Marisa: A feel good story about a book store community

After reading a lot of sad/bad/mad news to the extent that I do not want to read the news anymore, I'm sharing a nice news-story for anyone who feels the same:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/02/25/bookstore-owner-was-hospital-so-his-competitors-came-kept-his-shop-open/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.91d53e54750a

tl;dr: a bookstore owner was in the hospital so his competitors helped out and kept the shop open.

Molly- Questions

After an extremely long time, I have finally been able to access the blog hooray!!! I wanted to add my questions, though I'm a bit late. Here are some questions I still have at this point in the course.

1. People usually don't buy books because of who they are published by, as we have mentioned. Is this seen as a problem by the publishers themselves? Or is it just the norm? I'm curious what it would look like if we all started following publishers or like being fans of them specifically (some people might already).

2. When someone wants to publish a book, what should be their first few steps? I think we may have talked a bit about this previously, but I think the whole process is really interesting and would like to learn more about it.

3. Is there a "publishing community" on Twitter or other social media platforms? Does that play any role in the industry?

Sam: Reading Blockbuster Writers

         When I declared English as one of my majors, I think I assumed I would be reading and analyzing outdated literature. Yes, I did take Global Lit to 1500. But, curiously I have found that most of my class readings have been contemporary either from writing studies or just more recent novels (which is relieving). So over the last few semesters, I’ve been exposed to some of the blockbuster writers of our time.

         Last semester, I was assigned to read Stephen King’s Misery. Totally unfair judgement, but I assumed before I had read him that he was another James Patterson: churning out books with poor writing quality (Sorry James, but I respect your hustle!). I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of his writing, the depths of his characters, and the symbols he uses within his novels. In my horror class this semester, we will be reading his classic Pet Sematary soon (the movie scarred me as a child, so I'm looking forward to reading the book). I just recently ordered one of his more contemporary books to see how it matches up to his older stuff (11/22/63). I REALLY cannot comprehend how he can come up with so many concepts, publish VERY frequently, write everything himself (I haven't heard of him using ghostwriters?), and write it well. I probably should just read his memoir On Writing to understand.

          I also just finished Dean Koontz's Hideaway having never read him before. According to a report about World's Richest Authors, his net worth is a whopping 145 million. Sidenote: 90% of the authors on that list are white.

          Anyways, I guess I can't judge him completely off one book, but based off what I read, can't say I was impressed. The ending was so rushed it seemed VERY obvious he had to meet a deadline. As far as thrillers go, I felt it was nothing new, I prefer something more along the lines of Gone Girl with surprises and twists.

          I'm not sure what best-selling writer I'll try to read next, but I'll try my best to keep an open mind!

Brooke: The Secret to Immortality is Alcoholism

Okay, the title is kind of clickbait but it will make sense, I promise. Long time no blog...so I started to write a blog post about actual publishing earlier, but eventually the siren of information called me and I got increasingly dragged into that black hole we call the internet. I ended up reading this wild article that I am going to share here. I think it would make a great book and would undoubtedly sell. Honestly, I think even a bad book about this story would still sell. It's just too crazy.

It's essentially about this group of guys who tried to murder this other guy in order to collect life insurance money....except he just wouldn't die. They tried to kill him so many times, guys, it's ridiculous. Yes, it is currently 2 in the morning so I may be a tad bit too excited about this, but I'm pretty sure everyone will find it slightly interesting, at least.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-man-who-wouldnt-die-89417903/

Let me know what you think! Seriously, someone should make this into a book. I can practically feel the future Netflix adaptation looking over my shoulder as I type this.

Mia: Check out My Tita's Poem in POETRY magazine!

This news is a little timely since we just talked about literary magazines! If you could just allow me a little bit of bragging, my Tita Angela got published in POETRY magazine, for the March 2019 issue. So, if you grab a copy, check out her poem!

Here are some pictures from Facebook, the place where I inevitably hear all of this news.

Anyway, just wanted to share some good news that's related to this class, if any of y'all end up with an issue!

Jae: Question "Is it good?"

I think I can confidently state that I have horrible taste in a lot of stuff. I can't think of topics on top of my head, but usually, I do find myself enjoying things that even I would admit are "bad".

It's a pretty generic question, but I'm always wondering the composition of what makes a book "good". To put in an inquiry/sophisticated sense, I was curious about how an agent or editor examines a book. Rather, I'm wondering if/how their perspective, based on their occupation, would change in comparison to the times they would leisurely read a book. Is there a sense of an officiality behind the evaluation of a book? Or it a gut-feel that people just have when they read? I don't think there would be a universal answer that can be applied to all of the publishing industry, but I was always interested in how people see the book through the lens of the people with jobs that makes book a possibility. 

Mia: Translation & Untranslatable Words

One of my favorite things about learning other languages is the words that you can't perfectly translate. There's certain nuances that are untranslatable and I always find it interesting to see how translators walk that line.

Translating is a difficult and grueling process; I can barely translate a few sentences for my Japanese homework, so I can't imagine how hard it is to translate an entire book. However, as someone who loves learning languages, I wonder how close we can get to an accurate translation. I think about this especially in the context of poetry, which usually works a lot with metaphors, specific word choices, word play, etc. 

In writing this I realized I'm curious as to how translation works in the publishing industry. There are rights to the book, but who ultimately ends up translating it? And again, how? 

Anyway, for fun, here are some of my favorite words that aren't perfectly translatable from some languages I (kind of) know:

insortable - French for, someone you can't take out in public. Like, you can't take them anywhere, because they're annoying, embarrassing, etc. (I'm looking at you, Tess). 

さすが (sasuga) - this is usually used as an exclamation like "wonderful" or "great" but it's not quite that. "Sasuga" is used when someone who you expected to do well, does well. It's almost like "as expected (of them)". So, if you hear the smartest kid in class did well on a test, you could say "さすが".

ねこじた (nekojita) - this literally translates to "cat's tongue" but it's basically used with people who have an inability to eat/drink hot food. Someone with a sensitive tongue.

つんどく (tsundoku) - this one is relevant to all of us, probably. It's a noun/verb that means "to pile up books and not read them". It comes from, つもる (tsumoru), "to pile up", and どくしょ (dokusho), "reading".

くうきよめない (kuukiyomenai) - this one is great. It literally translates to "can't read the air". It's basically used for someone who can't read the atmosphere/mood. It's shortened to "KY" in text slang.

Kilig - this is one of my favorite Tagalog words, but it's most commonly translated as "butterflies in your stomach". This is mostly correct, but I like to think of it like so cute you want to scream? Or like, you can't stop smiling? You know when those two characters who have spent the entire book going around in circles finally get together and you're overjoyed? Yeah, that.

Gigil - again, Tagalog, also related to reacting to cute things. Basically, something is so cute you have an uncontrollable urge to squeeze it or grit your teeth or something. Usually used in reference to cute babies.

Tampo - to ignore someone because they hurt you, but in a non-serious, sulky way. Like being mildly, cutely angry. Usually translated to being sulky (but sungit is closer to "sulky" than tampo).

Evelyn M: Bestselling Books vs. Books We Love

I try to maintain my status of being a "well-read" reader, by constantly selecting the books I chose to read (or listen to) based on their buzz or awards or place on the NYT bestseller list.

In the past few months, I've read Something in the Water, Circe, Where the Crawdads Sing, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, and am currently reading The Silent Patient based purely on the feeling that I would be more "in the literary conversation" had I read them.

While I enjoyed all of them, I genuinely did not love any of them, or would consider rereading them. (Is the clearest sign of an excellent book the desire to reread it?)

