Some Nice Notes re: Recent Indexes

I got my reasons.

From a prominent Baltimore-based institution of higher learning:

Hi, Bob.

We're in good shape; the index is beautiful.


From an author publishing with that joint up in New Haven:

The index looks fantastic -- very comprehensive, especially with all the subcategories under key terms! 

Having said that, I still like to proofread and copyedit, if you get my drift.

Innocence and Experience

I wasn't going to post the following quote, as it's a bit humbling, but I loved the response it generated.

From an author for whom I've done one index -- although we struck up a fast friendship while doing so:

XXX is a good egg, and I think you'd like her book. I hope it works out for the two of you to work together. I told her the truth about you: that I've met no one better at their job than you are at yours. Also, how easy, fun and stimulating it is to work with you.

 

I passed that comment along to a managing editor for whom I've done hundreds of indexes, copyedits, and proofreads. The response?

 

You are good, but you are very strange...

A Nice New Year's Note

Bob, I realize you have read a lot since working with me in 2012–2013 on my first two books, and may not recall the books at all. But I just happened to be thinking about the books, all the work you did, and the best guidance and proofing a person could have received through your efforts.

I will always appreciate the excellent guidance and work you did for me on the two books we did. It was a great supplemental education for me, one that cannot be learned in college or any graduate school.

In any event, I wish you a safe, healthy and prosperous New Year.

After 35 Years at This, Maybe I Know What I'm Doing

An author with whom I've been working pretty closely just received a rejection letter from a writers' agency. Agent really liked the book but feels it's not sufficiently marketable.

The manuscript was in essentially OK shape when I first saw it, yet it needed a thorough albeit not difficult copyedit. Here's the agent's assessment after the Land on Demand touch:

I may as well get right to it: I’m going to pass on this. But believe me when I say I’m passing with many regrets, as I think that you’re an excellent writer with a superb grasp of both language and the type of style, tone, and pacing that makes for a good biography. I’m a big fan of biography and read a fair amount of it, and in terms of composition and content, this manuscript is on par with anything else that’s out there. 

Well, thanks. And, well, I guess I do know the person's name. But check out the lefty bass player and about three seconds of a seriously hammered Judy Garland at the beginning:

Testimonials: A Letter Rolled In

In case you’re not familiar with the phrase in the blog title, it’s typically used when a group sends a mass of letters to the editor that are obviously all the same text, just submitted by different people.

A new and welcome author came in over the transom a few days ago, and I asked how the person was familiar with my services. The response: 

A mentor of mine, a serial entrepreneur, asked a couple of his contacts on my behalf. He stated your name was given on multiple occasions. 

Not sure there were actually either a couple of contacts or multiple occasions. Smacks a little of an echo chamber, but I’m happy for the buzz.

+++

More on the testimonial front. Received a 120,000-word novel for copyediting, and the publisher couldn't take the job unless she could get quite hasty turnaround on the job in order to meet a print deadline: 

Getting this done so quickly has helped me and the author so much, Bob. I can’t thank you enough. 

And from a university press whose name you’d know:

The level of indexing was very thorough and the author was very pleased with the detailed index. The index was sent to me on time which was appreciated because of the short turnaround. 

+++

All this feels very nice, because the month has been brutal on numerous fronts. I'll get back to whining and complaining about work soon.

On a personal note, about 8 minutes ago, I turned 54 years old. In a hospital room on Staten Island, New York — same hospital where my father was born in 1932 — came one of the ugliest children on record. Badly jaundiced, dent in the head, ears rolled up. Story I once heard was that the nurse said, “What a beautiful baby," and one of my grandmothers burst into tears. I understand my dad went to the track for three days.

Notable things that happened on March 28? Three-Mile Island. Eisenhower died. However, my dear, departed Aunt Muriel was born — one of the wildest women I’ve ever known, and I wish I had known her better. And, damn, I wish I could be more like her. If we ever run into each other, ask me to tell some Aunt Muriel stories. She was seventy years old when my wife and I married, and friends of mine who were in their twenties would have been more than happy to hit on her. She looked kinda like Joan Collins, if Joan Collins was prettier and a lot classier without effort.

A Nice Note from a Not-Easy-to-Please Book Designer

Thanks for the great work. Hopefully your client-base will recognize these efforts. This organization distinguishes you from the garden-variety "book reader" wannabe editors.

The "organization" to which he's referring is the use of XML style sheets. Easy to do, and book designers / typesetters love it when it's done right. It's the ever-so-rare equivalent of, as a copyeditor, getting a writer who actually knows how to punctuate. Makes life easier and projects go much more quickly.

That these labors were expended on a self-published romance novel . . . well, underlying my long-standing corporate motto, the check deposits just the same.

Unleashing the Word Horde*

Tired of looking at the old entry, and no time to compose anything coherent. If printed books are dead, no one bothered to tell my publishers.

