[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] good evening. Im bradley graham, coowner politics prose along with my wife, and lissa muscatine, whos standing back there on behalf of the entire staff here thank you her image for coming. I had a terrific panel for you this evening on a new book by peter ginna, right here, titled what editors do the art, craft and business of editing. Politics and post although politics politics prose owes many others this year its not nearly as common for us to host the experts behind those authors are the editors, publishers and agents he was at efforts are essential to the books. Peter himself with more than three decades has had a range of editing positions. His work with the small independent Publishing Firm and a scholarly run as well as with the large commercial houses. Most of his time in thin trade publishing. Most recently publisher and editorial director of bloomsbury press, an imprint he founded. For his new book coming peter gathered essays for more than two dozen contributors from across the publishing field and row 1 piece himself. The articles take readers through every phase of the production from acquisition to the editing process, to publication and marketing. Later chapters provide case studies and a look at pursuing a career in publishing. The book comes at a time of significant and fastpaced change in the publishing business. The rise of amazon, the advent of ebooks and the growth of selfpublishing opportunities all have attributed to shaking up the industry more in the past 15 years as peter notes in his process than in the previous 50 years. Joining peter on the panel this evening are two other veteran publishing insiders who contributed pieces to what editors do. One is cal morgan on the and here, who after spending many years that a big house, harpercollins, joined this very fine house of riverhead is executive editor. Among the successful authors champion by transistor in his career barack sameday career barack same day, jess walter, emilia gray, Julie Quattro and mitchell asked jackson, just to name a few. His chapter in what editors do is called to start spreading the news about the editor as evangelists. Seated next to him is susan ferber come executive editor at Oxford University press. She has focused much of her acting career on books about history from the ancient to the modern. Among the books and authors she has shepherded our winner is that if you let there price is as well as New York Times bestsellers. Her chapter in a what editors do titled of monographs and magnum opus is is about editing works of scholarship. And speaking of University Press, i should note that what editors do itself is published by one. The university of chicago. Now also joining the discussion this evening in philly now the panel will be kill rock, founder of the Literary Agency and a friend of lissa in mind. People interested in getting a book published often ask how best to go about it. In general, the answer is to find an agent and said to who specializes in nonfiction is as good as they come and also to provide a little truth in advertising, gail is lissas agent for a book lissa is currently writing. Featuring men in welcoming our very accomplished panel. [applause] thank you, brad. It is a thrill for me to be presenting at this store because politics prose has been a great supporter of the kind of books i love to publish antireagan and the authors of mine have had terrific events here, so for me to be up front rather than the stand on thank you, mr. Chairman. In the back to thank you for hosting the panel and thanks for taking the time taking the train in the case of the new yorkers to be here. So we are talking about this book called what editors do. It seems like a straightforward, not to say a obvious title, but one reason i chose it is because they think most people dont understand just what we do with editors. It is our own fault for a business thats all about words, we have some of the most confusing and ambiguous terminology of any industry that i know an editor would be exhibita. When you hear the word editing, you think about a person sitting from and making notes on a manuscript, connecting grammar or maybe making a note for the author to make a shop or shorter, swap these points around, but that is only a small slice of the pie of what an editor actually does. I have come to think of the editors role in the most fundamental way as being a connector. You are the person who makes and facilitates the connection between writer and reader. An old saying in publishing that the editor represents the author to the house and the house to the author and that sort of janusfaced boy is actually a big piece of the editors responsibility. But you also are standing in, representing the reader to the author. You are trying to be that ideal ultimate reader in deciding, helping the author and what gets across most effectively to them. That involves both working on the authors way i was just describing, but also the much broader task of reading the reader to the book, to figure out who those ideal readers are for this particular work and how you get them to read it, to want to read it in the first place. So i see the editors job is raking down into three phases that brad mentioned in his introduction. They all overlap and some take place simultaneously. The first one is acquisition, finding books to publish. In many ways thats the most critical part of the job because if you dont find books to publish, you cant do any of the other things. There is no Publishing House. Second is what i call text development, the classical editing function again when you make note in shaping the actual words, the writing with the author. And finally, there is publication, that part of reading the book out into the marketplace, making readers aware of it in convincing people this is a book that they need to die. I have asked each of our panelists to focus on one of these aspects of editing. Gail is an agent and has a Critical Role to play in the acquisition process, so shes going to talk about what that looks like from her site or susan has rich richer chapter in the book about working