TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Author Archive

By Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti shared with us a moving remembrance of Steven T. Florio, ex-CEO of Condé Naste, who mentored her. Both were the first in their families to reach college, and among other things, Sadi benefited from his book recommendations. Here’s an MP3 of Sadi’s podcast of “Losing Steve”—well worth your time even if you earlier read the essay.

If you haven’t already, why not subscribe to our podcasts, mostly from Sadi?

By Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Moderator’s note: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti was first in her family to go to college. Wouldn’t this happen a little oftener if more library books were free online, TeleRead-fashion—to entice the young with just the right titles? Meanwhile sympathies to Sadi over the death of Steven T. Florio, who helped her break through “the blue-collar barrier.” - D.R.

It is a lonely feeling to lose anyone: a lover, friend or family member. To lose a mentor, though—how does one begin to express what this feels like?

Were it not for Steven Florio, I would not be in book publishing or publishing in any way. I always knew I would be a writer, but I never for a minute believed I could succeed as a publisher, as an editor, editorial director, acquisitions editor and more—the myriad jobs I have held so far in my career. Never did I think I could publish my work with some fair measure of success that could please Steven. It was Steven who first got me interested; or, rather, it was Steven who noticed my interest and watered it until it grew such that it became for me an ambition.

Rose fast, oversaw magazines reaching 70M readers a month

Steven T. Florio, was, at the time, the editor of GQ (Gentlemen’s Quarterly), having started at Esquire. He was still in his early thirties and had worked his way up from research assistant to editor in a short span of approximately nine years. At Condé Nast, as reported in the New York Times, he was president and chief executive and “oversaw all 16 of the company’s magazines, which then included Glamour, Architectural Digest, Self, GQ, Gourmet, Bon Appétit, Condé Nast Traveler, Allure, Wired, Lucky and Teen Vogue, as well as Vogue, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. The magazines reach more than 70 million readers each month” (hyperlinks added).

In short, Steven Florio took a small-to-medium-sized publisher of magazines and made Condé’s magazines—such as Vogue, where I was placed—a force to be reckoned with in their respective industries. He was a whiz ad man, selling hundreds of pages of ads and thickening the magazines to more than twice their sizes at times. It was a gift—a gift of gab, for Steven was definitely a talker, although straightforward and down-to-earth. He didn’t screw around; he came not from Harvard Business School but from Jamaica, Queens (New York) where he was born in 1949.

Steven and the babysitter-journalist

I remember Steven asking me one day when I first left the U.K. for the States if I would watch his children. Not knowing (or particularly caring) who he was, I went to his house with my typewriter (which was a portable Olivetti in a black case) and my notes for my article for the local town newspaper.

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By Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

My forthcoming book is a primer on the works of the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson—also, a semi-biography for those who know a little but want to know more. That name might not ring a bell, but perhaps his pseudonym does, Lewis Carroll.

For a project like this, relying on old text and images from the nineteenth century, isn’t everything in the pub domain? Wrong. I must spend hour after hour researching rights, both in the library and on the Web. Consider the photographs taken by Carroll himself; many of the prints are in private collections, and the “proper” thing to do is to pay to license the photographs. That can get pricey.

Carrollian copyright maze

Dover published a book of Carroll “postcards” of his photographs, but I thought Dover printed only work in the public domain. Or maybe not? Should I call Dover, then, for permission? Or did the company, too, have to seek permission from someone else? I can’t say; all I know is that the bulk of Carroll’s work is not necessarily in the public domain for my purposes. For word counts, etc., I need to contact an agency in London and say “roughly” what I plan to use. This is where it gets really frustrating. I ring and ask, Should I send a list of the works I would like to reproduce? I get a flat answer, No. Then how will you know what I would like to use? Give us an approximation, the agency tells me. What does this even mean? I am caught in a Carrollian maze of complex rights issues.

Sir John Tenniel’s illustrations for Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are in the public domain, but not if they are in color, I am told. I am not sure if this is true, but it’s what I was told on good authority. As for other illustrators such as Harry Furniss, I don’t know. As much as I’d hope they are in public domain, I am nervous at this point about printing any image in the book without paying for it—no small challenge, since publishers hate to spend much money to license images for use in a typical author’s book. You need a huge name for the publisher to loosen the purse strings. I think, “Not yet. Maybe someday.”