So, forthwith are posts that I had in waiting. I'm tired of looking at them, too. If they no longer make any sense, well, I've had a few other entries like that as well.

* * *

CreateSpace: Garbage In, Garbage Out

6/2/2012: In full disclosure, I wrote this rather hastily some weeks back. Would someone who actually knows please tell me the story: Does CreateSpace ever typeset copy for a book's pages? Or do they simply print what the author/customer supplies . . . PDF, Word doc, whatever? Is there ever any human contact? Do they provide a good service? I was just ranting here . . . to a degree.


If you're a self-publishing author and you don't know how to format your manuscript properly, your book is going to look like absolute crap when you get it back from Amazon's CreateSpace . . . unless CreateSpace has different levels of service, and one of them actually gives a darn what your book looks like as Amazon taps your bank account.

My two experiences with CreateSpace page proofs show that the folks at CreateSpace set exactly what the customer sent in. Maybe that's all they do. In some circles, that would be called "customer service." In my world, that's called "revenge."

To all self-publishers or ghostwriters working with same: For a very nominal fee, I can clean up a manuscript so that your page proofs will look, well, like a book when it's designed. And I can pretty much guarantee that my charge up front will be a hell of a lot less than what Amazon will charge you for typesetting corrections after the fact -- if they even perform that service.

And it will be worth it. Because unless you know what you're doing, and without that kind of intervention, your labor of love is not going to look like any other book on your shelf -- and I'm not saying that in a good way.

Many writers, frankly, just care about the cover and the spine. Author's name and title and, presto, "I'm an author." But if you care what's between the covers, you really do want it looking as good as possible. You don't want your readers saying -- and I've heard this -- "The book was prepared so sloppily that I put it down."

A self-published book can look as good as any other book in the world. Yes, it can. If you don't know how to make that happen, people can help you.

I'm one of them.

Shameless plug over, but that's what this real estate is all about, folks.

* * *

Two Kinds of Writers

Early in my blogging days, I spoke of Bill Shipp, a man who made his bones in journalism before I learned how to read. When I first worked with him, he had already written for four decades and was a giant of Georgia journalism by any metric. He demanded heavy editing. The rare call I received from him usually dealt with the paucity of my red marks rather than their overuse.

I do some pro bono work for a nonprofit that likes having its work proofed, edited, torn up -- everyone there, except the executive director. She doesn't want a word of hers touched. Doesn't matter if it's a point of grammar. Leave it alone.

--

I returned a manuscript to an author a few weeks ago, and I'll admit -- as I admitted to the author -- that my customer service was not up to par. And I'll state that here, just to be fair to the readership. Mostly dealing with turnaround time and communication. I performed, however, a rather thorough edit.

The author's comments were very nice, including this remark:

Your work on my book was excellent and finding you encourages me to write more and more and more.

Frankly, I can't think of much higher praise for an editor. That one's a keeper. Even better, the author writes about interesting stuff. Pinch me.

* * *

Special Onetime Offer: Legacy Rates

6/2/2012: I actually never got around to the point I wanted to make here, which would have made the headline make sense. Ah, well. It also leaves a blog post in my head. Dammit.


This post is neither a coupon nor an attempt to gather more clients into the LoD fold, although I never mind doing so. I worked long enough in the insurance industry to understand spreading the risk.

Rather I'm looking at a wholesale overhaul of my rate structure for authors -- not publishers -- based on a number of factors, primarily self-publishing and authors writing in their nonnative language. Nothing against such authors personally, but it makes no sense to charge them anywhere close to the same as the publishers' rates. The work is invariably more difficult, requires far more hand-holding, and takes longer . . . and there's little potential for repeat business, where an easier project down the line makes things even out.

Too, once a writer (I'm thinking of one in particular from years ago) knows an editor is going to clean up a particular editorial issue every time, the writer has no real incentive to understand what the hell the editor is doing and write it correctly to begin with -- even a matter of the simplest English composition.

Imagine 2000 pages of this:

"Why did the dog eat the biscuit," Ed asked?

Not a 2000-page manuscript. But five different novels of about 400 pages each. Don't you think after the first one, where I corrected scores of such constructions, the author might have learned something? (And this author is old enough to know better and of such demographics and background that the author is clearly not a stupid individual.)

When I say "old enough to know better," I'm talking about some of the great divides in U.S. education. This author is old enough to have learned the basics of composition very well. At the time the author grew up, I doubt he could have made it out of third grade composing a sentence such as the one above.

(Too, people of a certain age, regardless of native intelligence and barring some mitigating factors, can read aloud without hesitation. Not universally true with people under 30.)

* * *

Word of the Day, and Other Irritants

6/2/2012: I have a longer list on three small pieces of paper. Time to throw them out.


while at the same time

about 38

both (yeah, "both," thanks to a university press managing editor who scrubbed a manuscript of every single one before sending it to me for copyediting)

very unique

coteaching with another teacher

* * *

[no title]

6/2/2012: I have no idea why I saved this. I think I liked the part of the sentence that appears after the second em dash.

