isn’t a team player. The compromise we came up with is to ask if she can work on the Copy Desk part time and continue her work as Editorial Coordinator part time. If she can juggle it, it seems like a good way to go: She can make her superiors happy while also continuing the work she likes. A hell of a lot of work though, unfortunately. I do hope she doesn’t turn it down entirely. It would be my first instinct, and was probably hers, but when I discussed this with my mother today (she was a Human Resources Director), she maintained that it would look bad for her to refuse and wouldn’t help her get future promotions or salary hikes.

It’s definitely a tough position to be in. And none of it would have happened if we hadn’t had the layoffs/hiring freeze! So I’m hopeful that the company can turn things around. And also that Meredith gets the best experience out of whichever job she chooses (or both, if that’s the case). Like my former boss, Josh, told me when he heard I’ve been balancing both jobs: At least now you can answer that “How do you handle a large workload?” interview question for the rest of your life.

Does anybody else out there have any advice or words of wisdom? Anybody been in this sort of situation before?

I don’t believe I’ve mentioned it here before, but like many of you who read this blog (I imagine), I am working on my own major writing project. In my case, it’s a novel–fiction, romantic comedy. I’ve been writing it for over three years now, mainly because I enjoy it so much and will be sad to have it end, but also because I work on it only when I can spare the time and sometimes it’s sporadic.

I’ve definitely picked up the pace recently. This past Christmas I bought myself a laptop under the condition that I would write a piece of my book every weekend, and it actually has worked out really well. Now that my book is really taking shape I find myself running into some interested problems. I’ve never written fiction before. For a long time thought I was terrible at it… but when I actually tried playing around with a short story, it won 3rd place in a short fiction contest and I realized if I worked harder, I could get even better. Apparently, I must have known what I was doing.

Without giving away too much of the plot, here’s the problem I’m currently having. I have two major love interests for the protagonist, Amie. The first one, Brody, is meant to be a total gentleman, gorgeous, and nearly perfect (in fact, too perfect for Amie). But because I know the two of them are not meant to last the whole book, I have a hard time writing about him. It’s really difficult to make him interesting and enjoyable to read because, as I later realized, he doesn’t have enough quirks. Eric, on the hand–he’s the main love interest who the reader isn’t supposed to like at first–is so interesting and well-developed from the start that even though he’s a jerk, you like him a lot anyway. Isn’t it interesting how sometimes it’s impossible to control how the characters grow and develop and how the reader will respond?

What sorts of issues do you have in your own writing? I don’t care if it’s fiction/nonfiction, just for fun or professional writing. Share all your gripes here.

You probably know by now that Senator McCain has chosen Sarah Palin as his VP. I was really surprised. My initial reaction was: “Ouch, the Dems didn’t see this coming.” Then, “Somebody’s clearly hoping to get some of Hillary Clinton’s supporters.” Then it was, “She’s only been governor for two years?” Clearly, there will be a lot of chatter about his choice and I can’t wait to hear everyone’s reactions. I’m happy to see a woman for a VP slot, but how does McCain explain his reason for choosing a woman with so little experience? If you’re going to pick a woman, there are a hell of a lot of women out there with the experience and cojones to handle the job… Oh wait, they’re all Democrats. (Just kidding! I’m sure there are plenty in the GOP as well.) But I sure am curious to see what McCain can say about her lack of experience after he’s been bashing Obama nonstop for having that same weakness. If Obama isn’t ready to be president, how is Palin ready to be VP (and potentially president if anything were to happen to McCain)? Really interesting developments.

Sorry readers: I know you’re not here for election talk. There are plenty of other blogs for that (although, to be honest, I’m not sure I could recommend any of the ones I’ve been checking out lately). But a huge part of publishing is staying on top of current events and knowing the trends and discussions as they happen. While I discussed McCain’s VP pick with a colleague (Meredith, who I mentioned in an earlier post), she told me that one of our coworkers brought a book about Sarah Palin to Pub Board–the meeting where acquisitions editors pitch book ideas–and the book was declined. “UGH!” I groaned. What a loss for the company! “Can you imagine if we had accepted it and crashed it [to crash a book means to publish it with a very fast schedule]? We’d have the book done in a month and it would be the first thing everyone picked up.”

