Graduating to e-books: Some publishing students still clueless about E
Moderator’s note: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti is a writer-poet and publishing veteran who worked as an editor and publicity director at David R. Godine and also founded her own publishing house. An MP3 version of this essay is now online. - DR
I teach a publishing course at one of the finest graduate schools for publishing.
Recently I asked for a show of hands of those students who own palm devices, have downloaded e-books or even know that the technology is now practical.
Not a single hand went up at a time when HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and other giants were digitizing books by the thousands, and when the Kindle would soon make the cover of Newsweek.
Ideally this essay can help enlighten both the publishing industry and educators on the need for aspiring editors to understand the new realities, not just e-book technology but also its impact on the important area of subrights, a topic that I’ll also explore below.
What the students and educators need to know
E-books, electronic rights and handhelds and readers are hardly new to the publishing world now. No longer are e-books and audio books so novel. Most major publishers have become savvy enough to hold on to electronic rights in boilerplate contracts and think beyond audio books alone.
In the past, under the subrights clause of most contracts, author could easily retain electronic rights. Other sub-rights were negotiated—translation rights in particular (usually an 80/20 split or 70/30, with the higher percentage going to the author) and film rights. The author received the subrights except for certain books; think The DaVinci Code or The Devil Wears Prada, and pity the editor who failed to keep film rights or electronic rights on either book, which is precisely why young editors need to be taught subrights.
The perils of “sleepers”—including the E variety
Then, as now, editors needed to think strategically. Woe unto the editor who had acquired the book that seemed like a “sleeper” and suddenly took off, becoming enough of a phenomenon to draw serious money from Hollywood. Perhaps it seemed unlikely that Patricia Highsmith’s older work, The Talented Mr. Ripley would be made into a film twice-over now—once, as Plein Soleil by director Michael Clement in the French and another version; more recently, as The Talented Mr. Ripley with stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Matt Damon and direction by Anthony Minghella. Film rights seemed to the unseasoned editor, or even the seasoned author sometimes, to be a remote possibility.
E-books and all other electronic rights these days work in similar ways, although, as noted, more houses are becoming savvy and often maintain the rights “just in case.” The day will come when many books see more readers in electronic format than in print.
Helping students grasp the importance of rights negotiations as part of the publishing process
For now I’m doing my best to help students look ahead to the time when E will be even more important than it is today. This isn’t easy. There are many balls to juggle. I must teach my students the business of how to edit print books and also walk my classes through the details of trade publishing—that is, how a manuscript that comes in over the transom ends up as a final published book and finds its eventual way to Barnes and Noble and Amazon.
I want these future young editors to master the fine art of working with authors, a skill that require great diplomacy as you become at once the author’s lifeline to the publisher, but also part psychiatrist (sometimes), hand-holder, friend, advocate, and ultimately, the person who will shape the manuscript into the edited jewel that one hopes it will become.
But at the same time, I also need to teach them how to negotiate electronic rights and other aspects of contracts—the part of the course many students dread the most, some, remarkably, even seeing contract negotiation as irrelevant and far outside the domain of editors. The students imagine there must be “someone else” who handles these. In actuality, at most houses, it is the editor who first negotiates the contract, and the same is true of students who will go on to become literary agents—where they will also edit, but yes, first they must negotiate a contract. Don’t know how to do it? Good luck finding an employer who will take you on and is willing to put the time into training you.
More than just sitting behind a large oak desk and chatting away
Alas, some students see editors as people who sit behind large oak desks in private offices, red Col-Erase pencils in hand as they make the marks they learned in The Chicago Manual of Style, and who spend their days on the phone with authors while enjoying casual conversation and acquiring the latest Hemingway or Fitzgerald of the day. The students either do not yet know, or perhaps do not want to know, that there will be the bread-and-butter books that you will have to edit—whether you love (or even like) them at all. Books that are given to you by the publisher as part of your job. As someone who has worked in publishing her entire career, I can tell you that without a doubt, there will be books that you truly love, and other books that simply do not move you in the least. I can also say that no matter what the book, contracts will count.
But contracts, the students believe, are simply not part of this picture; too many see them as totally irrelevant to their eventual jobs (yet those I have sent on interviews, either as prospective interns or for paid jobs, soon learn that one of the first questions asked of them is, “Do you know sub-rights?” ). If students do not take the contract negotiation part of their education seriously, they will be at a serious disadvantage when they graduate. So you do what you can; as a teacher, the best and the most you can do is teach to those who want to be taught.
Most of my publishing students out of touch with E
That students do not know everything about publishing is understandable. Teaching them the ins and outs is the very reason I have my job at all and is the purpose of my class. Yet what always comes as a great surprise to me is the number of students who either do not know that the large houses are producing e-books (which is all too often the bulk of the class) or who have “heard” of it, but fail to see that the e-book is of equal importance to the p-book.
No, the students do not lacking smarts or savvy, nor are they just beginning their educations. In fact, most of my students are at least in their mid-twenties and fall within my own generation, so this is not a generational issue. To be in my course in the first place, each student has taken many courses in publishing, yet as far as I can tell from their reactions, not one class has mentioned e-books, e-book devices, or focused on the importance of electronic publishing—-not as a future promise, but as it exists in the industry here and now.
Like taking the students on a spelunking expedition
Showing the students the e-book device (in this case a Tungsten E) was like taking the entire class on a spelunking expedition, drawing them to the deep recesses of a cave in which they could see the writing on the wall. It was, to them, a new and curious part of publishing; it was something they had not counted on for the future even though it was part of the present. From many of these future acquisitions editors, instead of excitement of this new technology, there was disinterest, and from a few, a look that hovered somewhere between apathy and disdain.