It is interesting to note the rather Pelagian character of this soteriology, emphasizing the centrality of human agency over against the initiation of the divine—particularly salvation by moral emulation—and therefore providing no real sense whatsoever of how the divine actually enables the salvation of the nation beyond merely providing the opportunity.

* * *

A Day in the Bunker

I've referred to it many times before, whether on the blog or in conversation. Here's a day at the LandonDemand Intergalactic Corporate HQ:

By the way, I was raised on this show. I think it showed four times a day in NYC when I was growing up. Things haven't changed much, except now there's only one bed in the adults' bedroom.

* * *

And this added bonus, from fall 2009. 

6/2/2012: I forget if I posted this exchange. I emailed Moi some version of it. I'd forgotten most of it, but the whole thing still makes me shake my head. "Per" is the gender-neutral pronoun that an author used. I employed it here for a while to maintain gender anonymity. In this case, per is a dude. Now, I don't say "per." I just change the person's gender. Or not.


I'm going to take a page from one of the most offensive yet most popular Internet sites, the Drudge Report, and break the news here. Anytime someone tries to put out some dirt on Matt Drudge, he immediately posts the article on his own site, as if to say, "I got nothing to hide." This is another way of saying, "The best defense is a good offense."

Yes, indeedy, folks. Far and away my most bizarre client has given me the heave-ho. I'm not going to get into too many details, to preserve per's anonymity (I am fair, after all) and thus to preserve my own hide.

Let's just say this: Per is a Bible-thumping prophet (like an apocalyptic, see-the-future type) and an America-loathing rabble-rouser. Per foresees the end of America as we know it unless we all come to Christ and change our ways. I can go on and on about per, as I have come to know per over the last year or so, but I will let the slightly edited correspondence speak for itself.

===========

Yes Bob I will send the western union today although I am not going to pay you for re-editing your own work in chapter 26. The other day when you ask me, where did I get this copy from. . . I got it from you. That is the reason why I run everything through you before including it in the manuscript, so the entire manuscript will have to be re-edited because it is my opinion you either farmed it out originally or you did not do such a good job that you have found your own work to be problematic with errors. I know you by now (not using any gifts of foresight) that you are not going to re-edit this entire manuscript again, and do it right at no charge, but in my opinion you should because I have already paid you for it, and even if you did go through it, it is further my opinion you would not go through it with a fine tooth comb, so my only option at this point is to hunt for a new editor and wish you the best. I will send you some money but frankly in my opinion, I have wasted about [dollar figure here] and the manuscript is not ready to go to press. Goodbye Bob.

===========

Isn't this fun? Here's the response I wanted to send. Special blog exclusive.

===========

First, when I asked, "Where did this come from?" I'm certain I was referring to a specific piece of text, not an entire chapter, and how it fit into the surrounding text. I'd need to see the context for the statement.

On to larger matters:

You've received all the tracked versions of every document you've sent me (all of which I've kept), so you've seen exactly what I've done along the way -- no portion at all of which has been farmed out. I don't farm out my work any more than you farm out your prophecies.

You've had no complaint about the work until now. You've had scores of opportunities to say that you didn't think my work was up to snuff and to end our relationship based on the quality of the work you were receiving from me. I've never heard a single word from you along those lines -- even though you claim that you've been rereading and rereading the manuscript. If there were really something seriously wrong, you would have noticed it long before now, and you would have terminated the relationship long ago. You obviously felt comfortable enough with my work to continue to send me regular updates for nine months after editing the original manuscript, and to send me emails asking for advice, which have always been answered. Along the way, you'd mentioned at least twice all the money you'd be sending me once the book came out because you treat well those people who treat you right. Those aren't the actions or words of an author who is unhappy with the editing.

I can guess at any number of reasons you now no longer want me to work for you, but I'm not going to try to get into your head.

Every person who is in publishing full time will tell you that copyediting is part of a process, which includes proofreading as well, and proofreaders often catch what a copyeditor has missed, especially in a manuscript that at this point is being slapped together totally haphazardly, with a sentence here and a sentence there out of context going out for editing. If the manuscript overall is now not reading the way you want it to, it's largely because of the process you've undertaken since last November.

I've been getting emails since last November with documents titled things like, "last change before typesetting" and "one last thing." You can attribute it to [ . . . ] or your desire to have this book be its best, but I've worked with any number of folks who also have issues with [ . . . ] and who want the best for their publication, but who also intuitively understand what it takes to make a publication its best and how to work with an editor to bring that about. Your approach to the text of the book at this point is akin to a dog who keeps digging up a bone and looking for somewhere else to bury it. You just can't leave it alone, and confusion is the inevitable result. If you want to blame me for that, that's your decision. The corrections you've been sending my way have resulted from your claims that you had a better way to say something, or you've been adding new material (election, Michael Jackson, new interactions at churches), or you've been qualifying your experiences in [ . . . ] to make sure you don't land in additional legal trouble. Never have you said, "I didn't like the way you did this. Please review." Never. Not once. And that you kept sending me material clearly showed you thought I was doing something right.