It makes me wonder how a book ends up becoming huge in the literary world — is it marketing? Publicity? Enough people think they're good even if they're not life-changing? I suppose it's a combination, but it does make you think that even if you were to write an absolutely fantastic book, you'd need to have those other factors to break into the bestseller charts.

Also I'd love to ask the class: What's a book that you think is a hidden gem?

Dbo: Footprint of the Editing World's Lack of Diversity and "Theology-checking" in NY Times Bestseller

My friend suggested I read Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Holllis, which is currently #1 on the NY Times bestseller list of How-To books. Reading this book, I have thought more about the footprint of the lack of diversity in the publishing industry, as well as the lack of fact-checking we considered in our last class, so I figured I'd share my thoughts on the book here. (Also this is a super long post so hopefully it will count for my forgetting to post something last week).

As a brief overview, the book has twenty chapters. Each chapter has more-or-less the following structure: First Hollis tells a story about her own struggle with the chapter-topic and how she overcame it. Then she moves on to more exposition of whatever truth or encouragement she wants to convey in the chapter, occasionally referencing her Christian faith, and lastly, she lists specific and tangible strategies that she used to overcome the problem. The topics she covers range from mothering, to sex, to work ethic. Overall, the book resembled a very long pep-talk.

Although the title of the book implies its audience is women, I didn't get the sense Hollis was writing to someone like me (granted, the book talks a good deal about parenting, but this sense went beyond that difference between Hollis and me). I've gotten this sense before when reading other advice/how-to Christian authors, namely John Piper and C.S. Lewis (although, I tend to cut Lewis some slack because he was writing in a different day-and-age, and because - well, he's dead). In the case of Piper and Lewis, I would be occasionally pulled out of the book whenever their assumptions would periodically remind me that they weren't really writing to people like me; they were writing to men like them. Reading Hollis' book I had similar feelings. It was harder to place what exactly was making me sense that I was not an intended reader, but this impression was validated in chapter four when Hollis describes her online presence saying "I have worked tirelessly over the last couple of years to create content that caters to women. I have spent numerous hours trying to figure out exactly what women like us want in life" (Hollis, 41). In the first quoted sentence, Hollis mentions women generically, as if she's talking about any and all women. In the next sentence, however, she clarifies and specifies that she is not catering to all women; she is catering to "women like us", to which I replied in the margins of my copy of the book: "Who is the us?".

There is another clear moment when Hollis discloses that she is not, in fact, addressing all women in this book. In chapter eight on mothering she says, "somewhere some cynical reader is thinking about all the parents who do fail. There are plenty of mamas who make bad choices, who hurt themselves or their children... but I'm not speaking about those mamas. I'm talking to you" (Hollis, 87). Maybe I am the cynical reader Hollis is describing, but Hollis' admission that she's not talking to "mamas who make bad choices", points to a larger qualm I have with her book.

The main mantra of Hollis' book is "Only you have the power to change your life" (Hollis, 211) or as she puts it another way, "It's all in your hands now. Everything that happens from here on out is entirely up to you" (70). Or "You are meant to be the hero of your own story" (Hollis, 5). The entire book boils down to try harder, try smarter, and you will eventually reach your dreams because you can. I'm sure there are many women who need to hear that message, and, judging by its position on the NY Times bestselling list for the past forty-seven weeks, many women have loved hearing it. It's an inspiring mantra for most. Who doesn't want to be told that if they keep trying they will eventually reach their goals? Isn't that the American dream?

This mantra, however, is not always true. It doesn't hold for everyone. I could go on a rant on how the American dream is a lie, but this post is already longer than I intended. If you still believe in the American dream, do your own research. Type "american dream lie" into the Google search box. Other people put it more eloquently than I can.

Aside from her mantra being untrue in a factual and societal sense, it's not Biblical. When I read books by Piper and Lewis, I was able to look past their assumptions about me as their reader and glean the merit of their argument or theology. Finding such merit in Hollis' book was more challenging for me because her theology and arguments (in my humble opinion as a twenty-year-old decently-read theologian) were less sound. When building an argument, most people will draw from outside sources to validate their claim. Christian books tend to quote the Bible or other Christian literature. In Hollis' case, though, the vast majority of her advice stemmed from her own personal experience, and although much of the advice is phenomenal and although I'm sure many women have similar experiences, there is a fallacy of anecdotal evidence.

Holding the claims I have quoted above next to scripture, Hollis' truths come up short of Biblical truth. Her claims diminish the role God can and often does play in people's lives, but I am more concerned with how her mantras enlarge what people should expect from and for themselves. I know that sounds pessimistic, but hear me out: Hollis' claims make it seem like success is totally dependent upon the individual, which is simultaneously empowering and daunting for someone just starting out, reassuring and emboldening for someone who has already made it, but absolutely devastating and crushing for someone who has failed at their dreams. Failure and success are not always granted to those who deserve them. For one, there are broken systems that favor one person over another through no one's fault or merit. Furthermore, there's God-given grace and what some people call luck both of which play into people's successes and failures. Hollis doesn't acknowledge this.

I understand Hollis' goal to pep-talk women into achieving their dreams, and I'm sure she has reached that goal of inspiring women to pick themselves up and try again. However, these two glaring (at least to me) errors of (1) presenting itself as a book written for all women when in reality it feels as if it is written for a subset of women, and (2) championing mantras that - when examined more closely - are widely viewed as false; make me wonder at the book's editorial process. In chapter nineteen, the second-to-last chapter of the book, Hollis openly acknowledges race and difference as something she and her community have struggled to address. She does this with grace and admirable honesty, but it came long after I had already gotten the sense that she had no idea how "white" she was. This chapter - or at least some of its content - needed to come earlier in the book. This realization reminded me of Chris Jackson's essay in What Editors Do. I wonder if a person of color ever read the book before it was published. If they did I wonder if their feelings were at all similar to mine and if, because of their presence in the editing world, the tone of the book would have been more all-inclusive.

Hollis' book also reminds me of our conversation on fact-checking last class. Thomas Nelson, Hollis' publisher, is a division under HarperCollins Christian Publishing (HCCP), the self-described "leading provider of inspirational content", so perhaps they are more interested in books' inspirational capabilities than their theological foundations. I would assume HCCP have some ramifications on what they will or will not publish as a Christian publisher, but similar to how other non-fiction publishers leave fact-checking up to the writer, I suppose Christian publishers leave theology-checking (for lack of better words) up to the writer as well. Besides what I mentioned above, there were a number of other claims Hollis makes that are at least theologically shaky, and moreover, I felt that many of the truths she did not mention were perhaps more important the some of those she did. But even if some of Hollis' editors had doubts about the book, I'm sure they were weighing the two questions all editors consider: Is it any good? And will it sell?

Girl, Wash Your Face isn't a bad book. It's a great pep-talk and an inspiring read if you don't think about it too much. Hollis says exactly what so many people want to hear, and because it sounds so encouraging and because it is mostly true (and likely because Hollis already had a significant online following), the editors figured the book would probably sell. And they were very right.

Sebastian: Pangyrus

Here's the link to the literary website/event producer/journal publisher that Greg Harris founded. Greg will be our guest on Tuesday.

Sebastian: Stuff for Friday

Our Guest: 
Here's Joanna Demkiewicz, or rather, here's her website.
Here's a pretty cool piece she wrote.

(In an interesting aside, here's Eula Biss writing about her first book, the one that Jeff Shotts used as an example in his piece from What Editors Do.)

