Beyond the Elements of Style

What is Layout? A Brief History

So here’s the first in my series of posts about the process of manuscript preparation. Layout is not the first step in the process—actually, it’s pretty much near the end—but I wanted to begin with it because so many new authors seem to think that layout is part of the editing process.

It isn’t.

Here to tell us as much as you’ll ever want to know about the history of layout is my friend and colleague, Dick Margulis, whose blog is one of the best on the internet.

Here’s what he has to say about the history of layout:

Let’s look at the history of printing and publishing a bit. Initially, publishers were printers (or printers were publishers–however you prefer to view it). There was a brief period of turmoil in the fifteenth century when at least a couple of publishers entered into a commercial venture with monastic scriptoria to produce manuscripts in competition with these newfangled printing establishments. It was a snob appeal ploy (you’re too good for that cheap mechanical stuff), but eventually it gave way.

In any case, the printers took responsibility for finding manuscripts they wanted to reproduce, designing and casting the alphabets for them, composing the type, proofreading, printing, and in some cases binding (although that was often done elsewhere, on commission, after the book was sold).

Move forward a few centuries to the American Colonies (Chicago would probably lowercase colonies, wouldn’t they? Too bad.) You’ve been to Williamsburg or Sturbridge or at least seen the Mr. Rogers version, and you know the situation at that stage. Printers are doing the occasional book, but mostly they’re doing job work. The customer comes in with a rough draft. The printer selects fonts and does the layout. The customer gets a chance to look at a proof after the printer makes his own corrections. The job is printed. Books, though, were still published by printers and so it was printers who controlled both page design and editing.

However, compositors were a highly regarded lot. They were among the most respected of craftspeople because of their literacy and their knowledge of the arcane bits of punctuation and grammar. They remained high status workers until the demise of mechanical typesetting and the introduction of desktop publishing in the 1980s.

I think we were probably well into the nineteenth century before authors had enough clout to complain to publishers about the changes made by printers, who by then had evolved into separate operations if not entirely separate companies in all cases. However, layout–for books as well as for job work–was still in the hands of printers and standards were rapidly devolving until, by the end of the nineteenth century, whatever the editorial quality may have been, typography was at its historical nadir. Apparently NOBODY was concerned with layout. Composition was strictly an economic activity, done by the lowest bidder regardless of how well respected its practitioners may have been.

Then along came William Morris in England and the Arts & Crafts movement. Suddenly some artists were taking a serious look at the possibilities for a beautiful printed page, harking back to the Medieval manuscripts and the incunabula. This led to a flowering of the arts of type design and, simultaneously, typography and layout, both in England and the US. This movement crossed over from book design to advertising design and the two fields informed each other in rich ways up to the present.

So I’d say it was the period from about 1896 to 1940 over which publishers took layout decisions away from printers and handed them explicitly to designers (earlier for high-prestige publishers, later in that range for bottom feeders). Prior to that, if editors held any sway over compositors in terms of layout, it was minimal beyond saying how many pages the book was supposed to end up.

Next week I’ll continue “What is Layout?” with some more modern examples and definitions, but I wanted to start you off with Dick’s words. Context is, after all, everything; and modern layout did not spring fully grown from the head of Zeus. Understanding where processes came from is essential to understanding those processes, so do bear with me. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

What Do I Need?

What does this manuscript need?

I can’t tell you how often I receive queries that say, “This only needs proofreading,” and yet clearly requires a heavy copyedit, or developmental editing, or character development, or even layout help. Sometimes it’s the person querying who isn’t aware of, shall we say, his or her own limitations. Often it’s just about not understanding the different processes that take place when a manuscript is moving toward publication. But, in any case, confusion often ensues.

Help is here! Today I’m starting a series that will look at what we mean by copyediting, line editing, layout, developmental editing, formatting, and the like. So mark these pages and check back and see whether your questions about process are answered. You’ll finally find out what you need! And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Kirkus Lives Again!

Kirkus Reviews, which describes itself as posting “over 500 pre-publication book reviews every month in multiple genres,” and was (to our horror) shut down in December by the Nielson Company, has been resurrected! Oh, frabjus joy!

Kirkus’s new owner is Herb Simon, “the owner of the Indiana Pacers, the NBA team, and chairman emeritus of Simon Property Group, a shopping mall developer,” according to the New York Times. Plans are for Kirkus to continue to be published “as a print magazine while beefing up its digital offerings.”