According to your own account, you've gone through photographers, web designers, cover designers, and editors before me -- blaming them for all the problems and their inability to do what you want them to do. I'm now added to the list. Without the gift of foresight, I suspect the pattern will continue with typesetters, proofreaders, indexers, printers, distributors, bookstore owners, publicity people, and so on. When I read in your book that you'd been in 20 car wrecks, 19 of which were not your fault, that about summed it up. And when I read repeatedly in your book about your lack of faith in the United States and the American judicial system, yet when I look online and see that you are constantly in court, asking that very same American judicial system to clear up your problems for you, I see that I've been dealing with a bundle of contradictions all the way along.

You are certainly correct that I would not reedit the manuscript again at no charge. And I'd be wary of vendors who give you rock-bottom rates and claim decades of experience. I don't think you'll ultimately be happy with their work either, or you'll find that they'll start charging you for continually making changes and adjustments (as they should), which will make their original low price end up not so low in the long run.

You say that this book will come out on God's time and according to God's plan; if that's the case, then your dealings with me have just been part of a grander scheme in which you claim to have complete trust. Or maybe it's like the judicial system: it's something you fall back on when it suits your purposes.

I wish you the best of luck with the book.

Bob

Note that this book remains unpublished. June 2, 2012.

*Headline: thanks to William S. Burroughs

Tales of Brave Ulysses and Matters Mystic

The title of the post is for the Paisan, but the post is all about me. I mean, this is a work blog, right? My work blog?

And the point of the blog was originally to serve as a site to hawk my wares. Evidence over time shows that the approach has worked. I’m presently editing a nifty and utterly fascinating book on the history of hypertext. The author came referred to me from an Australian professor who found the blog and me and whose book I worked on a few years back. Now he’s spreading the love around the world to his peers. That’s the way it’s supposed to work.

Occasionally my readers might not be authors but managing editors who have sent work my way. It’s all good.

Those of you keeping score may remember that I’ve been proofreading since 1974. First for my high school newspaper (perpetual gold-medal winner at the Columbia Scholastic Press Association), and then beginning in 1981 with a now-lengthy series of paying gigs (in addition to and wrapped around editing, etc.). It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that I’ve forgotten more companies that I’ve proofread for than I remember.

The only time in the last 38 years that I’ve not been involved in some way with printing or publishing was during my three-plus years as an English major in college -- time during which I avoided publishing . . . and the classics. Don’t ask why. I can’t say I always make the best or most appropriate decisions.

During those college years, I met a friend with whom I’ve recently reconnected over the last few years. He’s always had one foot firmly planted in matters mystic. In a recent email from him, he warned, “Be careful about what you invite into your life.” I think the point was that if you want a door to open, you’d better be ready to handle whatever’s behind that door. It might be way more than you bargained for.

And a few posts back, I pondered . . . How would I handle it if Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans were to come in over the transom these days? And what if it required a read against the manuscript, which is rarely done anymore? Nine hundred pages of one of the English language’s most unreadable novels . . . that I would have to read under deadline pressure . . . and where mistakes carry consequences.

I thought the 900-page family history that came into my life which I edited, and which I may soon be indexing, was the universe’s little giggle on my behalf.

Be careful what you invite into your life.

Even unknowingly.

I give you a moment from last week’s Land on Demand inbox:

* *

Dear Bob:

[OUR] press is publishing an e-book edition of Ulysses based on [OUR] World Classics print edition. We are going to create this e-book edition by optical character recognition (OCR) scanning of the print book. We need to get it proofread because this kind of technology is, of course, imperfect and we want to avoid the introduction of the kinds of errors one often sees in quickly made e-books.

I am sure I don’t need to tell you that this particular book is going to be a challenge to proofread. Joyce was not a conventional speller or punctuator. There are existing typos and other errors in the book that have to be retained for historical reasons, so this will be a careful check against the original. What you would read are Word files containing the output of the OCR process. Only errors introduced during OCR will be fixed.

Anyway, I thought of you immediately. We should have the files around the 23rd of March and were hoping to have them back a month later. I don’t know exactly how many pages it will be in Word terms, but the print edition is 980 typeset pages.

* *

As an English major, a lifetime proofreader, and one whose business relies on the graces of scholarly presses, I can think of no greater capstone than to be “thought of immediately” when [OUR] Press wants to republish its definitive version of Ulysses in an in-demand format for a new millennium.


Here's lookin' at you, kid.

 

Land on Demand in the News

Indirectly. Click titles for links.

1

The Won Cause: Black and White Comradeship in the Grand Army of the Republic, a book by Barbara Gannon, is an Honorable Mention for the 2012 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize.