Jill Abramson, what gives?
Please see the earlier post for the Rolling Stone story about Abramson's misquoting/plagiarism problems.
Then there's this guy who used to work at Vice: NEWS TO ME, which is long and pretty interesting.
And then Vox had this piece, which points up some of the issues surrounding fact-checking and nonfiction books more generally.

Question: Books + Movies= My new OTP

We talked previously about how an author can sell their copyrights to the movie industry in order to create a film, so I'm assuming there can be instances where it happens vice versa. Currently, I'm thinking of how the Star Wars saga and their book franchises and how that happened. 

Anyways, can an agent who failed to pitch a manuscript to any publishing industries pitch it to the movie industry? Does that count? Just generally curious between a relation (if any) between the relationship between film and literature.

Ethan: Questions

1. We had talked a bit in class about how certain literary magazines can have different intended audiences/requirements for publication in their magazines. For example, Georgia Review only publishes literature from Georgia, Creative Nonfiction only publishes that type of fiction, etc. Is this something that also occurs in publishing companies? We had had some discussion about quality vs marketability, but are there any publishing companies that only target certain demographics?

2.I've noticed recently that audio books are starting to become a bigger deal. What thought process goes into deciding which books will become audio books? What kinds of costs go into making an audio book? How has the market shifted to accommodate this new interest?

Mia: Fanfiction Follow-Up

So, this morning I was peacefully working on some things and catching up on some Overwatch League when my roommate drops by my open door and says, "They're making a Harry Styles fanfic I read in high school into a movie."

Not sure if anyone has heard about this already, but the movie is called After. It was originally a fanfic of Harry Styles (and not the other One Direction boys, so far as my roommate as told me) turned book series, published by Simon & Schuster back in 2014. Anna Todd, the author, simply changed the name of Harry Styles to Hardin Scott.

Back in high school I read this book called Fangirl by Rainbow Rodwell and one of the plot points (spoilers) is that the main character, Cath, gets an F in her fiction-writing class because she submits fanfiction because her teacher sees it as plagiarism. Honestly, I don't remember it and it's possible I never finished it, but that concept of plagiarism definitely comes to mind when we talk about this stuff.

How much does an author need to change about a character for it to be their own? Is a switch in names just enough? If the author is a good writer, is that all that matters? It's interesting, to me, how this entire business of fanfiction to book to... Series? To Movie? Seems to have a pretty prominent presence in the publishing industry.

Evelyn M: Link to Interview with Jill Abramson

Here's the link to the Rolling Stones article we discussed briefly in class — Jill Abramson is being interviewed by one of the people whose work she's accused of plagiarizing. Needless to say it gets pretty HEATED!

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/jill-abramson-jake-malooley-plagiarism-interview-794257/

My favorite part:

Right, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around—
"OK, I think that I have really explained it. Do you have other things? Because I have a three-hour class to teach at 3 o’clock."

Questions

How do agents work?
How much say does a writer have of their novel in terms of size, hardcover/paperback, type of ink used, type of paper?
>I ask because of a graphic novel course I took last semester where the professor said that cartoonists (graphic novelists) are the only writers that really get to determine all aspects of their graphic novel since all aspects can be integral to story and meaning. Which is dope.


Some weekly poetry recs -- I'll have more next week to make up for the short post:

If You Knew by Ellen Bass

Six Poems by Ali Shapiro

Jess: Questions

Have you ever read a book that originally only existed on TV?

I first saw this happen on the show Younger. It’s about a publishing house (in part) and they acquire a book from the CEO’s exwife:

And now you can read it too if you really want to?

The show Jane the Virgin also has a book you can buy:

I also saw this tweet recently:

So apparently there’s a market for it and my question is who? Also why?

On the is it good/will it sell questions I feel like the newer to both might be no. 

Some other questions:

What is the market like for self-published books on Amazon? Do people make money that way? What types of books are sold?

Who publishes accessible books? (Big font, Braille, etc.)

Not a specific question, but I’m generally curious about the textbook publishing industry. Maybe my question is why do textbooks cost so much?

Anna: Questions about production

Questions I still have include a publisher's involvement in the physical production and binding of the book itself. Taking Technologies of Text alongside this course has made me think a lot about the presentation of a book and how different factors of book production serve different purposes and convey different messages to the reader. To what extent do publisher's contemplate over the design of a book? Are they focused on minuscule details like the font type, size of the margins, and the location of the page numbers? Are books printed and bound in the U.S. or is that an industry that has moved elsewhere? I think, in general, my questions can be summed up as: okay, so we got the author to write an incredible book and we edited the hell out of it so it shines as a text, but what next?

Sara: Questions

1. How difficult it is to pursue a career in publishing here in the U.S if English is not your language?

2. What if my major has nothing to do with the arts and literature and I feel I want to actually find a job in those fields? I would be competing with people who have actually prepared themselves with courses and specialized programs, so how can I still try to make it in the publishing world?

Yaodi: How is Trashy Romance Sold

In terms of what I want to find the answers to, I'm still super confused about that shelf of trashy romance novels in my local used bookstore. The question that I used to have regarding them when we first talked about money vs merit in publishing wasn't which side they stood on ($$$), but rather how it even fulfills that role. Who buys them? Do they actually generate enough revenue to cover production costs, company operations and employee/author wages? The books didn't seem like they were in a series, yet all were extremely similar in the layout and book design, sort of like James Patterson but under a company brand rather than a personal brand.

Now after listening to our guest speakers, I'm even more intrigued on how those novels got out into the world if its up to distributors to move them from the publisher to retail stores. How do they get stores to buy those? Like other products, I can only see retailers buying something if they expect it will sell, but I can't see how any of those attract anyone. They're generic and won't appeal to the people who buy tabloids for celebrity gossip, but also embarrassing enough that I can't imagine people reading them in public. Do distributors do a bundle deal or something to sell them to retailers? I really need to buy a few of them next time I'm home, wondering how accessible the company's financial statements are to the public.

Megan: Questions

How common is it for people to "double up" -- eg work in publishing as agent, editor, etc., and also write/are published as an author. Thinking back to the Dan Mallory piece, I remember in it a line about, during the auction of the book, people in publishing wondering why someone in publishing would want to keep their name anonymous, which then they realized because it was Mallory and he is infamous in publishing circles. But that's made me wonder about the opposite of that, someone in publishing who hasn't made enemies of all their colleagues and rivals. Having connections has to make getting published a little easier, right? How often do people make the jump to being on both sides of the publication process?

Mia: Questions

This post was originally just one block of text with some random line breaks, but I decided to put some section headers so it looked more manageable. So, onwards to some questions and thoughts about what we've learned thus far:

1. Agents

In this course, we've talked a lot about publishers, writers, and editors, but what about agents? We read a bit about what they do, and I think I understand where they stand in the entire publishing process, but I think it'd be interesting to get a more in-depth look at what they do.

2. Self-Publishing
My second question requires a bit of set up, so bear with me.

One time in high school, this guy was invited to speak about cyberbullying because he had written this book called lol..OMG!, which my school thought would be super topical to read in health class. For context, he had made this website called "JuicyCampus.com", where college students could gossip, and as any rational human being with common sense could predict, it became a facet for cyberbullying.

After a lot of negative publicity, including some remarks from Katie Couric, he wrote a book about how he... learned from it? I put this in a skeptic/sarcastic tone, because he really didn't seem to have much remorse and quite honestly came off as a grade A asshole. It became the talk of high school because we wondered how such an insufferable person had somehow been invited to speak and we'd all been forced to read his crappy book. Some kids looked into his book, and turns out, he had published it himself, presumably because no publishing company wanted his book and he made a lot of money because of his horrendous website, so he could.

