John Green on Publishing as Collaborative

Something a lot of self publishers don't realize when they first think about going it a lone. I can get a few friends to help me edit and proof read. I can get a friend who is good with computer to design my cover. I can get a friend who knows how to format and upload by book for me. I can get a few friends to write positive reviews...

Friends, friends, friends, none of who are in the professional publishing industry.

Publishers really do offer a lot of support, freeing the author to write...

We must "strike down" the "insidious lie?" Wow. I'm hearing Les Mis in the background: Can you hear the people sing/Singing the song of angry men....

I don't personally know any purveyors of the insidious lie, that is, the Romantic vision of the artist struggling alone in his garret. Apart from Hollywood in certain moods. But that's just me.

Kind of a chicken and egg conundrum if viewed in a contentious fashion. Without the MS, there could be no book industry! Well, without the book industry, there could be no book! Me, I like to think of it more as a symbiotic system.

I've seen a lot of people (including many who have self-published) complain about "giving away" money to publishers for "doing nothing." A lot of people don't think a publisher deserves 80% of the money that comes from the book, and I think it's because a lot of people don't realize the work that goes into it and the team effort required to put out a great product.

p.s. I want to be John Green when I grow up.

Phaeal said:

I don't personally know any purveyors of the insidious lie, that is, the Romantic vision of the artist struggling alone in his garret. Apart from Hollywood in certain moods. But that's just me.

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I see it quite frequently.

Kind of a chicken and egg conundrum if viewed in a contentious fashion. Without the MS, there could be no book industry! Well, without the book industry, there could be no book! Me, I like to think of it more as a symbiotic system.

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It is, and that's kind of the message I got from the article, to be honest.

kaitie said:

I've seen a lot of people (including many who have self-published) complain about "giving away" money to publishers for "doing nothing." A lot of people don't think a publisher deserves 80% of the money that comes from the book, and I think it's because a lot of people don't realize the work that goes into it and the team effort required to put out a great product.

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A lot of people assume that the publisher gets to keep all of the income a book brings in after royalties are paid to the author. It drives me nuts.

p.s. I want to be John Green when I grow up.

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Me too. He's a wonderful writer.

Another important collaborator: The reader. A story doesn't exist until it forms in a reader's mind.

Everything in publishing is in support of that final transaction.

... part of the problem may be that many writers just
don't know all that's involved with the production of a book,
including everything from typesetting to editing.
If they did there'd be more appreciation and gratitude.
That'd be true of readers too.

Medievalist said:

I've been at more than one event when I was typesetting books where the author of a book I typeset was introduced to me, asked what I did, and when I said I typeset your book and made the ebook said author said "I hadn't been aware that they were allowing people like you in. This is supposed to be a professional gathering."

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"People like you"? Really?
I read those stories from writers who say that errors were introduced into their manuscripts during the publishing process, and I always wondered why they would think anyone would bother.
Hearing your story, I can see why a typesetter might go back and insert a few 'hilarious' typos into a manuscript.
I applaud the professionalism and strength of character that stopped you from wreaking all sorts of havoc on that author's next book.

Medievalist said:

I've been at more than one event when I was typesetting books where the author of a book I typeset was introduced to me, asked what I did, and when I said I typeset your book and made the ebook said author said "I hadn't been aware that they were allowing people like you in. This is supposed to be a professional gathering."

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Wow, what jerks. You'd think they'd appreciate the effort you put in. Maybe you should ask them if they want to do it themselves next time.

Medievalist said:

It's pretty common.

Lots of authors who dismiss production and edit staff as "functionaries" because they wrote the book we're able to buy without any help from anyone.

Talk to some production people or editorial sometime about it, and say you don't want them to name names.

I've been at more than one event when I was typesetting books where the author of a book I typeset was introduced to me, asked what I did, and when I said I typeset your book and made the ebook said author said "I hadn't been aware that they were allowing people like you in. This is supposed to be a professional gathering."

Plus there are even more assumptions of late that anybody can edit, or typeset, or write cover copy; that it's unskilled labor. Or that it's all in the software. You'll see that a lot in some of the Bewares threads on the part of new publishers who have had a publishing company startup.

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I was about to make a snide comment about Green being overdramatic but then I read your anecdote and now I'm just like "Wow." That author should have politely thanked you, NOT insulted you to your face! WTF?

Phaeal said:

I don't personally know any purveyors of the insidious lie, that is, the Romantic vision of the artist struggling alone in his garret.

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You maybe need to read a bit more deeply in this very forum.

caw

kaitie said:

I've seen a lot of people (including many who have self-published) complain about "giving away" money to publishers for "doing nothing." A lot of people don't think a publisher deserves 80% of the money that comes from the book, and I think it's because a lot of people don't realize the work that goes into it and the team effort required to put out a great product.

p.s. I want to be John Green when I grow up.

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This may be a bit off-topic, but your comment hit a button with me after a conversation I was part of with a university librarian. He mentioned that the university now spends 5x more on access to databases than on books (we're talking millions of dollars). He said he thinks "All information should be free."

It wasn't the time or place to bring up that it takes many people doing professional level work to produce all the "information" that he wants to be free. It was sad to me that a librarian would devalue the work of everyone who produces the work that is of such importance to every field of study and to further invention, scientific discovery and artistic creation.

Jordan Rosenfeld spoke about this very thing at our writer's club a few weeks back. She has been traditionally published but has formed a publishing collaborative with other authors. She stressed that each person in the collaboration brings a different skill set to the picture, such as marketing, editing, etc. I think it sounds great.