The Ethernet surprise

Amid the challenges of my library work, I find pleasant surprises. I discover that The Morgan Library, in New York City, home to an excellent Carroll collection, allows you to use an Ethernet cable to access not only the Morgan holdings but also the Web in general. What you cannot use, surely for security reasons, is WiFi. The same is true of The Houghton Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at Harvard. You can bring your computer and be hooked up to the Ethernet with no problem. It’s actually surprising and wonderful to know that such old institutions that carry such rare material can be open-minded toward technology. I have found the IT people, the staff of the Reading Room, to be among the most helpful groups I have worked with.

But that does not spare me the problems of dealing with rights issues, especially for a printed book, which, ironically, counts more to Luddites than do print books.

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By Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

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.

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By Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Moderator’s note: Sadi Ranson-Polizotti, the TeleBlog’s book editor and main podcaster, has just recorded a moving audio version of the previously published essay below (MP3 format). Also enjoy her memories of Saul Bellow.

Hans Koning was one of the foremost writers living in the United States, having written thirteen novels as well as numerous works of nonfiction on topics as varied as China, Che Guevara, Russia, and so much more.

If you’re a well-read American, it’s likely you’ve seen Koning’s work many times in The New Yorker or The Atlantic Monthly. He was a “reporter-at-large” for The New Yorker and his work was published to great critical acclaim. George Plimpton said, “One of America’s most accomplished writers.” All told, Hans Koning wrote more than forty works of fiction and nonfiction. He died on April 13, 2007, at his home in Easton, Connecticut, from melanoma. He was eighty-five years old.

I had the great honor and pleasure of not only being an editor to Hans at one point, but most importantly, being a good friend, and that to me means everything. A card bore news of his death, and it read: “I want to set up a whispering in the Universe” (America Made Me, 1979).

He is missed. He will always be missed. (more…)

By Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Moderator’s note: Sadi Ranson-Polizotti, the TeleBlog’s book editor and main podcaster, will release an audio of this essay in the next few days. Also enjoy her memories of Saul Bellow.

Hans Koning was one of the foremost writers living in the United States, having written thirteen novels as well as numerous works of nonfiction on topics as varied as China, Che Guevara, Russia, and so much more.

If you’re a well-read American, it’s likely you’ve seen Koning’s work many times in The New Yorker or The Atlantic Monthly. He was a “reporter-at-large” for The New Yorker and his work was published to great critical acclaim. George Plimpton said, “One of America’s most accomplished writers.” All told, Hans Koning wrote more than forty works of fiction and nonfiction. He died on April 13, 2007, at his home in Easton, Connecticut, from melanoma. He was eighty-five years old.

I had the great honor and pleasure of not only being an editor to Hans at one point, but most importantly, being a good friend, and that to me means everything. A card bore news of his death, and it read: “I want to set up a whispering in the Universe” (America Made Me, 1979).

He is missed. He will always be missed. (more…)

By Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Note: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti, TeleRead’s e-book editor, teaches a graduate-level course in editing.

Line editing is a dying art in the modern book world. This much is a sad fact and one we must accept if we are to succeed as writers of e- or p-books.

No longer can an editor find the time to hold an author’s hand and, line by line, make careful or substantive changes to a submitted manuscript. “Due to the pressures of time and business, in the 21st century, the art of line editing is all but dead,” says Evander Lomke, an editor at Continuum Books and an officer of The Genius Club, a small, private organization comprised of members of the intellectual community.

Press-ready books: Growing requirement at big houses

Large print houses like Random House and HarperCollins—and even many of the good smaller presses like Continuum—are under great pressure to get to the market, posthaste. It is now more than ever assumed that the book will arrive in a more complete form, press-ready, than before. Perhaps some of the smaller imprints have the luxury of true line-editing, but even this is rarer and rarer. (more…)

By Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Update, 1:30 p.m. EDT: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti has just recorded an MP3 of her reactions to the Godine designer’s thoughts on e-books. You might also enjoy the text and podcast of her memories of Saul Bellow.

David R. Godine, Publisher, based in Boston, started in a barn with a hand-cranked press. Godine books are famous for their flawless design and fine paper and binding, not just their literary quality.

I worked there before I began my own small press, Lumen Editions, and now I was curious how my old colleagues felt about e-books. Might Godine, one of the most prestigious of the small presses, be able to create digital equivalents of its well-crafted paper editions?

Carl W. Scarbrough, who designs most Godine books, among his other publishing and management duties, graciously replied to my questions via e-mail. While his background is in commercial photography advertising, and marketing, the printed page has always held a special fascination for him. He also works as a freelance designer and has designed books for Harvard University, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Encounter Books in New York.

SRP

Suppose you could commission e-book software that offered your favorite fonts, and over which you exercised complete artistic and typographical control in other respects. Would you like this idea? (more…)

By Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Update, July 25: You can now hear Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti’s podcast in MP3.