Anyway, this long story is the prelude to my question: how does one self-publish? What does that process look like? Do you just pay a company to make the book for you, or is it more involved than that? How much does it cost? Why wouldn't everyone just self-publish? What are the differences, pros and cons, etc.?

3. Judging Literary Merit
My last question, finally, is about literary merit. We've read a couple of articles of book reviews, we've talked about how some editors/publishers/agents pick books they believe are worth publishing, but my question is how? How do you know? Liking things, to me, has always been pretty subjective. What goes into knowing if a book is good or not feels vague. There are so many aspects you can take: will it sell? Is the writing good? But what even makes good writing? Is there any way to be truly objective over a book, or will there always be some sort of bias? How does someone become qualified enough to say what's worth publishing and what isn't? Is it just a matter of being well-read?


Geez, this is way longer than I intended it to be. Somewhere buried in this mass of text are three questions? With a lot of sub-questions? Sorry, professor.

Sebastian: Some Reading

Hi folks. For Friday, please read

— Michael Pietsch's chapter (p. 119) in "What Editors Do" (Pietsch is, as CEO of Hachette, Alexis's boss)
— These two pieces on money: Publisher's Weekly on 2018 results and that Vulture piece on McNally Jackson's rent
— And finally, the curmudgeonly (in a good way) Jessa Crispin on what she sees as the real problem underlying the Dan Mallory story.

Sam: Remaining Questions

There was a Galassi quote from Hothouse that still has me thinking. He commented on how publishing is much better as a commercial enterprise. Better is vague, and subjective of course. So I wonder, better for who? Is it just for the big, booming publishing houses like Random House and Simon & Schuster? What about the smaller publishing houses just scraping by? And with regards to scale and profit, literary magazines are hardly a commercial enterprise. But, can this sometimes be better for the writer? For the art? For the readers? It’s concerning for me that the woman we spoke to on Friday at Grand Central admitted that they’d basically accept any Patterson book regardless of content (from a business standpoint, obviously this makes sense). But from a literary perspective? Depending on the business, the person, the advertiser, the consumer, "better" is going to have different meanings, but I think it's something worth investigating. 

Fanfiction: The Tumblr Side of Publishing

To what extent does fanfiction influence the literary field? Like, I'm interested to see if authors bothered to read fanfiction from their novels and had inspiration or regrets on what they wrote. And how much of fanfiction is recognized in the publishing field? I think there was a literary magazine that did "publish" fanfiction. After all, the term "Mary Sue" did originate from fanfiction of Star Trek. Given the face value of a fanfiction is... well, a fanfiction, I'm interested to see what an author or publishing company would consider a work written by a fan

Evelyn M: How do you judge a literary submission?

On Tuesday as we wrapped up our discussion on literary journals, we were asked to consider questions that remain and aspects of the publishing industry that we'd still like to explore. Throughout Hothouse and the literary journals (thinking about submissions to these journals in particular), I come back to question: How can you feel qualified to judge a submission?

I'm referring specifically to reader's reports. As an intern in publishing, as an editorial assistant, a large majority of your responsibility comes in the form of reading manuscripts and drafting reader's reports so that your editor doesn't have to read them. But how the heck are you supposed to know if a book hits the sweet spot of being both good and sellable? Is it a gut instinct? And how can those people feel confident enough to truly bash a book in their report. What if I say "This sucks balls" to the next Sylvia Plath — or (financially) worse, the next multi-million brand James Patterson? 

Moving forward in our class, I'd love to take a look at reader's reports and try to pick them apart — to see what makes them effective, and as close to truly representative of the book as possible. 

Jade: How to Choose

The more time I spend with literary magazines, the more I want to find the one that speaks to me, the one that I can trust, the one that turns me into a loyal subscriber. Because there are so many of them, however, I can't help but wonder if there's some kind of cheat sheet, some database out there, to help people like me sort through literary magazines based on the general style of work they publish. I'm also curious as to how they all differ in terms of their ideal reader and aesthetic. And going along with this, are all of them really that unique? Why start a literary magazine? After listening to Katie Sticca in class today, I got the impression that the function of a literary magazine is almost like a mini publishing house for short story and poetry writers. There's the submissions, the editing, the production, the marketing...are they just a stepping stone for authors who hope to one day publish books wholly their own, or can they be the end goal of an author? What does the answer to this question say about the longevity of literary magazines and their impact, their core mission?

At a more personal level, I wonder to what degree the overall design influences my first impression of literary magazines. Since there is no jacket flap synopsis to peak at, literary magazines have to catch your eye based on the authors published or the cover art. I suppose I'm also interested in finding the literary magazine of my dreams because I'm not sure it exists. It's hard for me to believe that I could trust an organization's taste in writing so much so that I'd pick up every one of their issues, but if such a literary magazine exists, I would be thrilled to discover it. I think there is so much potential in literary magazines, both for writers and readers; it's an opportunity to share, to build a supportive and exciting community out of those who are like-minded.

Dbo: Reflections and Questions

After spending - I don't know - four or five weeks reading and discussing the publishing industry my perspective on the industry has almost completely shifted from the one I had at the beginning of the course. Before taking this class I knew next to nothing about the publishing industry before this class and was honestly, a pretty naive, optimistic, fiction writer. Now, though, I feel like the curtain has been pulled back, and I see the publishing industry with eyes less jaded. My previous blog post delves deeper into those reflections, but one question I am left with - the first one listed below - comes from this new perspective.

A Question We Probably Won't be Able to Answer: In today's class, Prof. Stockman made a point to emphasize how small literary communities are by showing us the authors and readers who likely have connections to Salamander's editors. Katie Sticca also mentioned that the AWP conference is a relatively small community. Somewhat related to that, in the introduction to What Editors Do, Peter Ginna mentioned the substantial lack of diversity in the publishing industry, and I haven't failed to notice that almost if not every editor we have spoken with or about has been white. These observations make me curious about how the American publishing industry might manifest its bias. After what I have learned from the first month-ish of this course, I am no longer naive enough to assume that the publishing industry is immune to bias, and I wonder how it plays out in the publishing world and how it may affect the books, articles, and poems we eventually get to read. I would be curious to hear non-white, insider perspectives on the industry.

A Couple Questions That I Probably Should Know the Answer to by Now: This might be my forgetful mind or just my wanting to revisit something we've already talked about, but I'm still curious about agents' role in the publishing industry. We talked about them towards the beginning of the course, and looking back - after having read Hothouse especially - I realize that I imagine agents' work being very similar to editors' work. So I suppose my questions are: What would a day in the life of an agent look like? How does it compare to an editors' average day? Do agents wear as many hats as editors? How involved are they after a book has been accepted by a publishing company? I'd also assume that agents are not usually one-person shows - that there are agencies that employ agents. Is that true? How do those companies work?

And My Last Question... what's next? We've already covered so much in this course that I am struggling to think of what we might discuss going forward. I suppose we still have an entire book to read and two-and-a-half months of course content... I guess I'm simply curious as I anticipate where we might go from here.

Mia: Egalitarian Publishing

Just to start off, this conversation with Katie Sticca (and also, our conversation from last week) was pretty fascinating to hear a different side of publishing and talk about distributors and all of those other technical/business oriented things. I think I tend to forget that there’s a whole business side of publishing that exists.

What struck me about Salamander, and what I took away from the conversation, was how fair it all seemed. No submission fee, not exactly trying to turn a huge profit, etc. She really emphasized that she wanted every writer to have a fair shot and stay very open to writers.