with scholarly authors and she has helped many academic writers do their first book for a general audience come which involves often in intensive editorial intervention. So she can talk about that editing piece and cal who has my favorite chapter title in the book, which brad also mention, start spreading the news, about the editors role of conveying his passion about the book out to people as colleagues in the Publishing House and then out into the media and the booksellers in the world atlarge. So he will talk about that piece last. Gail, we are going to turn it over to you. Tell us what agents think about what editors do. [inaudible] [laughter] we love you guys. One of the books i worked on when i first started in the business was by a woman who had a testing device that was far simpler than myersbriggs. It only had four kinds of personalities. She said to me after going around talking to editors in new york that. It is you do bring together the two least complementary parts of her Personality Test and that it was impossible to do what you have to do. So here is to you all. I want to say this is a fantastic book. I read this book and learned lots of things about the process i didnt know and im buying a case in giving it out to each of my new clients because it answers all those questions i wont have to answer any more. In terms of what we do, and we have to know the individual editors. I work on a regular basis for semi regular basis and interact with 100 different people in publishing, 100 different editors, lots more in marketing and such and that requires i think the three most important things to me are smart, talent, passion, responsiveness and those are the things my client wouldve said dont work for the same people because its hard to sit in a room and make a big deal. Those are not complementary things. And so, what i find is the greatest thing for me as i get to know all of these people and i know every press editor in new york. I know their kids names and where their kids are going to school. If im doing a book on summer camp, and thats the passion, most of the people i deal with a birdie made smart responsiveness by working with people. They fall in love with this. I would say in the midwife of the project. We need a partnership because they are that connector. They are everything at the house and they will only do the things that i cant do and that is what i need them to make my client better than my client is. And to follow mild and care can be their advocate all the way through. That is the most fun part coming off the list of people who are the right. Frankly it is hard to start out of this business and so i always tell people to call me and say how can i become an agent to work for the region because those relations are really crucial. It is hard. Its not that they dont want to publish books, but they have to go through so many hoops that you need someone who will fight as hard as i am and as an author is for their work because its tough out there and it the best thing in the Worldwide Networks and even when it doesnt work, when you know youve been in a partnership and not much better work their hardest, all the different parts of the house will be talking about that are and they have to do that to make that acquisition to start with, they have to really love it and learn to love it as much as you do. We will answer questions later. Will answer one question now because you talk about the number of troops that have to be jumped through acquisitions. A lot of people dont understand how complicated and byzantine the process can be. Talk for a minute about what that is like from your side. I work for a long time on a proposal to make it the best they can possibly be in my intent with working on a proposal as an author is to answer and editor and marketing peoples questions before they have been to anticipate what the problems are going to be ms preparing the proposal with authors and editors and figure it out for you and make the job easier. Give you all the ammunition you need and that the proposal in the author to make it simple. You take a proposal and the boss says byatt. Most places you got your editorial meetings. Sometimes they are editorial driven and the publisher loves that. In other places you from sales and marketing and editorial meetings are legendary and a hundred people at a table and you have to go back to an acquisitions meeting after the editorial meeting. They can be byzantine, but when they wanted it can be pretty fast. Right, right. All right, lets ask susan about the actual editing piece of the process. Thank you. I first wanted to say for anyone in the publishing world, politics prose is the super bowl mac. All wrapped up in one store. We know how hard it is to get the feeds because we try to get them for authors. Im especially grateful and feel like i won the Golden Ticket just being here and this is a terrific turnout. I had many hours of transportation where i could get in my own little world just editing and that could be very happy. I work with a lot of firsttime authors, but a lot of authors who lost track of how many things they published. They really require its own diagnosis for what work needs to be done, what work i deal it could be done and what the optimal outcome for the author and the press. Im going to hone and as requested to networking mysterious epidemics and in the field that i work win, which was history there are a lot of them. There arent enough shelves in the start of a number of historians who want to write crossover books or trade books are anything but the dreaded m. Ward, monographs. What does this actually mean and what does it require in terms of editors intervention . Its a different challenge than a nonacademic. They still need to make an intervention in the field or better yet the longheld leave to do anything to move the needle in terms of a conversation happening in academia for a long time. For a general audience the opinions to wear his or her hand lightly and the ideas of how his or her own perspective alters the picture. This is not the place for editing, offering the great intellect and putting someone elses words first, which is the