“With the growth of e-books and e-reading devices, no one can really see the future of publishing. But turmoil like this creates opportunities,” said Simon in the NYT article. “At a time when even the definition of a book is changing, my love of books makes me want to be part of the solution for the book publishing industry.”

Simon is apparently just as interested in publishing as he is in sports: he is already the owner of an independent bookseller (and we love independent booksellers!).

So there is hope in these changing times, and your next book in prepublication may yet see the light of day in the new and possibly improved Kirkus Reviews. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

And Yet More on Blogging: RSS Feeds

I’ve been writing recently about a number of ways to market your books, and I received an email from one of my readers asking what an RSS feed is.

A lot of people use RSS to subscribe to blogs. Here’s the quick-and-dirty Wikipedia take on it. Instead of having to remember to visit a blog every now and then to see what’s new there (and who can remember?), you can use an RSS reader. It will notify you when there’s a new listing.

Both the Mozilla Firefox browser and the Mozilla Thunderbird mail and news client have RSS tools, as do many other browsers. I use Safari, and the blogs I subscribe to just show up in a blogs folder, looking very much like a mail folder. Each blog is its own subfolder, and the blog article titles show up like email messages.

Try subscribing to blogs that you read, and you’ll both save time and get more information. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Hope for Authors?

Does Apple’s new iPad represent hope for authors?

Okay, yeah, so I’m a Mac girl, and of course my cult believes that the world will be saved by the Macintosh. But a new product offering hope to those of us who spend our days sitting in a room and writing?

Bear with me for a moment here. Let me take you back to the beginning of the century, when record labels suddenly realized that musicians could make a perfectly good living without them. Creation and recording? Online. Distribution? Online. Marketing? Online. And while the music consumer in me loved the change (iTunes rocks, let’s face it), the author in me said, hey, wait … at least there’s still an income stream here for musicians. The song itself isn’t the product: the concerts, the t-shirts, those have become the products. Musicians can thumb their noses at the establishment and still pay the rent. But what about authors? Come on, who’s going to spend $75 for a favorite author’s face on a sweatshirt? Or pay $150 to go to a reading?

Ain’t going to happen.

So along with other writers I’ve been watching events unfold with some trepidation. And while I will admit to owning a Kindle and having become addicted to the ease of download and portability, I also have concern about the monolithic control of Amazon. So I was interested in this article by Eliot Van Buskirk in Wired magazine (and thanks to my friend Pete Tedlie for turning me on to the article!):

Wired.com’s Brian Chen and Dylan Tweney were right about Apple launching a book store to complement the iPad. The new iBook store will work pretty much the same as iTunes, functioning as one of 12 new apps that come installed on every tablet, and allowing users to choose books from a growing catalog. People who may never have contemplated actually buying an e-book before might consider it, now that it’s something they can do on their shiny new tablet. Authors and book publishers will have a larger market to pitch to, and they could take more risks on lower-selling authors, given the low cost of distributing e-books.

Still, books have not fared well during the growth of other electronic media and will face the same stiff competition on the iPad that they face elsewhere. Either way, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos should feel a bit tense today facing new competition from an extensible device that also does e-books and can be had for less than the price of a DX Kindle.

I was able to perceive some hope there. I have an acquaintance who makes a very nice living, thank you very much, exclusively writing ebooks. Right now the only categories that afford that kind of income are erotica and romance, but where they lead others may follow.

And anytime more people have books accessible to them, it’s a Good Thing. Consider the possibilities of the future, and then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

The London Book Fair

Full disclosure first: I’m offering this as a resource, but have never myself attended this particular show, so can’t comment first-hand on its usefulness.

But FYI, the London Book Fair will be taking place this spring from the 19th to the 21st of April, 2010.

The London Book Fair is one of the global marketplaces for rights negotiation and the sale and distribution of content across print, audio, TV, film and digital channels. It’s not as large or as famous as the Frankfort one, but well worth taking note of. As the advertisements say,

Even in the digital age, the power of meeting face-to-face cannot be underestimated. Wherever in the world you want to do business, you can do so much more, at The London Book Fair.