It made me wonder how other literary journals run and choose to publish; I know there must be varying degrees, but I think it says a lot about the journal. I think what becomes more evident as this class continues is that there’s a constant tension that exists between the ethics of publishing and the business behind it. Which, I suppose, is how a lot of things in this world function; but before I took this class, I never thought too deeply about how this played out in the world of literature.

Yeah, I don't have much else to say, let alone a solid point. Just some thoughts.

Okay i am here

hi th9s is peter yay it works just an fyi lol

This is why I can never keep a diary

I shouldn't be allowed to do this blog thing. I know I missed my post last week. I'm sorry! I'm not made for this! I have commitment issues! I just set a reminder on my phone, though, so we'll see how that goes. I figured I'd make this post about poetry. As a brief disclaimer, I'm a huge fan of poetry. I know it's a genre that kind of splits the room, especially in an English classroom. I like prose, too, but actually prefer short stories to novels. (Did I mention my commitment issues?) And I loved poetry before I took classes at NEU, but taking Contemporary Poetry and the Poetry Workshop with prof. Kim really solidified that for me. (Yes, plugging her classes because she's brilliant.) But poetry has a bad rap. It's inaccessible, lofty, oftentimes boring and out to trick or confuse you. It's 'high art'. It's snooty. And, from what I know (very little) it does not really have a market. There are exceptions, obviously. Rupi Kaur, despite writing 10-word poetry with no line rhythm or discernible meaning, has been doing pretty well for herself. Instagram Poetry celebrates poets with pretty book covers and easily digestible poems. Let me be clear: I don't think elitism has a place in poetry if it wants to be at all relevant or interesting or do something more than sit on shelves and get dusty. But the problem I have with Instagram Poetry is that it has no perspective. It's so terrifyingly vague that twelve-year-old girls and fascists alike can easily relate. Here's a full poem by Rupi Kaur:

"it isn't what we left behind
that breaks me
it's what we could've built
had we stayed."

I mean, come on. Emily Dickinson didn't have sex with her brother's wife and write poetry about it for this. I believe all good poetry has an inner thesis. There has to be some bite to it, some contention or at least a little tension. It's more than conveying meaning in beautiful ways (although it should be that, too). I guess what I want is for popular poetry to do more. It's such a distinctive art form that so many people do so well. Alright, I'll stop being cantankerous now and end my post with some poetry recommendations.

If you're new to poetry and want to dip your toe in:

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing by Margaret Atwood (yea she does dope poetry too)

After by Octavia Paz

Some poems by Ada Limon (I recommend all of them but especially Accident Report in the Tall, Tall Grass)

Lillian Gish Goes to Hell by Richard Siken

A Certain Kind of Eden by Kay Ryan

A Myth of Devotion by Louise Gluck

My Life had stood - A Loaded Gun by Emily Dickinson (try to forgive poetry.org for choosing the worst possible font for em dashes)

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

If you already like poetry and maybe want to see something new:

How I Became Impossible by Mary Ruefle

Four poems by Maggie Nelson

Slow Dance by Matthew Dickman

Two poems by Hala Alyan

Desunt Nonnulla by Kaveh Akbar

Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell by Marty McConnell

Prayer for the Newly Damned by Ocean Vuong

Sara: That awful feeling when a book sucks

I'm usually someone easily pleased with any book. As long as I stick to my favorite genres and I've done a little research on Goodreads, the books I end up reading tend to be decent or good or really good or life-changing good. Still, there are some cases when I read a book and I end up despising it.  I've invested my time - hours and hours - in reading and understanding a world of fiction and instead of getting lost in it and feeling entertained I just wanted to turn the pages as fast as I could to get over with it. There have been cases, I'm not going to lie, where I simply could not finish a book. That is a rare moment where I had to give up because my eyes were burning with every word read from a  preposterous story.
My best and favorite example of DNF is Fifty Shades of Grey.  I remember this story so vividly because it all happened during the time when every single woman on the freaking Iberian Peninsula was reading this book. That includes my mom and my three only aunts. It was summer when they became obsessed with Mr. Grey... They kept discussing how a man could be so hot and sexy and dirty... Yes, I had to listen to those discussions by the pool and I will probably never recover from them. Anyways, I've always loved reading and romance, even though this book is more Erotica and BDSM than romance which I didn't know at the time, so it caught my attention. Summer passed, and I wanted to see what was all the hype behind this book, but of course, my mom would not let me read it because it was not appropriate for a girl my age. I was 15, and being told that something was forbidden made me want to do it even more. My strategy then was to ask my best friend if she could let me borrow it. She said the book was awesome and I needed to read it as soon as possible. I truly thought I would be reading the best story of my entire life at that point. One day at school, she brought it and I carried it in my backpack like it was some counterfeit object and no one could know I had it with me. I felt like a badass ignoring my mom's order, and that afternoon I started reading it in my room with the adrenaline of thinking I might get caught. What a huge incredible disappointment. I was maybe in chapter 2 when I could not continue reading it. The writing was bad, cheesy and so boring. What I thought could be an exciting read after the process of getting the book in my hands, turned to be the biggest disappointment to date of a book that I could not stand after maybe 10 minutes reading it. The next day I gave it back to my best friend, and that was the end of my secret book adventure.
I'm reminiscing this story because this morning I finished a book that I didn't like at all. It wasn't as bad as Fifty, but it was bad nonetheless. I guess I'm just mad and nostalgic and feeling the bad taste that book left in me, but anyways, I'm writing this post because the feeling of reading a book that sucks is in my top 5 of worst feelings in the world, and when it happens it usually stays with me for a while.

Sam: Patterson, Publishing & Profit

I definitely undermined James Patterson's part in the publication and marketing of his books. The fact that the CEO of Hachette and the publisher of Little Brown went to his Florida house to talk strategy with him just proves his influence and success as a publishing machine. Interesting concept, “But never had authors been marketed essentially as consumer goods.” I’m impressed that Patterson wrote, produced and paid for commercials for his first Alex Cross books. It’s super rare to see in publishing, and his advertising background clearly gave him a unique perspective on commodifying his product. He knows he’s no literary genius, the article even says he considers himself more an entertainer and not a man of letters. At 71 now, I wonder when he plans on slowing down. Doesn’t seem like anytime soon. 

He seems to have an interesting relationship with his cowriters, and has this vast knowledge of where his books are selling and where to market to. He realized he wasn’t selling in Scandinavia and paired up with a major crime writer from there. I like that he plucks some of his cowriters from obscurity and allows them to become successful writers. I wonder if any of his cowriters have anything to negative to report, or if the money hushed them up. 

Honestly the millions of dollars and mansions didn’t surprise me as much as the fact that he doesn’t type on a computer and writes in longhand!

This is his mansion. I'm jealous.

Megan: Post Road

The publication I picked up last Friday is called Post Road, is still in publication now, and puts out two issues a year in the spring and winter. They have a website -- postroadmag.com -- but there is surprisingly little about the history of the publication. In the front page of the issue I have, #30 from Winter 2016, it says that it was founded in New York City in 1999 and lists the founders and original editors. It is published as a nonprofit, in conjunction with Boston College, as also listed in the front.