Two books co-won this award for 2012, and Barb’s book nabbed the sole honorable mention. From what I hear (from the author and others), this award is given for books that achieve the pinnacle of Civil War scholarship—and a ton of scholarly Civil War books are printed each year. This is quite the honor, and the book is indeed an amazing piece of research. If I’m remembering right, I think I copyedited, proofed, and indexed this one. Barb’s sister, the czarina, and I all used to work together, and I thank Mary for the reference.

Amazon book description: 

In the years after the Civil War, black and white Union soldiers who survived the horrific struggle joined the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR)—the Union army’s largest veterans’ organization. In this thoroughly researched and groundbreaking study, Barbara Gannon chronicles black and white veterans’ efforts to create and sustain the nation’s first interracial organization. 

According to the conventional view, the freedoms and interests of African American veterans were not defended by white Union veterans after the war, despite the shared tradition of sacrifice among both black and white soldiers. In The Won Cause, however, Gannon challenges this scholarship, arguing that although black veterans still suffered under the contemporary racial mores, the GAR honored its black members in many instances and ascribed them a greater equality than previous studies have shown. Using evidence of integrated posts and veterans’ thoughts on their comradeship and the cause, Gannon reveals that white veterans embraced black veterans because their membership in the GAR demonstrated that their wartime suffering created a transcendent bond—comradeship—that overcame even the most pernicious social barrier—race-based separation. By upholding a more inclusive memory of a war fought for liberty as well as union, the GAR’s “Won Cause” challenged the Lost Cause version of Civil War memory.

2

Excellent New York Times book review of Queen Elizabeth in the Garden: A Story of Love, Rivalry, and Spectacular Gardens.

Great news for a small publisher. BlueBridge Books produces timeless volumes that are meticulously fashioned. I proofread this one. And it’s especially sweet as the Washington Post unnecessarily hammered another excellent BlueBridge book a few years ago.

Amazon book description:

Taking a fresh and original approach to the life and reign of Queen Elizabeth I, this book tells the incredible story of her great passion for gardens, and how the two most powerful men in England during her reign fought a decade-long duel for their queen’s affections by creating lavish gardens for her. It chronicles how, in their quest to woo the queen and outdo each other, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and William Cecil, Baron of Burghley, competed for Elizabeth’s favor by laying out innovative and extravagant pleasure grounds at their palaces for when she came to visit. As she played one off against the other, they created gorgeous palaces and landscapes that amazed the world. The book also describes how others in England and abroad followed Dudley’s and Cecil’s leads and how the queen’s love of plants made gardeners of courtiers, statesmen, and soldiers. This meticulously researched account reveals how Elizabeth’s enthusiasm for horticulture changed the world, encouraging gardeners and designers to create landscapes inspired by the spirit of the Elizabethan garden.

*

A fine week for the LoD client base. Keep up the good work, folks.

Two more happy customers

Hi there

When I got my first glimpse of the index you wrote for The Cat and the Toaster [Wipf and Stock, 2010], I thought I should write and say thanks. I spent a half hour just reading it over. Later I found that Dr. Hall had done the same thing. And the other day someone else told me he was reading the book, and I asked how far he had gotten. "Well," he said, "actually, I started with the index."

Writing to you was one of those nice thoughts we have sometimes, and then ignore... But I just opened it again to track down a quote, and after finding it so easily, I told myself it is time to write to you!

Thanks, Bob. You did a masterful job with that index. Your work is a tremendous asset to the book.

You make us look good, and we are grateful for your help and your good work.

With appreciation,
Steve Daman
Emmanuel Gospel Center
Boston

=================

Dear Bob,

We had a meeting this week with our new publisher NYU Press, and the director of production was gushing about the high quality of the copyediting. So we told her why and she asked for your contact info.

[from the folks at the American Human Development Project]

Sometimes You Just Ask

Over on Moi's blog, one of her regular posters is, if I get it correctly, an artist who works in illustration and design. I forget if it was on Moi's blog or here that the topic turned to drumming up freelance work. I mentioned to K9 that sometimes it was just a matter of going back to clients you hadn't heard from in a while and mentioning, "Hey, I'm still here."

K9's response was, "I wish it was that simple."

Sometimes it is.

As I've written before, clients come and go. If you'd have named for me a few years back the clients I'm surviving without now, I'd have asked you if you wanted to sit next to me at the Salvation Army for dinner tonight. But publishers and authors go, and others seem to take up the empty places right at the right time. My dear wife ascribes this to the presence of a deity. Maybe yes, maybe no. A lot of folks out there aren't doing so well these days, not to say that any deity is responsible for every little turn of events. I don't think the ways of the universe are conducted on such a micro level anyway; nor does my wife think that way, I don't believe. And theodicy's certainly not the subject of this post or this blog.

But I guess I could phrase as it as "Knock and the door will be opened to you; seek and you shall find."