Take a look at what’s going on—it’s a lovely time to visit England! And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Poets and Writers Grants Submission Calendar

Did you know that you can access grant and contest submission information (deadlines, requirements, fees, etc.) for many literary journals online, thanks to Poets and Writers magazine?

The submission calendar is well worth checking on a regular basis: you may have some old unpublished piece that just fits in perfectly — or be inspired to write something new! Either way, keeping up with submission information will keep you … beyond the elements of style!

Creative Marketing Ideas

It’s almost 2010, and still I find myself telling bewildered would-be authors that it’s not enough for them to say that they’ll participate in a potential publisher’s promotion plan for their books. That may have worked in the ’50s, I don’t know—I wasn’t writing and publishing then. But it hasn’t worked for some time, and the sooner you get your head wrapped around that concept, the closer you’ll be to selling your book.

Any book proposal, fiction or nonfiction, must include a marketing plan, and the more specific it is, the better. Publishers don’t want to hear that you’ll go along with their ideas, they want to know that you’ll be constantly coming up with ideas of your own, and following through on them. A website. An email list to which you belong. Flyers. Lectures. Giveaways. SEO. Social media. Direct mail. Local cable broadcasts. The list is limited only by your imagination.

And to help that imagination, enter a new blog by PR expert Rebecca Kellogg, Creative Marketing Campaigns. It’s still in its infancy, so don’t expect a plethora of ideas; but I’ve listened to Rebecca’s ideas for some time and I’m excited about the potential for this blog. Try it and see what you think!

An older post (but still relevant) that I think is particularly useful about creative book marketing is called, oddly enough, Creative Book Marketing, and is well worth the read.

If you want a little humor with your research on book marketing, check out the idea of book trailers here.

In any case, remember that it’s no longer up to you to simply write the best book you can. You have to market, market, market. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Calling Poets and Fiction Writers!

Okay, so it’s been a while since I posted to my blog. Bear with me: my personal life has been in an upheaval (to put it mildly) but it seems that I’m getting it back on track, so I’m back to my blog now as well!

Today I want to point all poets and short fiction writers to a tremendous web resource of which you might not be aware. Duotrope lists an amazing amount of information about an amazing number of publications, both print and online, that are open to submissions. It tells you about reading periods, whether simultaneous submissions or reprints are accepted, the average response time, genres, comments … in short, just about anything you might want to know about the publication.

Duotrope also keeps track of the frequent changes in the literary world: which publications have folded, which aren’t accepting submissions, which new ones have appeared, etc. And you can have all of that information sent to your inbox for free by subscribing to either the poetry or the fiction edition of the digest here.

So check it out! And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

More on POD, self-publishing, etc.

Since I wrote my post a couple of days ago, I’ve been pointed to some interesting articles and helpful resources on the subject, a couple of which I’d like to share with you here.

Yesterday’s New York Times carried this article, Self-Publishers Flourish as Writers Pay The Tab. (Misusing in the process several terms as author Motoko Rich refers to “self-publishers”—in fact, the article is referring to subsidy presses—and speaking of iUniverse as a “print-on-demand” company. One sees the writing on the wall: once the Times has misused a term, it’s hard to regain accuracy!)

An older article that appeared in Information Week in 1999 spoke to the hopes and plans surrounding the print-on-demand technology. In Barnes and Noble, IBM to Develop Electronic Books, analyst Tischelle George discusses another use of the technology: a kiosk in every bookshop that will in fact print a book immediately and on-demand so that every book on the planet is available, all the time. This is a truly breathtaking use of the technology that, sadly, has not come to pass; and now we’re stuck with the term referring to authors willing to pay to have their books (at best) enter into public discourse or (at worse) gather dust on Aunt Edna’s bookshelf.

This past weekend I was sitting in the green room of a theatre, waiting for a play I’d written to go onstage, and was reading to pass the time. One of the actors looked at me in surprise and asked, “What’s that?

“A Kindle,” I responded. He continued to look baffled, so I expanded: “It’s an ebook reader.”

The actor shook his head. “I have no idea,” he said, “what any of that means!”

Soon he will; soon just about everybody will, as electronic books are the literary technology most likely to survive hard economic times and downturns in reading rates. I’m probably a lone voice crying in the wilderness here, but I believe that the way we name and communicate about these various ways of making books available to the public matters.

Think about what you want to communicate, and how you want to communicate it, so that you too can be … beyond the lements of style!