With some digging, I found a copy of an article in Boston College Magazine from 2009 about the acquisition of the magazine. It was originally independent with no geographical center; then it collaborated for publication with Lesley University in Cambridge and the nonprofit Literary Ventures Fund; then it came to Boston College. Its founding story in this article, I will quote:

"Post Road was begun by a group of graduates from the Bennington College Writing Seminars. According to founding co-editor Jaime Clarke, the editors looked at various “little magazines” and noticed “the same vanguard writers popping up. We wondered if we could publish a literary magazine that didn’t feature the works of prominent writers,” Clarke says. The founders realized, however, that established names lend credibility to a publication and attract readers, so they decided to include book reviews, or what they called “recommendations,” from well-known writers such as Susan Choi, David Leavitt, and Robert Pinsky."

The selections inside are diverse: there is fiction, nonfiction, poetry, theatre, visual art, recommendations, and criticism (though interestingly, the issue I have doesn't have anything for the criticism category. Guess they didn't find a good submission for that?) Issues aren't titled, and there doesn't seem, from this one I skimmed, to be a theme it is centered around. There aren't topic limitations on their submissions page on their site. "accepts unsolicited poetry, fiction, nonfiction, short plays and monologues, and visual art submissions" -- that's pretty broad. Pretty open.

The editor for the "Criticism" section is Hillary Chute, who's an English professor here at Northeastern. I took her class on graphic novels last spring and found it kind of funny to see her name where I wasn't expecting it. 

Is James Patterson the Taylor Swift of the Literary World?

In the endless literary debate of What is Good and What will Sell, James Patterson is arguably the most extreme example of commercialism. While I was shocked at the magnitude that is the multi-million dollar industry of his books, I couldn't help but feel that this type of commodified, mass-produced, average-standard quality product is seen across all industries — so why does it feel so disdainful in publishing in particular? Why do we look down on James Patterson, a man who just bought a $17.4 million dollar "cottage," instead of recognizing him as a successful case study for authors? I started to look at James Patterson as a brand instead of an author.

There are a lot of brands like James Patterson: widely appealing (perhaps because they lack anything of true substance), extremely easy to scale, and comforting in their formula. To a consistent Patterson fan, picking up a new JP novel is probably an experience very akin to stopping in a McDonalds. Whether you're in a McDonalds in Maine or California, you know that a Big Mac will taste exactly the same — and that, to a lot of consumers, is a consistent comfort. I know I'll like this, because they all follow a very similar formula.

But despite the huge successes of brands like these, we — the snobby consumer — turn up our noses, just like a hipster, music connoisseur will likely scoff at most anything on the Top 40 charts. Why do we attribute more value and respect to a music artist that nearly no one has heard of but is "really shaking up the industry, my man," versus Taylor Swift, another very formulaic yet extremely successful brand?

I'm not sure what the answer is here. But I really doubt that James Patterson is bothered by our dorm room snobbery while he's building his multi-million dollar mansion on the ocean.

James Patterson Inc.

This profile of Patterson is almost 10 years old, but still very much worthwhile. He hasn't gotten less successful in the intervening decade. If anything, the numbers in the story are out of date: they've probably tripled. 

Also note: the opening scene where Patterson is sitting down with the editor of Little, Brown (his main imprint) and the CEO of the whole damn company (Hachette) is ... not how most authors usually interact with their publishers. 

Furthermore: here's the Grand Central Publishing website, where Friday's guest Alexis Gilbert works. As you can see, they're a paperback subsidiary of Hachette. Scroll through some of their offerings. Which of these is not like the others?

Sebastian: This story is nuts

All of Book Twitter was talking about this story yesterday, which I'm just getting caught up to now:

A Suspense Novelist's Trail of Deceptions

The New Yorker

Some facts about The New Yorker
It was started in 1925, and is published 47 times annually.
It does have a focus on the cultural life of NYC, but also has a large national and international audience.
It's famous for its cartoons, short stories, and nonfiction articles.
In recent years, they started a cartoon captioning contest (anyone over 13 can enter) and the winner gets their caption published. I had an English teacher in HS who entered the contest every week (to no avail- yet!).
Many pieces that were originally published in TNY were eventually adapted into films
Original Editor was Harold Ross. There have been four editors since him (one being Gottlieb)
The average age of readership is 47.
Most readers have left-centered views
The magazine originally did not have a political stance, but started in 2004 (they endorsed John Kerry, Obama, Obama again, and then Clinton in 2016)

https://lithub.com/20-iconic-new-yorker-covers/
Here is a link to some of the most famous covers of TNY. You’ll probably recognize a few! The one that depicts the world from the perspective of a New Yorker is one of the more famous ones that I was familiar with.

(Notably, the first one in the article, of Bert and Ernie, caused a bit of controversy. I remember reading about it a few years ago, it was in response to the steps taken towards the legalization of same-sex marriage. Some people were upset with the implication that Bert and Ernie were a couple. Their creators/producers insisted that puppets cannot have a sexual orientation, I believe. Other people loved the cover, though.)

Famous authors published in TNY: Truman Capote, J D Salinger, E B White, Stephen King, many more
Also notable: Art Spiegelman (author of Maus) worked at TNY for 10 years

In the 2017 copy of the magazine I borrowed from Prof. Stockman, the short story piece (which was my favorite) is “Dogs Go Wolf”, by Lauren Groff. I really enjoyed it.
Also, I like how the formatting places the poems within the text of other articles. The formatting in general of TNY is extremely aesthetically pleasing, in my opinion.

Tom - Folios (War, Literature & The Arts)

I ended up taking home Folios Body (2018) and Folios Peace (2017) to perform further research. Both were created by the War, Literature & The Arts literary magazine. This magazine publishes poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction pieces of literature. The Folios literary journal issues are released annually and direct the focus towards a specific topic. Folios "is a themed journal which complements and magnifies the annual journal while staking out new ground." 

War, Literature & The Arts began its publication in 1989. It is published form the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado. Kathleen Harrington is the editor in chief of the magazine. She is a winner of the Colorado Romance Writers' Award of Excellence (many of her books appear to be of the type we discussed a few classes ago, with very over-the-top romantic cover material).

Each Folios issue focuses on a specific topic. In 2017 the theme of the issue was peace and in 2018 the theme was body. Both journals contain opening pieces that distinctly highlight the referenced topics. In Folios Body we are presented with a story about a young mother birthing a child at 18 years old. We also witness a firsthand account of a mother's decision to have an abortion, and explore the idea of women (and their bodies) experiencing protection or the lack of protection. The word "body" is used countless times throughout the piece. Similarly, the word "peace" is used perpetually throughout the opening piece in Folios Peace. This piece discusses the symbiotic, if not peaceful relationship between the !Kung tribe of Africa and the native lions. Without the imposition of fear or power, the !Kung do not invade the lion's deserved spoils. Likewise, the lions do not ambush the !Kung while they are scavenging their food. 


Both issues contain images of visual art, in different forms. Folios Peace contains paintings from a war zone in Iraq, and Folios Body contains images of abstract sculptures by Gina Herrera. Folios Body also contains sheet music, which Folios Peace does not. One of the reasons I chose Folios Body was because I noticed that it contained sheet music, which I felt was entirely unexpected for a literary journal.

According to online sources referencing the editor of WLA:

"Quality is the sole determining factor for acceptance in WLA. At its best, WLA is witness to the power of word and image and for the human craving for meaning. If one of the functions of art is to disturb the status quo, to force us to view the world anew, to consider our capacities to build or tear down, then we welcome those disturbances."

Both covers for these issues invoke emotion in very different ways. Folios Body allows us to consider our capacity to build by displaying a sculpture that was built by Gina Herrera. Folios Peace allows us to consider our capacity to tear down by displaying a painting depicting a scene of war. 