Or that every invention is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.

A few publishers that I hadn't worked with lately popped into my head this week. I tracked one down, and it's now under the management of a larger group that handles a number of smaller imprints, all publishing in kinda the same field. The only contact person I could find on the new webpage was the president and publisher of the larger group. I'd forgotten the name of my old contact.

I emailed the president/publisher, telling per that I wanted to contact the press that was now part of per's larger company. I was a freelancer who wanted to reestablish contact with this press.

This was yesterday. Within an hour, I heard back from my old contact, asking for my most recent resume and rate sheet. Half an hour later, per said there might be some work for me.

I received news of a project today. I'll have it next week. A nice copyediting job.

Sometimes you just ask.

Publisher 2: I wrote my contact, whose name I remembered this time, and said, "Hey, haven't heard from you in a while. If you're still using freelancers, I'm still here."

Response: "Great to hear from you. We're still using freelancers, but just putting out fewer books. Will definitely keep you in mind."

Sometimes . . .

Back to publisher 1. I was put in touch with the graphic designer for the book I'll be copyediting. I did my A-student freelancer thing and said, "By the way, if you know of any publishers or authors looking for someone who does what I do, feel free to pass my name along, and I'll do the same for you." Per immediately wrote back with a contact at a press that labors in the same academic fields as most of the rest of my clients, and said, "Tell per I recommended you." I did so. Contact, if the widget is correct, was checking out the blog earlier tonight. I cannot assume, of course, this will turn out to be a good development, but it's a press that I would be very proud to put on the client list.

Sometimes . . .

I said this before also: if I had the nerve and the confidence in some regards at ages 14, 18, 22 that I do now, aspects of my life would have been totally different. Then again, there's no telling what bad roads such nerve and confidence might have taken me down then until now.

Agnosticism is a funny thing. I think everything is tied together. I think things move toward some conclusion that might not be revealed without the benefit of decades of hindsight. It just is so immaterial to me if someOne or someThing is tying that knot or moving things toward any conclusion. That's for the bigger brains to deal with.

It's too late at night for this. I belong in a dorm room at age 18, having serious discussions, although I don't really remember many serious dorm room discussions. A lot more laughing than pondering.

Bonnaroo lineup is out for 2010. It's tempting. Younger son and wife certainly want to go. Older son hasn't mentioned anything. Of course, being there represents heaven on earth to him, but hopefully he'll be busily and gainfully employed somewhere this summer in a pursuit that renders him unable to go . . . and that pursuit would likely not be in shouting distance to Manchester, TN. But knowing him, he'll try to figure out some way to game the whole deal so he can still do Bonnaroo. I like doing the tent thing. Mi esposa says she's over that and wants to do an RV. I just don't see it, but hell, I don't see a lot of things.

Side note, this from my Internet gig: Part of that gig, in addition to reviewing the work of about 100 other copyeditors, is answering the random questions that come in to a Help Desk from a cast of a few thousand writers of various levels of quality. I was dealing with one of the writers earlier this week and received this nice note:

---------

Bob,

You're awesome as always. I'd be lying if I said I'm thrilled when I'm told to take a different approach, but your advice is always specific and right on the mark so I am glad to have it.

Thanks again,

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Every so often, that craziness is worthwhile. As is this:

Another Happy (and Sorta New) Customer

For a book that was supposed to be a simple project, but I uncovered significant documentation issues at the proofreading stage, requiring some independent research to straighten everything out:

Bob:

Thank you for the work you've done on the Lincoln project. Your invoice is reasonable based on what you did. I am glad that you do a very thorough and professional job, but you are also reasonable with your fees. This has made it easier in terms of convincing [publisher's name here] to use your services on a much more consistent basis.

My Farewell Column to Bill Shipp

http://blogs.ajc.com/political-insider-jim-galloway/2009/05/19/bill-shipp-types-30/ (Beware the inevitable troll-like comments.)

http://www.blogfordemocracy.org/poli/2009/05/farewell-bill.html
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Bill Shipp came into my life personally in the last quarter of his career, and in the early to middle stages of mine. As a freelance copyeditor and proofreader working for almost all of Atlanta’s business and political periodicals in the mid-1990s, I received a call one day in 1997 from Tim Bentley, another great and unfortunately late-too-soon Georgia political journalist, saying he’d heard Bill Shipp needed an editor, and could he pass my name along?

Me? Work for Bill Shipp? Pinch me, I’m dreaming. Having lived in Atlanta since 1977, I was more than familiar with Mr. Shipp’s work. (And I called him “Mr. Shipp” for years before he invited me to call him “Bill.” I was just raised to talk to my elders that way, especially one as esteemed as he was, yet I know he didn’t stand on formality. That’s just how it went.)

So I’m sitting in the DeKalb County Public Library near Northlake one day, and my pager went off. I found a public telephone (remember those?) and dialed the number. Bill Shipp’s number.