That’s sad. Nobody could have predicted she would be VP, but props to our editors who saw a great opportunity for a book about an influential individual rising in popularity. Who knows? Maybe we still have time for the book… what a bummer, though!

Although I said News & Rumors would be biweekly in the “every two weeks” sense, it may turn into twice a week! All because I suddenly have time to read my PW Daily emails. But first half sales are out and it’s always interesting to see who else in the industry is floundering (sorry guys).

Borders reported its sales yesterday. They were surprisingly not dismal. Publisher’s Weekly reported yesterday:

While Borders’s operating loss rose slightly from $21.0 million to $23.1 million, its loss from continuing operations was cut to $11.3 million from $18.1 million. The loss was less than expected by Wall Street analysts, giving a bump to Borders’s stock price. During the quarter, the company sold its Australia/New Zealand/Singapore business and applied the proceeds to help cut its debt, which was reduced to $465.7 million compared to $738.4 million a year ago. Total sales, however, fell 6.9%, to $749.2 million.

Wow, that’s a lot of numbers. The skinny is that they didn’t lose as much as expected, hence stock going up. As my company’s publisher announced delightedly, “Borders might last the week!”

Random House also reports that their sales fell 8% in the first half of 2008. “We have much catching up to do from September through December to reach our ambitious targets,” CEO Markus Dohle wrote. High selling titles this year include The Appeal and Audition as well as two Barack Obama titles, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope. Interesting to note after my e-book post yesterday, Dohle notes that “sales for e-books are already more than double the total for all of 2007,” although e-books are a very small source of income for the company.

Whether you’re a bookseller or publisher who’s affected, sales are always down the year after a Harry Potter book comes out, and they’re all mourning the loss of that series.

As a follow up to recent news that Virgin Comics closed, CEO Sharad Devarajan confirmed and said that the company is “restructuring” and will relocate to new and as yet unspecified offices in Los Angeles. “The decision to scale down the New York operations and concentrate on core activities is due to the current macro-economic downturn.”

So that’s all fairly depressing. Let’s talk about how many great things were on television yesterday. Red Sox killed the Yankees, 11-3 (they’re playing the third game of the series, 2-2 now). Bill Clinton had a fantastic speech at the DNC, Joe Biden had a very important and heartfelt speech to follow (including a tearjerking introduction from his son, Beau), and then Obama showed up to be cute and spontaneous. I can’t wait to see the speech tonight!

Had a great department meeting today during which the company’s Subsidiary Rights Director spoke about our e-rights movement toward publishing e-books. We have quite a few e-books (or Kindle books) available on Amazon at the moment, and we’re hoping to get lots more out there. The big issue is determining if we have rights to publish photos in all formats. But we’re leaping easily into the e-book era, over what I imagined would be a bigger hurdle.

Our agreement with Sony Reader is still in progress, but Amazon’s people are exceedingly easy to work with. They keep pushing us for more books in Kindle format to add to their site. And the best thing for us is that these versions require no extra work. It’s just more money coming our way. I believe Kindle books sell for about $10, but we earn rights from an even larger price (which is a specific percentage of the cost of the cheapest edition we publish). It gets the author more exposure to Kindle readers and for the moment, paperbacks/hardcovers are still much more popular–so we’re still profiting quite a bit from this movement. If Kindle version become more popular than paperbacks or hardcovers, that’s when we’ll see the digital movement exploding and will have to think quickly about how to recover during a new technological age. I’m not sure I want to think about that yet…

The questions I have for you guys: How do you feel about the Kindle? Do you have one? Do you want one? If it was less expensive, would you use it? What if you could get books on the Kindle before they were published in print? What if the Kindle offered bonus material? If you could get a free Kindle chapter for a newer/older book by the same author as a print book you’re already purchasing (and assuming you had a Kindle), would that be more incentive to buy the print book?

My colleague just got a Kindle and it’s the cutest thing and I hope it gains popularity and functionality. I think it’s in its early stages though. At the same time, I don’t want to see the end of printed books. Who knows where the industry is really headed…

Also, check in tomorrow for more news on Borders (some not-as-bad news) and Virgin Comics to follow up on yesterday’s News & Rumors.