Tag Archives: publishing

Freelancers versus Editors in the Digital/Print Age

Freelance journalist Nate Thayer’s blog post about his experience with The Atlantic has made some waves.

In short, Thayer was pretty annoyed when Olga Khazan, an Atlantic editor, asked him to re-write a piece published elsewhere for The Atlantic — for free. Thayer reproduced their email exchange, which included him reminding her that “exposure” does not pay any bills:

I am a professional journalist who has made my living by writing for 25 years and am not in the habit of giving my services for free to for profit media outlets so they can make money by using my work and efforts by removing my ability to pay my bills and feed my children. I know several people who write for the Atlantic who of course get paid. I appreciate your interest, but, while I respect the Atlantic, and have several friends who write for it, I have bills to pay and cannot expect to do so by giving my work away for free to a for profit company so they can make money off of my efforts.

Then a more senior editor, Alexis Madrigal, got involved, feeling Thayer’s pain but explaining how, gosh, publishing is in a tough spot and he just doesn’t have any budget for freelancers, even as he wanders the halls and ponders the magazine’s past glories

If I open up one of our musty tomes at the office, I can get sucked in for an hour just looking at the ads, or marveling at the eloquence of W.E.B. DuBois. When I look back at old Ta-Nehisi posts or see Fallows in the halls, I can get emotional. I was watching Ken Burns’ National Parks documentary, and he notes, offhandedly, how stories that ran in our magazine helped preserve Yosemite for future generations.

Commenters saw it differently:

I just love reading lengthy self-justifications from people who have full-time jobs taking other people’s work for free.

And

Congratulations: you’ve made your magazine’s arrogant, sorry-not-sorry half-apology and made it into a full out non-apology. The amazing thing is that you think you’re articulating a defense of the profound self-worship of The Atlantic, when actually, you’re engaging in it.

A lot of the comments does engage the money issue in intelligent ways, so if you are trying to write for money, it’s worth reading them.

Publisher Drops Suits Against Blogging Librarian

A  university librarian who described Edwin Mellen Press on his blog as “dubious” and as offering “second-class scholarship” was sued in turn by the press, but the lawsuit has now been dropped.

The lawsuits inspired scholars from around North America to rally behind Askey. Created by Martha Reineke, a professor of religion at the University of Northern Iowa, a petition demanding EMP to drop its lawsuits had garnered more than 3,100 names as of Monday morning.

EMP told CBC Hamilton on Monday that it “has discontinued the court case against McMaster University and Dale Askey.”

In a statement, the company added: “financial pressure of the social media campaign and press on authors is severe. EMP is a small company. Therefore [it] must choose to focus its resources on its business and serving its authors.”

The key words appear to have been “social media campaign.” In the relatively small world of academic publishing, it got results.

I notice that Mellen’s website describes them as a “non-subsidy academic publisher.” That was not always my impression, but OK. Another page, however, states “The Edwin Mellen Press refuses to write, rewrite, or revise any author’s text.” Not hiring copy editors saves money!

UPDATE: See comments.

Wicca, Recategorized by Librarians, Now by Booksellers as Well

In 2007, the  news was that books on Wicca were re-categorized by the Library of Congress from BF (psychology, abnormal) to  BP 600, a sort of catch-all for “other beliefs and movements.” A new Dewey Decimal number was assigned as well, for libraries using that system.

Now the change is on the retail side. As Elysia Gallo blogs at Llewellyn, some Pagan books are being re-categorized for retailers as well.

So here’s the news – Wicca, in the eyes of the book selling industry, is now a religion. It crossed over from OCC026000 Body, Mind & Spirit / Wicca and Witchcraft, to two separate BISAC codes. One remains in the occult section – OCC026000 is now simply Body, Mind & Spirit / Witchcraft. But Wicca itself is now REL118000, or Religion / Wicca.

Let’s not even stop to think about what a headache it will be for me to decide whether any given book should go into the occult “Witchcraft” end of things or the religious “Wicca” end of things. Sometimes this distinction is made crystal clear by its author or its content, but much more often it’s a very blurry line. No, instead let’s allow that to just sink in for a moment. Imagine going in to your local bookstore chain (because this will probably not change how metaphysical stores or libraries operate) and, instead of heading to the New Age section (or whatever your local store calls it), you head to the Religion section. There, next to shelves of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim books, you will find your Wicca books. Strange feeling, isn’t it?

But the change may confuse some book-buyers, she continues.

 

Copy Editors Killed in Chicago Manual-AP Violence

“At this time we have reason to believe the killings were gang-related and carried out by adherents of both the AP and Chicago styles, part of a vicious, bloody feud to establish control over the grammar and usage guidelines governing American English,” said FBI spokesman Paul Holstein, showing reporters graffiti tags in which the word “anti-social” had been corrected to read “antisocial.”