I believe that even though the magazine/journal is non-profitable by nature, the main reason it is published is out of the belief that art must be preserved and used to further humanity's opinions about the world.

Jae: Tin House (the Cutesy Owl)

The current literary article I have is Tn House, Volume 18, Number 2 called "Winter Reading". Interestingly, the magazine's front cover of the owl is also wearing winter clothes, so I guess the designer, Jakob Vala, was being that eccentric with the design of the cover. Skipping the contributors and stuff like that... what caught my interest is the editor's note that promptly speaks about the 2016 election. It wrote, "as I am writing these words before the election, I do not know if the United States has elected a madman who has the potential to scorch all life from our planet. What possible value can art and story and poetry have in the face of such pending insanity? Everything."

I'm never the one to generalize, but I do find the relationship between politics and literature quite fascinating. Here, in face of the possibility of Trump's election (at the time) prompted the note to inform about how they "hoped that the barbaric yawps contained within these pages reflect our times and are also timeless, that they capture what it is to be alive now, and, for those of you reading in the future-" that's me!- "that the words resonate with you as well."

The magazine contains 5 fictional short stories, 9 poets, 1 interview, and a "Lost and Found" section at the end of the book. With the online ranking that Professor Stockman posted, Tin House is classified as Tier 2 and closed as of December 2018.

Given the basic analysis of the magazine, the story given from the literary magazine did not really reflect the editor's note. The political nor message of reflection of our day in age really stood parallel to me as I read some of the short stories. But then again, I suppose I read it with a different perspective than the editor had in mind. Perhaps the editor's note was kept in to provide a sense of communication of the literary magazine to the readers. Or maybe it was in attempts to prime the readers to read a certain way. But with that hypothesis to be given, who shapes the story the way that they want to, the editor or the author? It got me thinking about the path of what the book is published and how different it will be from what the author wrote. Is it "edited" or "changed"? I guess that depends on the editor's philosophy and their relationship with their author. There was always a sense of romanticism for me in terms of writing the book, but now, I'm not quite sure yet on how to feel about seeing the logistical side of publication. 

Yaodi Luo: True Story

On the inside back cover of the little booklet, it reads: “True Story is a publication of the Creative Nonfiction Foundation, which inspires an supports writers of true stories. Under the direction of Lee Gutkind, the foundation provides publishing venues for a diverse range of creative nonfiction writing and writers; serves as a strong advocate for the genre, helping define the ethics and parameters of the field; and aims to broaden the genre’s impact not only in the publishing world but also in the arts, humanities, and sciences.”

On the website, it looks like True Story is a monthly publication and has subscriptions of 1 year for $20 or 2 years for $35. The stories in these pocket-sized booklets were quick to read, I can easily see myself pulling one out during a commute and finishing it along the way. On the site, the Creative Nonfiction Foundation is supported by public and private funds contributed by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation, the Vira I. Heinz Endowment, and the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, as well as by other foundations and individual donors”. I doubt that they are making much money through their print magazines if they are being supported by so many other organizations.

I really like the look of the True Story booklets, the simple cartoonish image on the front combined with the short titles give a quick glimpse into what the story could be about without really spoiling anything. The bite-sized feel means I can just start reading without worrying that I’ll get behind on my other work, and it's a nice change of pace from reading more long-form pieces. I read issue 22 Lethe by Leanna James Blackwell and issue 23 The Sixteenth Tape by Sean Madigan Hoen. While I thought both were well written, the subject matter of the latter piece wasn't particularly appealing to me.

Jade: Translating Poetry

Last class I picked up the winter 2011-12 publication of Ploughshares specifically because it included an archived interview with Elizabeth Bishop. While I have read hardly any of her work, her villanelle "One Art" really struck me when I encountered it in my senior year English classes. In the interview, I was surprised to find out that on occasion she would translate Spanish poetry into English. Coincidentally, a week ago I finished a short book by Eliot Weinberger which catalogued nineteen different ways one ancient Chinese poem has been translated. The take away from Weinberger's analysis: translating poetry is almost impossible because across languages the standards of meter, rhyme, and even visual aesthetic are so different. In Chinese, for instance, the number of characters per line are traditionally the same, giving the poem a very balanced appearance and even pace. This distinct style is impossible to replicate in any western language. Thus, a translator must be a wizard in order to not only understand the poem through the correct historical lens and translate its meaning, but also replicate that same first impression. Needless to say, the fact that Bishop's few translations, particularly of Octavio Paz, are well respected, I consider her an incredibly capable poet who knows language and its sensitivities.

Sara: The purity of Art

I can't seem to stop thinking about our last discussion in class, about the huge role editors have in the process of making a book publishable. For me, this whole notion of the "behind the scenes" of all forms of art has been lurking in my head for a while now, and with our last couple discussions in class, I just keep thinking about the extent of what is considered original. Who really has talent? Is it fair to believe that if you received more help than others your art has less merit?
I started to think about this when I became I tiny bit obsessed with Marvel movies back in 2009. Iron Man came out in 2008, but only one year later my cousin would make me watch this "really cool superhero movie", and the rest, as they say, is history. Since that moment, I've been going to the cinema to see every single one - shout out to the new Avengers: Endgame trailer coming out today during the Superbowl, I don't personally care about American football but this game has become special to me just because of the new preview - and as you might now, Marvel is quite famous due to its post-credits scenes. I had to make my whole family and/or friends stay until the last very second of every movie we saw to watch a short clip that might reveal important information about the next coming movie, or just show a funny irrelevant scene (still worth the wait, of course). During those minutes watching the credits, which let's be honest, no one really ever watches after finishing a movie unless is Marvel, I realized the huge amount of people that are needed to do a movie. I was mind blown. Every single person shown in the endless credits contributed to making a two-hour movie, where the only praise would be received to the cast and maybe, to the director. No one thinks of those whose task was to create the perfect setting decorating a room for a scene that might be used for maybe 5 minutes. Or the people catering the set. Food is so important, yet no one thinks of those who put time and effort feeding Robert Downey Jr. or Chris Hemsworth. Thanks to this movies, I've become really appreciative of the people behind the scenes. Their contribution, smaller or bigger, was essential for the creation of art such as filmmaking.
I know movies and books go through completely different processes to reach the final product, they are even two completely different galaxies in the realm of art, but since the beginning of this class, I just can't stop making comparisons with the people working making movies. To finish up a book and get it ready for the public needs another army behind it to make it possible. The editor is essential, and he or she can play a role in even how the book might end. Who dies, who survives. It is the role of a small God, guiding the writer sometimes towards a fanatism making him or she follow his word too strictly or hopefully simply establishing some guidelines but giving freedom and space because the editor believes that the author's free will can be trusted. It also all depends on the type of person they both are because we are at the end more complex than a simple metaphor and circumstances can be sometimes bigger than our good intentions. To conclude, the editor is essential and has a bigger role than I ever imagined before taking this class.
There is a quote from the Art of Editing that has been stuck in my mind since we read it. Joseph Heller explains how he was going to be interviewed by the New York Times, and that day he received a call from Gottlieb to let him know how "he didn't think it was a good idea to talk about editing and the contributions of editors, since the public likes to think everything in the book comes right from the author". I could not believe how true that was! I've genuinely believed for so many years that a person just writes a bunch of words, makes sense of them, sends them to a publisher house, gets picked out for the originality and voila, your idea gets published! Now I feel really naive for thinking that way. As we have read, some authors need more editing than others, but for me, the biggest question I kept asking myself was that if any author receives more edits, then the book might be seen as less pure, hence it should receive less merit. Is it fair to think that way? My reasoning at the moment is that indeed that is an unfair point of view. If I think about songs, for example, nowadays most of the biggest hits are not solely written by the singer. Nonetheless, I will keep loving the song and singing along. Those who helped any singer write a song are those I consider working behind the scenes, the secret heroes whose sole purpose is to create art people can enjoy without receiving any credit for it. They are doing it because they are passionate about it. Yes, they are also making a lot of money if they are perhaps helping Beyoncé write a song, I'm aware not all the motivation is coming from a selfless motive. Regardless, with movies, books and music I've learned to appreciate the ones working endless hours on the process of making art. Every single person involved has talent, and what they contribute to the final product does not make it less pure. In the end, it is not a matter of purity, but of the basic human instinct of making art as a way of survival.