first thing i normally encounter when i see a lot of academics in this kind of writing. This is where scholars often go wrong. Overreliance on secondary sources and theoretical ideas for indecipherable sentences completely out of context and everything written before us in the work appears to be the first the only one ever written on the side check. Things go one direction or the other. Finding the right balance is key not to being perceived as lighter popular much of the time for me the products that i see a crossover book i. D. Idea, but quite hard to develop the ideas in the structure and usually without an agent doing the work before i get to see a. Its a much more organic process of going to the conference of listening to people talk about their ideas and working with them afterward and something i really like im turning point in key figures of the story they may be human, animal, landscape and things that pacing and coloring contacts, they often get much more easily than academics. If im lucky, what i get to review already has all these elements, but most of the time is not the case. Its a rarity in the United States or is that the United States series with an author like richard white. They are to have publishing platforms, quite expensive ones and followers in the arty no they have trade audiences and how to do it. Instead its more likely they will see projects that disembodied torso or virginia andersen summer during the trader a Rosslyn Rosenbergs gina crowe. I swear i dont only at women or American History. A couple of others here at the store. Jeffery stewarts, the new just coming out. Right craze, the cry of the renegade. These are not the authors that come to mind when you think American History or world history. They are not David Maccoll said. They work through these quite a number of times and academic editors dont take the time to do that. A number of us do when its not always a single straightforward at it, but working over these tax to think about the introductions and craft a book that will really bring readers and end that will allow extensively researched, deeply, deeply researched books and products to a larger audience, but not papering over eight years with jargon and not telling us much about the place come a person, motivation as possible. It means figuring out how long of a book for the approach of what it is either definitive biography in advance book, big idea book, synthesizer gigantic narrative history. No one has more time now to sit and read than they did in the past been truly concentrate on the book, so we have to find works that are right size or make them out way. It is easy for readers and reviewers to turn to those they know and love and it needs to be extra good and to be like me, lucky enough to win the Golden Ticket to find true trade success. I think thats a good description of the work by susan does typically with historian, but that process of finding the balance between your expertise and the ignorance of a delayed reader is something that anyone who was an expert in a journalist or a scientist or thinking person and im sure many of you in this room are in one of those categories. What susan has to say and i recommend her chapter highly is quite applicable to things outside of academics or history. Cal, how about telling us about the editor evangelist . I first want to say we all pay tribute to a Little Something at the beginning of our remarks here. My version of that is i wouldnt be sitting in this chair if you work for the guy sitting creatures over. It was peter who was the first verse and whoever hired me into a publishing job. I was thinking after he did not, i was tired to be his assistant in the assisting to the guy who ran the company we were both working for. A short time later i came across my resume on peters dust, which was still around and around on the top of it, specs, which is how he remembered which guy i was. Which i guess is the impression that i made. The spec wearing young graduate right out of school who came and sat down in peters office really came to that of room to talk about doing the job that susan talk about, to talk about the on the page editor, to see whether its possible to realize the great dream of a twentysomething year old kid to spend all day long working with words and working with authors and selling more and more rooms that look like my bedroom for this room or what have you, just full of books that somebody would read. The great joy of my first year or two in the company where we both worked, which was state Martins Press at the time was that it was a place where the young editor you could again to do that very quickly. One of the things if any of you do when i hope any of you will buy the book and spend some time skimming through peters book is how many, before you even listen, once they bought it [laughter] one of the things you will find right away is how many people in the book who are in many cases sort of prominent position started out at saint Martins Press and the reason for that was it was a place where young editors could begin to acquire books very quickly without a lot of rhyme or reason necessarily sometimes based purely on passion for the books and based purely on the small fact that they wanted to take that there may be an audience out there for this first novel award this book on a small subject, it is rare. I was able fairly quickly to start doing not and i had a little bit of a sobering sort of second shoe drop about a year after i bought my first couple of books, which is that i did all of the stuff we talked about. I nurtured the authors that i worked with the manuscripts. I thought enormously proud that these books were doing the thing i wanted them to do. I thought great, my work is done and i will carry on and hand these books off to the Marketing Department and go back to my work, which is, is. And then nothing happened. I thought what is the piece of this process but i have missed . What have i done or failed to do to ignite the marketing and publicity and sales machine behind these books in a way that meant that they were suddenly the talk of the town in washington or new york or what have you that the