“Bob, I heard about you. My editor just quit, and I need someone to read my columns and newsletter. I don’t want just someone to check grammar. I need someone who will tell me when I’m off-base and tear up my writing when it needs it. Can you do that for me?”

Pinch me.

Off we went. Via fax and e-mail. The very occasional phone conversation. For 12 years. I worked with him anywhere from two to four days a week, 15 to 60 minutes at a time. I believe I met him face to face exactly three times: twice very early on in the parking lot of Channel 5 when I was working on his book The Ape-Slayer and Other Snapshots and once with my wife Tere and his daughter Michelle about two or three years ago at a restaurant in Kennesaw.

My life for the last 12 years has been the steady drumbeat of Sundays and Thursdays, editing his columns before they were distributed to his syndicate. And Bill Shipp’s Georgia before it became Matt Towery’s property. And his columns for Georgia Trend. And the every-so-often special-occasion piece.

When I started using a laptop, I’d take it with me, mostly so I didn’t have to miss a column if I was traveling somewhere. If I didn’t get the column, I’d write to his assistants over the years, concerned that I’d missed something or, later, concerned about him.

Bill was a unique writer in that he had absolutely no fear of the editing process. Just the opposite. Some years ago, if I went for, say, 4 weeks without bleeding all over one of his columns — in some cases rewriting or trying in my own clumsy prose to say what I thought he was trying to say or even should have said — he’d call me up and give me a hard time.

“I’m not paying you just to pass over these columns. You need to tear them up more often than you have been. I know they need it.”

But they often didn’t. So what’s a poor editor to do, given good material?

Bill’s political leanings were hardly concealed. And in the days after the Republicans took over Georgia, his voice became more noticeable. Every once in a while, he’d pen some piece that seemed a little too moderate, too conciliatory. I’d email him and ask what was up? His response: “I’ve got to write one of those every so often so my newspaper editors don’t think I’m a communist.”

Then the email hits my account today that Bill is hanging it up. Effective immediately.

I want closure, a different kind anyway. I want a farewell column. I want the dean of Georgia’s journalists to give one last wave to the first rumblings of integration in Athens while he was a student, Billy Graham, Zell Miller, his dear departed son Ernie and wife Reny, Jimmy Carter, Ernest Vandiver, Tom Watson Brown, Lester Maddox, Romeo Richardson, the AJC, the Talmadges, Roy Barnes, Mike Bowers, Tom Murphy and a hundred others. Even Sonny Perdue. I want the perspective of history. I live in Virginia now, but Georgia still feels very much like home, and a big reason for that is Bill Shipp.

I’d have worked for him for free (although I don’t think I ever offered), but now I’m feeling a far greater loss than the monthly, promptly delivered check. He was no doubt my smallest regular client measured by dollars, but dollars are an entirely insufficient measure of the last 12 years.

Mr. Shipp — Bill — thanks for taking me along for the ride.

Author testimonial

"I am doing the final editing that Bob sent me today and I think he is just super in the way he treats my work." --from a romance novelist publishing her twelfth book, reporting to the designer/project manager

testimonial

From the managing editor to the author:

The indexer has completed his work. I have attached the indexes for your review. Up to now, the index of subjects is clearly the best index in any [book of this series].

From the author to the managing editor:

This looks very good after a first quick scan. I agree with the indexer’s strategy, so am fine with that. I’ll look through this tonight and send a word along to you. I can’t imagine, though, that I will have any issue with this. I am very impressed with it. One of my tests was to look for [a particular, and particularly obscure, technical term] to see if that was indexed, and it was. I think the indexer understands the book!

(Insert nervous cough from indexer here.)

Sweet words at a needed time

From a new client:

Dear Bob:

There is nothing like reading the corrections of a professional copyeditor to make you say, "Now why didn't I see that?" (Oh dear, is there a period at the end of the previous sentence?)

I thank you for finding things that I think we should have caught, as well as making modifications that required your knowledge and expertise.

Your suggestions for some rewriting are right on target, and I think the author will find them useful and worth following.

Thank you for doing a fine job quickly. I look forward to working with you in the future.

Sincerely,

xxx

testimonial

From an author for whom I edited a short piece:

Bob,
I'm thrilled. This is exactly what I want. . . .
Thanks so very much. You're an answer to prayer. I'm elated.

It's been a tough week on a number of accounts. The health report, following up on the last post, is not ultimately a bad one -- a case of diverticulitis brought on by a bacterial infection, for which I'm now on a pair of antibiotics -- but the good prognosis doesn't mean I've felt wonderful, although I'm getting better. And a few other ongoing matters, none of which I'm going to discuss here. But messages like the one above make things a whole lot better.

So, actually, thanks are in order to the author, and those are not words that often come from me.

been a while

Sorry for you regular reader(s) out there. I have not been so diligent about posting. More work to do than thoughts about it these days.