Sebastian: Promised links

Hi folks,

Here's that OCD writer's ranking/list of literary magazines.

And here's a post she wrote about submission strategies.

Again, hers isn't the final say on literary magazines, but it should give you a good sense of the way writers think about this stuff.

Dbo: Thoughts as a Writer

I want to build off Jade's comment in our last class about how disheartening it for an aspiring writer to see the unveiled editing world. Although, I don't write as often as I would like to, I have been writing fictional stories longer than I can remember, and so I consider myself a writer.

Many of the materials we have read in the course thus far (Hothouse, the Paris Review interview, and What Editors Do excerpts in particular) seem to glorify the editor's role in publishing. From the sampling we've looked at, it seems that the best editors have at least a confident if not an inflated view of themselves, which is only bolstered by many of the writers they acquire and support. These editors tend to enjoy what they do, and I think it's safe to say they romanticize the trade a bit. There have been moments when I start to wonder if I want to be an editor because they make it sound so wonderful and heroic.

But then we talk about editors like Gordon Lish and writers like Jonathan Franzen, and publishing loses its luster. I am reminded that it is just like any other business. There are praise-usurpers, mind-manipulators, and racist, sexist jerks. The world that perfects and distributes the stories that we all treasure and the world that many writers aspire to enter, is not nearly as perfect or magical or entrancing as anything it produces. It's actually none of those things. It's just like the rest of the real, wreck of a world we live in. And if a writer writes to escape this world, and he or she wants a book to transport readers from this world, it is disheartening and somewhat scary to consider that before a book can reach readers, it has to go through a bit of the real world. And I guess as writers we just have to hope that it comes out the other side that perfect, reader-transporting, masterpiece we always dreamed it would be.

So I think that was a long way of saying that I relate to what Jade was saying last class.

Evelyn PM: What I've Been Reading & What Makes Books Hard to Get Through?

I've mainly been reading two books (A Column of Fire by Ken Follett and The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli) these past two weeks (I forgot to post last week).  

As I mentioned in class a while ago, I've been finding A Column of Fire ("Column") harder to get through than the two prior books in the Kingsbridge trilogy, Pillars of the Earth ("Pillars") and World Without End ("World"), both of which I remember not being able to put down even though they are each about 1,000 pages.

This is pretty surprising for a number of reasons: (1) the Kingsbridge trilogy is relatively new, as in originally World Without End was the sequel to Pillars, and there was no need or even sense of a third book; (2) the two books as a set were a phenomenon both because World was as good if not better than Pillars, which is pretty rare, and because they were way different than Follett's usual spy/conspiracy thrillers, which always sold well (so there was no inherent call for a genre jump); and (3) in between publishing World and Column, Follett completed an entire other trilogy (Fall of Giants, Winter of the World, and Edge of Eternity), all of which were terribly long and incredibly difficult to get through.

It's almost as if someone said to Follett, "Why don't you make those two stragglers into a trilogy?". I'm currently ready to throw my fist through that guy's face … 

So far (I'm about three-quarter through), Column has been a real disappointment. While the plot lines are just as interwoven as they were in Pillars and World, I'm less enamored with the characters; they seem less complex than the Prior Philip, Lady Aliena, Caris, and Jack that I remember from the prior books. The relationships between the characters also aren't as developed, and there isn't the same mysticism or imagery that Pillars and World had in abundance. Maybe I was expecting too much: a third book that met the excellence of the first two?

On the other hand, The Order of Time, which is a lot like Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson, has completely blown me away. For a book that is really an onslaught of total mindfucks (ie. time is unique at every point in space and faster further from Earth's center of mass -- faster in the mountains, slower at sea level), I was expecting to need time to process, but Rovelli talks you through it (a lot like how you'd reason with your drunk friend who is rediscovering how revolving doors work). It's somehow an absolute breeze to read. 

So what makes a book hard to get through, not difficult -- emotionally or intellectually -- but dense? Why is Pillars, which is almost double the length of Column, so much easier to read? How is it that The Order of Time can introduce and explain such complex theories yet be such a quick read? Is it harder to write the easier book?

Short Stories

We talked a bit about short stories/essays today, and I was wondering if anyone could recommend some? I find them fascinating. This is due to me having to study Joan Didion for IB English, in a class in which everyone, for some reason, despised her work. I realized I loved it. Another short story that fascinated me in - Salinger's "Hapworth", which is just an absolute mess. I believe it was the last thing he published (it was published in The New Yorker) and he was clearly going a bit mad. It literally makes no sense. It's great. It's awful, but it's utterly fascinating. I just remembered it the other day. 

ALSO- in writing this, I just remembered this WILD short story called "All Summer in a Day." Ray Bradbury. Did anyone read it in school? I remember having to look up what the word "tumultuous" meant when I was reading the story.

(Found it, if anyone's interested:

http://staff.esuhsd.org/danielle/English%20Department%20LVillage/RT/Short%20Stories/All%20Summer%20in%20a%20Day.pdf 

In retrospect, it was way more shocking when I was in 7th grade. I credit a lot of my interest in literature to this story.)

What short stories have you guys read? Anything of interest?

Tom - Thoughts on What Editors Do 5, 6, 7, and 9

After reading these chapters from What Editors Do, it made me consider the process of developing a book from an entirely different perspective.

It never occurred to me that books containing outside quotes or other outside material need to receive permissions to use the content. I'm unsure why this hadn't occurred to me before, but it makes a lot of sense. I wonder how much money a publishing house is willing to spend to acquire the necessary permissions. The reading states that many times, editors will cut out material that requires these permissions to avoid the process altogether. Are there any examples of books that would not have succeeded if not for their usage of material that required permissions?


It was also fascinating to see the level of personal connection achieved by some editors and authors become during the process. Due to editors' love for literature, they are able to fall in love with authors that they hope can write the next hit. When acquiring a book, an acquisitions editor always has this hope in mind. I began to question the nature of these relationships when examining an extreme case. The reading discussed an editor that gave personal loans and writing accommodations in her own house to an author she truly loved working with. Eventually, the author moved on to a contract at a different publishing house, leaving the editor devastated. Is it not commonplace for editors to have this situation perpetually happen? I feel like it would make more sense for an editor to approach the situation from a business perspective, considering the fact that at any time, an author may leave in the pursuit of money. Maybe this could allow editor's to feel less heartbreak when one of their prized authors moves on. It could also allow them to take a more objective and conservative approach to the books they acquire and to the extracurricular things they decide to for authors.

Loyalty to a house certainly appears to have its benefits, but authors shouldn't just blindly shy away from exploring other opportunities, even if it means breaking the hearts of those working at the current publishing house.

Last comment -- I also never imagined that books go through a legal review before being published. It is very clear to me now why this would be necessary. Do all books go through legal review, or is it more common for a book to bypass this situation completely?