Holy Grail According to Max
10:33 PM
- if you're having lunch with Mort Janklow, where should you take him?
- what's a good place to get collar stays (the brass ones)?
- when you take a nap in the middle of the day, is it best to A) close your office door, or B) turn to face the window and pretend to be reading a manuscript?
-- that every young turk in publishing (whether or not your "Turkishness" was officially acknowledged recently by PW) needs answers to. I've sent out any number of similar email queries to my colleagues in publishing over the last several months, and have received replies to virtually none of them--until very recently. Based on the tone of some of these recent replies, it appears that I've reached a tipping point of sorts--that is, I've officially become a nuisance (or worse). One of the best & coolest editors in town brushed aside my question and referred obliquely to
"people who pretend to know something about publishing but in fact do not." [Could he mean me?]Another top editor went into somewhat greater detail.
To the first comment, I say, guilty as charged: I don't know jack; how I got as far as I have in this business is anybody's guess; and I'm scrambling now to see if I can learn a few things before it's too late."Max, I saw Michael Cader’s column vouching for your being a good guy, etc. I have to say, though, that I don’t really understand why any editor would want to give away – beyond his own firm – knowledge capital he or she has amassed over the course of a career. It is effort expended without tangible return. I understand that you see this enterprise as working in everybody’s favor, and maybe I’m shortsighted for not “getting it,” but it seems to me that the best can be hoped for is that somewhere accessible on line there’ll be a sort of “best practices compendium” for everyone to access – and I wonder if most houses don’t in fact already create something tantamount to that by pooling staffers’ ideas."
But this second comment? If only!
The "best practices compendium" is precisely what I've been looking for (call it the Holy Grail According to Max)--a database full of good ideas; it's the reason, in fact, I started this blog, in hopes of stumbling across material worthy to be included therein... We used to have such a compendium here (where I work), but its contents have been badly pilferred... Remember the library's copy of the 1977 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue that you snuck into some behind-the-stacks cubby, only to discover that the pictures themselves had already been ripped from the binding? Well, it's like that: there's a folder here marked "best practices compendium," but the only things it contains are a 10-year old Esquire article on "Publishing's White-Hot Center," a yellowed pamphlet from 1962 that instructs "gentlemen" on the art of tying a bow-tie, and an advertisement for a cutting-edge personal computer called the TRS-80.
A "best practices compendium"--just think of it. Question is, do any publishers exist today that actually have/make time to pool the ideas of their employees, to brainstorm in hopes of coming up with fresh approaches to the same old problems?
I suspect there are a lot of us inclined to thing that the better question is, What's the point anyway? Is a bright baker's dozen gathered around a conference-room table going to come up with a practical & implementable alternative to virtually unlimited bookseller returns? to the centralization of all aspects of our industry? to the collapse of the mass market business? to the virtual disappearance of serious literary publishing by mainstream presses?
Well, pessimism be damned. It's time for me to make my first big acquisition of 2005--so if anybody's got a "best practices compendium" less than five years past its expiration date, I'm buying. And let's move quickly--I'm in the mood for a pre-empt...
6 comments:
Max, your desire for book of best practices reminds me that 30 years ago I read a book by a retired English policeman, in which he pointed out that even the humblest copper, when he leaves the force after 30 or 40 years, has accumulated a vast amount of useful knowledge. Yet all too often that knowledge is lost; it departs with him. The policeman author suggested that all retiring coppers should therefore be persuaded to put pen to paper, and pass on what they had learnt. Do you think that ever happened?
Ah Max darlin', the problem with the Holy Grail According to Max is that the people who could most benefit from it will never be convinced of its wisdom. Those people are always looking for the trick, the fix, the gimmick.
For instance, here's a pearl of wisdom--for writers not editors--write a good book. Write the best damn book you are capable of writing. Then re-write and re-write until it's better than you ever believed it could be. Use the Funk & Wagnalls instead of spellcheck on the computer. Don't leave plot holes someone could drive a Winnebago through. Don't leave plot holes at all. Create characters in shades of gray instead of black and white cardboard. Get rid of the tics and the quirks. Tell a story as though your life depended on it, as though you has to entertain some bored, cranky guy in the middle of a desert every night.
Do you know how many writers don't do that? Yeah, I guess you probably do. So if you trip over the Holy Grail of Publishing, or wake up some morning and find it lying at the foot of your bed instead of a horse's head, you'll still have the gigantic task of convincing people to do the work, to practice the "best practises."
On the other hand, as you're searching for the Grail you do look damn cute in the monk's robe.
D.R.
OK. Strongly-worded opinion from one of the Young Turks (Max, can you tell me when I can shed the label?). "I don’t really understand why any editor would want to give away – beyond his own firm – knowledge capital he or she has amassed over the course of a career. It is effort expended without tangible return." Ugh. Ugh. A couple of times I've been at industry panel discussions and habe heard again and again (most notably Dominique Raccah from Sourcebooks) that the book business isn't growing, so the only way for an independent publisher to grow is take market share away from someone else. More ugh. It is precisely attitudes like these that are responsible for the less-than-the-rate-of-nflation growth in the book business. It is NOT a zero sum game. Someone in publishing made money by publishing Jim Surowiecki's WISDOM OF THE CROWDS, maybe we can all make some money if we actually read it and learn from it. failing that, there's always the wisdom of the cliches: a rising tide lifts all boats. Then, if we continue to ignore that one, we can all be the latest installment in case studies of the Tragedy of the Commons.
Richard Nash
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