Chicago rulez. We got two documentation styles, an’ we know de difference tween a hyphen and an en-dash. Dey ain’t got shit.

Textbook Prices Outpace Inflation

I found this graph at the College Insurrection blog, a project of law professor William Jacobson.

When I first started university teaching, I never bothered to wander through the bookstore and see what the books that I assigned actually cost. Once I did, I was suitably shocked.

After I had taught a little more, I began to realize that, for instance, the differences between the “fourth edition” and the “fifth edition” were not exactly substantive.  They mainly existed to damage the used-textbook business, I think.

The Equinox Pagan Studies Series Continues

As I mentioned in November, the Equinox Series in Historic and Contemporary Paganism will continue, even though two books in the series will be published by Acumen, the result of the two firms’ merger and then de-merger. These are the titles:

1. Kaarina Aitamurto and Scott Simpson, eds. Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Central and Eastern Europe.

2. Donna Weston and Andy Bennett, eds., Pop Pagans: Pagans and Popular Music.

Both are well worth reading. Unfortunately, the Central and Eastern European volume will be available only in high-priced hardback at first—one of the problems that my co-editor, Nikki Bado, and I had with Acumen’s approach.

So during 2013 we will be interested in seeing new proposals for the series.

The Knife Goes In, But You Don’t Feel It

Never underestimate the ability of senior academics to dismiss a book with what sound like words of praise.

Today’s example, Wendy Doniger’s (leading scholar of history of religion, particularly in India) blurb on a new book called The Origins of the World’s Mythologies.

“Not since Frazer’s Golden Bough, has anyone achieved such a grand synthesis of world mythology. Boldly swimming upstream against the present scholarly emphasis on difference and context, Witzel assembles massive evidence for a single, prehistoric, Ur-mythology. An astonishing book”

–Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago and author of The Woman Who Pretended to Be Who She Was

In other words, I think she is saying that it follows a solipsistic (“swimming upstream”) and out-of-date methodology (the Golden Bough reference), and what astonishes her is that Oxford actually published it.

Fields Books to Close on Polk Street and Move Online

The last time that I visited Fields Book Store, San Francisco’s long-time esoteric bookshop (older than the Golden Gate Bridge), was the last time that I was in the city. I can’t remember what I bought — something — and I spent a while skimming the last volume of Mircea Eliade’s journals.

Then I heard that it was closing, which was sad. But it will continue online after January 2013, says owner David Wiegleb:

So, we’ll need to pass the baton of “San Francisco’s oldest brick-and-mortar bookstore” to someone else, as it was passed to us. I think it goes next to that beatnik youngster over in North Beach, City Lights, founded in 1953 — certainly one of San Francisco’s treasures. While we hope that Fields can continue to serve you on our website for many years to come, I urge you to also support your local brick and mortar stores as well. Each time we lose one, we lose a bit more of the fabric and texture of our cities and towns. The low prices of the mega-stores — real and virtual — have a very high cost. Make your purchases consciously whenever you can.

Settling Publishing Issues at the AAR

Trudging through McCormick Place

To complete your quest, you need an elf, a dwarf, a hobbit …

I am sleeping a lot these days, recovering from this year’s American Academy of Religion meeting, held in Chicago’s monstrous McCormick Place convention center. Beware of any architect who designates parts of buildings as a “grand concourse.” That translates as “huge useless spaces that you have to walk back and forth through to get to the important stuff.”

This was the most “businesslike” of all AAR meetings that I have attended. I barely even saw the book exhibit—quite a change from years when I examined every publisher’s booth carefully (unless it was something like IVP or Zondervan) because I had no one to talk to. Now I have to write to all sorts of people with whom I should have liked to have a fuller conversation.

Important publishing news in Pagan studies and Western esotericism: the merger (which I had not discussed) here between Equinox Publishing and Acumen.

Now they are de-merged. It feels like a divorce, with the authors and series editors as the minor children who are assigned to the custody of one parent or the other.

As part of the agreement, certain religious-studies books that were already in production, including one that I spent all spring and summer on copyediting and typesetting, have been assigned to Acumen.

But a number of series editors — including Nikki Bado and me for the series originally called Equinox Studies in Historical and Contemporary Paganism — are moving their series back to Equinox as originally contracted. It’s as though the kid said, “No, I want to go live with Mom. And I will.”

As for The Pomegranate, the editorial pipeline is finally moving, and I anticipate another issue coming out soon. That has been on my mind a lot.

After being in editorial limbo for a few weeks, it was good to get these issues straightened out.

“The 10 Most Difficult Books”

If you like reading lists, here is one from Publishers Weekly.

I confess to having read none of them, although I did manage Gravity’s Rainbow, one of the runners-up — twice!