The indexing onslaught continues. Did come across this in a book about the downslide in Protestant seminaries in the U.S.:

Some kinds of activities cannot be made more efficient. It probably takes about as much preparation and effort to produce Hamlet or perform a Beethoven symphony in the 21st century as it did centuries ago. Activities that have at their core human effort, training, practice, attention and presence cannot be made much more efficient. No technological invention or social innovation makes it possible to reduce the level of input into such activities and still get the same level of output, so enterprises organized around such activities cannot be made more efficient without a reduction in quality.

Nicely put.

Received a book today from one of my clients that is trying to position itself to produce all the books in this one publisher's new series. Because they want to do a particularly good job on the book, the production manager said to me, "This was sent to our best proofreader." That felt nice. I've often said, although perhaps not here, that proofreading is the one what brung me, and unless I'm really tearing into something good, my proofreading skills rank above my other tasks, although judging from business these days, no one is finding much fault with copyediting or indexing either.

Well . . . perhaps not so fast. In the interest of full disclosure, I did have a publisher recently bounce an index back to the authors (not me) for additional work on the subentries because mine perhaps were too detailed and did not point readers in the correct overall direction. I take this as constructive and not totally unwelcome criticism, but I place part of the blame on two issues: (1) the use of run-in entries, and (2) the slavish adherence on the part of this publisher to have all entries and subentries begin with nouns.

I won't address the latter as much as the former here. To me, run-in entries are absolute hell to read and reduce the value of an index. Very difficult to pick out topics in a run-in index, as opposed to an index with tabbed entries. Sure, they save space, but at what cost? Hell, set the dedication on the copyright page, shorten the acknowledgments, and let the book dictate the index and its quality.

I have a 178-page book coming up where the publisher says, "No more than a four-page index." I can see this sometimes where a publisher wants not to convey the idea that a book is particularly dense, but when you actually have a dense book, detail is what the nonnovice reader will want.

Medical note: I've been semi-sidelined lately with odd gastrointestinal distress. Went to the doctor today, and will be having a CAT-scan tomorrow to check for diverticulitis or colitis. I am hoping it's neither, of course, but the doctor seemed to be somewhat concerned after pressing on my belly and also doing the one-finger wave Down There. First time I've had that, not counting the non-chemically-aided flexible sigmoidoscopy back in '96. Yow.

Actually working on an interesting book now about a private industrialist in Franco's Spain. Knowing nothing about Franco before picking up this book, I'm learning a lot, which of course I will forget in a day or two. Maybe the tiredness I feel these days is the effect of a constant spiking of my IQ while I'm reading/working and then the rebound effect back to the addled, slackjawed slug I am at rest. My lovely wife back in our early years used to not believe me when she'd ask me, "What are you thinking about?" and I'd say, "Nothing." Now I think she understands.

another happy customer

Bob, just wanted to take a moment to say that I am truly impressed. You are thorough, speedy, and a pleasure to work with. My personal thanks for all your hard work.

Cheryl

talking with publishers

Seems that everyone wanted to catch up today after the holiday weekend.

1. I told one of my best clients a provisional no, thanks, to an index, just because I have too many of them scheduled back to back at a certain point in the future, and of the three tasks I undertake, the one I cannot do repeatedly (like four or five in a row) is indexing. I need a break from that, moreso than proofing and editing.

2. Another very nice publisher of mine contacted me because the author whose book she was publishing was questioning the serial comma (sigh) and was totally confused by the Chicago treatment of numbers. Well, no surprise there, because the Chicago treatment of numbers is totally confusing if you don't (1) work with it every day or (2) have someone like me to explain its confusion in easy-to-understand and impossible-to-remember terms.

3. Professional services firm from a few posts back continues to be confused on copyediting/proofreading. They emailed and said they could shuttle me some chapters to proofread, and then the designer could work on the layout and design from those corrected chapters. No, I explained, first the layout and design, then the proofing. After encountering the aural brick wall, I asked if I could just be put in touch with the person who is actually composing the book. Meanwhile, more time is wasted on the front end and, oh yeah, their deadline seems to have moved closer on the back end.

4. Again, if you're following the story, the publisher I mentioned a few posts back who is helping put out the out-of-date business book asked for my opinion on the tome, which I gleefully shared, and with which he 100 percent agreed. Now there's a cause for fireworks.

Next on the desk is an actual very up-to-date business book. What a nice change.

But also today, amid incessant phone calls and emails, was indexing the chatty book on how the wealthy should give their money away now. Interesting thing has developed over the years. From repeatedly indexing books on very difficult subject matter, I find that indexing books that are more anecdotal or down-homey, for want of a better term, is a harder task. Easy book, tough index. One of my publishing cohorts said that one of my greatest talents was to write indexes for books that have very little true content and make them seem substantive. Whether that's a good thing, I don't know.

Long day, tired eyes, boring post. Well, maybe they all are.