I remember riding the trolley to Saul Bellow’s office at Boston University—my alma mater—on an autumn day with my heart aflutter. I remember my wool gray skirt and ivory silk blouse that I wore; the weather sunny and crisp; a good autumn day. Gosh, I even remember my t-strap shoes that I wore, and that I still wear.

The year was 1996. I was a young editor, fresh from Godine, and had just started a small press, Lumen Editions, and now I wanted a Nobel Prize winner to serve on my board of directors, pro bono. As Lumen’s editorial director, I’d decided I had nothing to lose by cold-calling Bellow and everything to gain. We needed a good board of directors to help make careful editorial decisions, and I suspected that Saul would take his time. And so I invited myself to his office.

I remember Saul Bellow with a cravat about his neck, which he always seemed to wear, a nice one of silk and taupe colored; his handsome face so full of light that he practically emanated the very name of my press, Lumen. At the time it seemed to me a virtual impossibility that someone so full of light—as I felt I myself was during those days–could say no to me. (more…)

By Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Note: This is Part II of a two-part series by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti, TeleRead’s e-book editor.

Could e-books be the next step for Gather and other community sites? I’m in office of Tom Gerace, the energetic CEO of this literate online community, and I watch his bluish-green eyes light up at the prospect. Why not put together “The Best of Gather” as an e-book?

“Publishing compendiums is a really interesting avenue for us,” Gerace says over the fizz of the black-cherry drink on his desk. He’s as effervescent as the sofa.

He tells me that “fotolog, which is a big photography sharing site in Brazil, is about to come out with their first collection of photographs by fotolog members. I think Gather has the potential to publish poetry books, short story collections.” Gerace might release them during the Christmas gift-giving season.

Site growth first

First Gerace wants to grow the site from its 10,000+ members and more than 500 user-created groups, everything from the Haiku Group to gardening forums; and also “we probably need a partner for e-books.” But once that happens, Gather’s possible e- or p-books could benefit from the built-in word-of-mouth, given the community approach. Later, as I see it, might come acclaim and great reviews by major industry publications such as Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. (more…)

By Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Note: Part II and two podcasts by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti will be coming later this week.

Jane Jacobs, the great lesson of hip-hop for writers, and the hilarious Don Ameche Code–those were among the topics of hit posts on Gather today.

Ignore the so-so Alexa stats and traffic comparisons with other communities. No other virtual gathering place has the certain je ne sais quoi of this relative newcomer, founded in June 2004 and funded the next December. Gather’s sunny and welcoming fresh-squeezed orange colored website is as vibrant and youthful as the CEO, Tom Gerace, who sat down with me for an one-on-one to discuss Gather in general and its e-book potential in particular. Part II of this two part series will cover e-book possibilities.

Indirect public radio tie

Yes, the Boston-based site is for smart people everywhere of a certain age who read books and listen to public radio. Among Gerace’s first round of backers, in fact, was none other than American Public Media Group, the parent organization of such gems as Minnesota Public Radio, home to Garrison Keillor. Another investor is Andrew Tobias, the money-guide guy who’s also treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, although this could be just coincidental for the most part. Gerace, his family and various members of the team have also sunk in their own money. Perhaps this is why the site hasn’t splurged on marketing dollars but instead has been slowly, er, gathering steam.

More than 500 user-created groups exist, from the Haiku Group to Electronic Voting Experiences and gardening groups galore. Gather is truly a place for intellectual idea-swapping and exchange and even critique if so desired. In Lake Wobegon terms, at least most of the participants are above average. (more…)

By Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Note: We’ve just posted an MP3 of the essay below from Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti–TeleRead’s e-book reviewer.

A highly disturbing experiment: go to virtually any search engine and type in “e-books pornography,” and you’ll get a plethora of results offering “Child Pornography” downloadable to Microsoft Reader with “direct links to downloading and free samples.”

I toured “porn” sites recently. Some pages offered simply “debates” about the use of pornography (here in context as an e-book phenomenon). Other sites offered more information on said debates. (Who knew the e-book community had been debating this matter? Should we have known?) Another site listed an offering about “the reality behind the ‘often hysterical media coverage of child pornography available via the Internet.’”

But then there were those downloadable samples that one just could not get away from. It all contrived to make me feel like just hysterical Puritan who has no sense of fun and who pines away her days wishing and hoping that grown men will start wanting women of normal age. I don’t ask for much; let’s say over 16, at the high end of the scale. (more…)