What’s the big deal about being able to read a book on a hand-held device? (again, something most of the class did not even know possible—beyond which no students owned hand-held devices). To make a point, I told my students about Scott Sigler’s book Earthcore and how it went from e-book to p-book. For the students who are also writers, not uncommon among editors, I noted that there is another way to get noticed and see eventual publication. Here again, I was mostly met with blank stares, even from the would-be, wish-to-be, published authors. I also discovered, by a count of hands, or lack of raised ones, that no students ran their own web sites or blogs (I didn’t specify between a “serious” blog or diary blog – hell, even “MySpace”—just something). You read that correctly; not one student had a Web site of any kind.
Time for educators to educate themselves about E—e-books
So what’s happening, or not? Why are the basics of today’s E so astonishing, so brand new, to students who should have known about e-books all along? One wonders how many other publishing programs around the country lack any education on the electronic aspect of publishing that students will eventually, inevitably, encounter.
What we need, as professors, for it is not up to the students to come with full knowledge, is to demonstrate the real potential for e-books and illustrate that. To show them the latest devices and how close E can come to P in typography, ease of use and functionality (in fact with features such as in-book shared annotations, e-books will become more functional). The story I often tell, from my frequent travels, is that I was able to take thirty or more books with me to Le Jardin Luxemborg, and all in a small handbag. I was able to research the book I am working on now through e-book technology, and with hope, my own book will one day be an e-book (yes, I maintained electronic rights—the editor I had at the time knew little about electronic publishing at all and put up absolutely no argument).
The MP3 player of literature
The better the devices, I hope, the more enthused the students—or at least, as interested in e-book technology as they are in iPods, etc. The e-book is like the MP3 player of literature. What we need to is to demonstrate the inherent sex-appeal and impart that to students and then watch them go. Those will be the successful editors of tomorrow, carrying us forward and for those who remain unmoved, they will be, as they are, left in the cloud of dust as we spin out, moving to the future.
Moderator’s note: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti is a former publicity director and editor for David R. Godine, Publisher, was recently appointed as a senior editor at Cyrano’s Journal. She has worked at Conde Nast Publications, The Atlantic Monthly and others. She has been widely published and now writes for several publications including the famous Cleveland Blogcritics, Geek2Geek, Boston Globe Arts Section, and she has also written for Publisher’s Weekly, Independent Publisher and others. Visit her Web site.
Enjoy Sadi’s podcasts and other TeleBloggers’ by pasting the TeleRead audio feed into your podware.
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November 30th, 2007 at 9:27 am
Fascinating article and quite surprising. Perhaps these sort of courses attract a higher proportion of people who disdain technology as crass. If you have a genuine love of books as BOOKS and not just as means of delivering information then you’re going to become defensive about e-books. A well made p-book is a thing of beauty of itself.
November 30th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
OK, this article was really getting up my nose because, as someone who’s been p-published 4x, and screwed by it, I hated to see The Enemy being enlightened about what will probably surpass all other rights: e-rights.
Then I got to this:
>>>my own book will one day be an e-book (yes, I maintained electronic rights—the editor I had at the time knew little about electronic publishing at all and put up absolutely no argument).
OK, so she’s not all evil… ha!
November 30th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Bill Monks: “Fascinating article and quite surprising. Perhaps these sort of courses attract a higher proportion of people who disdain technology as crass.”
Perhaps a higher proportion of people who see themselves as managers. They would certainly would have computers, but obviously they are not curious enough to try and find Literature with it. It does not take long to come across ebooks, even if you are not looking for them.
Mike Cane: “OK, this article was really getting up my nose because, as someone who’s been p-published 4x, and screwed by it, I hated to see The Enemy being enlightened about what will probably surpass all other rights: e-rights.”
It got up my nose as well, and I am merely a reader. No-doubt most publishers get the author’s film rights, along with every other right under sun, I just cannot see any moral justification that they should.
After all, novels have to be rewritten as screen plays, very little of the original p-work remains in that, except the author’s concepts of plot, theme and character, perhaps a handful of well turned phrases.
It is true that editors sometimes shape a novel, with advice and editing, my guess is that usually this hardly touches the fundamentals, and is probably increasingly rare these days anyhow.
So where is the justification for publishers to hold so many rights? Only in that monopolise the presses, the outlets and the promotion of the book.
I.e. the very things that digital communications sets aside. Anyone one can become a publisher on the net, and anyone can become an author. That means a lot of bad literature will be produced, but it also means a lot of very good literature that would never have made it into p-books also comes available.
The role of the publisher essentially changes within digital publishing. At the moment they can only see this as an extension of what they already do (hence DRM, high prices, and demands to rights that they only got in the past because they stood between the author and the press).
They no longer stand between the author and the press — the world is changing, I think this article is a good indication of why this change will be a very good thing for authors and readers.
December 1st, 2007 at 5:09 am
Or, publishing students : your grandma is more tech savvy than them.
December 13th, 2007 at 11:34 am
I also teach graduate students in a publishing program in NYC.
I teach in the classroom and online publishing courses that incorporate all types of media, which allow students to learn using tools that complement their learning styles.
We cover all digital rights, including e-books. Students come to class expecting to talk about digital rights and the future of publishing.
The gap I see is that the students often have more
e-savvy then their bosses.
I often wonder if these graduate publishing programs are really missing the market. Perhaps it is the 40+ generation of publishing professionals who need to go back to school.