My agent is one of those who works with an author in an editorial sense as well - and he is worth his weight in gold. I had taken my book as far as I could on my own, but his feedback was like this lightbulb moment. Not that I hadn't gotten any feedback before - but he saw exactly what I was trying to do, where I was going with the manuscript, and helped me fine-tune it until it shone.

frimble3 said:

I read those stories from writers who say that errors were introduced into their manuscripts during the publishing process, and I always wondered why they would think anyone would bother.

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I wondered the same thing before I went though the copy editing process. Now I totally get how errors sneak in here and there... not intentionally, but accidentally. Going back and forth over commas and semi-colons and a particular sentence structure... it's like ten little tiny details per page that at least two people have to "okay," and when you're doing this all in the document... it gets confusing and messy.

frimble3 said:

I read those stories from writers who say that errors were introduced into their manuscripts during the publishing process, and I always wondered why they would think anyone would bother.

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It's not a matter of 'bothering' to add mistakes. They just happen. That's why authors review the galleys. And mistakes can crop up even after that.

For example, there's a typo in my first published novel that wasn't in the original manuscript, nor in the edits, nor in the galleys. But there it is (an 's' added to a verb making it singular with a plural noun) in the published book. How and why the hell it got there, not even my editor knows.

For another example, a bestselling author had a book come out with a slash in the middle of a word in the very first line of the book, like th/is. Obviously that wasn't in the original manuscript, any of the edits, or any the galleys. This same author had a previous book for which (probably) the wrong file was sent to the printer. Errors in the published book were ones that had been corrected during the editing process.

Now don't get me wrong: I don't say this isn't to criticise typesetters! When I was a reporter on my high school newspaper, my best buddy on the newspaper staff was the typesetter, and I'm still in awe of her and her work lo these (mumble) years later. To this day, I adore anyone who makes my work better, regardless of the job they do.

It's just to say that shit does indeed sometimes just happen.

I also think that the horror stories of massive errors (as opposed to small ones, such as my case) being introduced by typesetters have three sources: 1) exaggeration, 2) myth, and 3) micro- and vanity presses run by people who don't know what the hell they're doing.

In case #3, sometimes unskilled editors bollocks things up (there are plenty of stories about typos that weren't in the orignal manuscripts being added to PublishAmerica books), and other times I'm fairly certain that the errors were always there but the author didn't see them until they saw the book in print.

I'm with John Green. Publishing greats books is a collaborative job.

Self publishers collaborate too, you know. We don't all rely on our 'friends'.

Mate, you've never tried to sell a book to a family member. Hard sell indeed.

Some of us choose to publish our books using a different method. Who are we to criticise anything but the finished product? I do think he's being a bit dramatic but I agree with some of it. Plus he gets pretty sweary and comes across as quite aggressive: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/05/john-green-self-publishing_n_3390143.html?ir=Books which is a shame.

sarahdalton said:

Self publishers collaborate too, you know. We don't all rely on our 'friends'.

Mate, you've never tried to sell a book to a family member. Hard sell indeed.

Some of us choose to publish our books using a different method. Who are we to criticise anything but the finished product? I do think he's being a bit dramatic but I agree with some of it. Plus he gets pretty sweary and comes across as quite aggressive: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/05/john-green-self-publishing_n_3390143.html?ir=Books which is a shame.

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Because self-publishers aren't dramatic? They are all about the kittens and don't spread utter nonsense about the publishing industry? The real shame is trying to convince readers the industry over price books for doing next to nothing. Even with my small press books, there was team of people involved in getting them to galley stage. No to mention the ongoing work at the publisher behind the scenes before and since that I don't have to think about, like website maintenance, presence at fairs, and legal among other things.

I didn't find him aggressive. I found him passionate regarding the falsehoods he's used to promote. It's about time people in the industry started to get aggressive and speaking out about what's really involved in getting from idea to book in a readers hand.

Terie said:

This same author had a previous book for which (probably) the wrong file was sent to the printer. Errors in the published book were ones that had been corrected during the editing process.

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We caught this juuuuust before it happened with one of mine. Thankfully I'm also the illustrator (MG fiction, hybrid chapter/comic) and they were asking where some of the illustrations were. I had actually started doing some of them before I stopped and went "Waaaaaaaiiit a minute....we cut those! I couldn't have just forgotten THAT many!" So we tracked it down, thankfully, to someone having sent the wrong version to copyediting, and they re-copyedited it in record time.

The person I felt really bad for was the layout person, though, who had to redo all the layouts. Ouch.

(With a small press and my second comic book, we didn't catch it, and there is now an errata printing missing a page. We had all read it so many times that we literally just filled in the mental holes. Oof.)

Stuff happens. Frankly, given how many books get published, I'm amazed at how little DOES slip through!

Am I the only person who tends to enjoy finding an error? It's almost like finding a little needle in a haystack sort of treasure.

Medievalist said:

Talk to some production people or editorial sometime about it, and say you don't want them to name names.

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Ah, but you see, I WOULD want them to name names, so I could avoid the snotty authors in future.

To me, the idea of publishing as a collaborative enterprise is self-evident. Alas, I should know by now that the human capacity for ignoring the self-evident is boundless.

Still, do the snots really outnumber those who appreciate their fellows in the process? Admittedly, one snot can weigh as much in the scales of memory as ten nonsnots or two-three sweethearts.