Amy Einhorn on the Author/Editor Relationship: “Marriage, Not Dating”

VP, Publisher, & Editor Amy Einhorn and author Lyndsay Faye discuss the collaborative journey from first draft to final

During the intense six weeks of The NYU Summer Publishing Institute (SPI), we’ve listened to many speakers, panel discussions and attended countless workshops, but we’ve never sat in on a conversation between an editor and her author. Not until the great Amy Einhorn, Publisher and Vice President of Amy Einhorn Books, and Lyndsay Faye, author of The Gods of Gotham, appeared together on one of the final days of SPI to enlighten us about the unique symbiosis between an author and an editor.

“It’s a team effort. What I say to my authors is: ‘These are all suggestions’,” said Einhorn to illustrate the collaborative, not imperative, way to propose changes to an author. And some authors may be amazed with how much freedom they have: “Authors who are also journalists are often surprised [when going through the book editing process] at how much autonomy they have; they are used to far heavier editing,” revealed Einhorn.

Faye agreed and praised the subtle work of book editors whose job is to gently help authors improve their work and provide moral support during the sometimes long, and rarely easy, path to the shelves. In fact, when asked about self publishing, Faye noted the importance of the editing process in improving a literary work. “I have nothing against self-publishing… if you can find your audience on your own [without the help of a mainstream publisher], it’s bloody fantastic! Still, you have to have a stone cold eye about your own work. You need outside feedback. It can work without it, but you need to be extremely focused,” she summarized.

Even if authors have great control over their manuscripts, a good editor is one who is committed and engaged: “When publishing, you’re getting married, not dating. It’s a long, interactive relationship for years and years,” said Einhorn.

Students work together to create book publishing imprints

As SPI draws to a close, we have come to realize that this statement describes not just the relationship between an author and editor, but among the members of the entire publishing team. This has been emphasized repeatedly throughout SPI because publishing at its very heart is a team business. While making books may begin with a solitary author like Faye, the combined efforts of dozens leads to a successful final project that reaches and engages an audience.

Collaboration was a buzzword as well in our final SPI projects. By working on intensive group projects, meeting with human resources directors to revamp our resumes, attending Book Expo America, networking with alumni, visiting bookstores, magazine and book publishing companies, and meeting with the 250 (!) publishing professionals who came to share their expertise with us, the 116 of us truly learned that publishing is about content just as much as it is about the people who work to create, perfect, and distribute content. As we finish the program and reflect on all that we have learned, it is with great enthusiasm that we look forward to a stable marriage with this industry we love so much.

by Laura Sangrà Herrero

Book Expo America: Rock Concert for Book Lovers

SPI students Vivian Roberson and Chloe Goodhart at BEA

After the first three days of classes, NYU’s Summer Publishing Institute (SPI) students experienced a change of pace from the classroom when they attended Book Expo America (BEA) at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. The conference center was transformed into a huge mall where every “store” featured the same thing: books. Even better for the students, the big books for fall were not only prominently displayed, but in some cases given away as advance reading copies.

Penguin Media Suite: High-Tech and Trendy

Penguin CEO David Shanks with M.S. in Publishing students

Podcasts. Audiobooks. Videos. Apps. Digital media has fast become an integral part of book marketing strategies, and it keeps growing in importance. So what’s a leading publisher to do? Last week students in the M.S. in Publishing: Digital and Print Media program at NYU’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies learned how Penguin Group (USA), Inc. solved the problem: they created their own media suite!

Digital Book World 2012: Changes and Challenges Ahead

A gathering of NYU Publishing student volunteers: Amy Goppert, Amelia Spriggs, Joana Costa Knufinke and Jaime Bode at Digital Book World

This year, M.S. in Publishing: Digital & Print Media students at the NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies were once again provided with the fantastic opportunity to volunteer at the annual Digital Book World conference. Between making sure that everyone entering the conference rooms was wearing a badge and helping to direct the 600 attendees to different breakout rooms, we volunteers were able to listen to the informative discussions about the deep changes that our industry is undergoing. On Tuesday morning, Mike Shatzkin, the respected blogger of The Shatzkin Files and DBW co-organizer (along with Publishers Marketplace founder Michael Cader) summarized the general goals for publishers this year, followed by a panel of CEOs from Hyperion, Yale University Press, Ingram Content Group, and Sourcebooks. Ellen Archer, President and Publisher of Hyperion (a Disney Company) and an NYU Center for Publishing Advisory Board member, stressed that publishers need to be open-minded to apply new strategies: “Books are elastic and dynamic,” she said. “Books can live in so many ways.” She mentioned Hyperion’s strategy of releasing mystery books based on the ABC TV show Castle in digital format. The third tie-in, Heat Rises, shot to #1. “Be really open-minded to doing things differently, and it can pay off,” she advised.

A major discussion that morning focused on the new quantitative industry research that proves once again the growing importance of the eBook industry. According to James McQuivey of Forrester Research, 25 million people now own an eReader and 61 million are projected to have one by the end of this year. The ongoing study by the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) on Consumer Attitudes Toward eBook Reading reported that an estimated 17% of book buyers purchased an eBook in December 2011. The number was 9% in December 2010 and 3% in January of the same year. This growing trend has also taken place among teens, who “report tripling their reading rate of eBooks.” The genres more likely to be bought electronically are mystery (22.9% of the market share) and romance (20.9%). Apple is, for young people and adults, the favorite reading device manufacturer. According to other research carried out by VERSO, the adoption curve of reading devices is now reaching “late majority.” However, 50% of the reading population is still very reluctant to purchase any type of reading device.

The morning sessions ended with a panel on the digital evolution of romance publishing. What was particularly interesting in this discussion was the talk about DRM (digital rights management) and the fact that romance publishers frequently omit it from their books. According to a survey of more than 6,000 users, carried out by All Romance eBooks (a specialized romance eBook retailer), 96% of the romance books sold through their platform do not have DRM, even if 91% of the total books on sale are protected by DRM.

In the afternoon, attendees could choose between four different panels that tackled issues such as marketing, design and/or social media strategies, among other topics. The second day included a presentation by Caroline Marks, CEO of Bookish, who explained more of the plans of this online digital platform for readers backed by Penguin, Hachette Book Group, and Simon & Schuster, launching next fall. Marks noted that Bookish will focus on ways to have “books find you, instead of you find books.” Overall at the conference, the push to increase discoverability was a very hot topic. Other key ideas that speakers emphasized throughout the two days were the role of Amazon as a “frenemy” of traditional publishers (who are now competing with their biggest retail customer); the difficult pricing strategies of eBooks and the impact of the agency model; the best cloud-based publishing infrastructures; the growing importance of self-publishing (now a real trend); the imperative that publishers need to know their audiences better to serve them targeted products; and the possibilities for international expansion of English eBook catalogues (either in English or in its translated versions).

In the exhibit hall, where tea and coffee were served twice a day, many publishing vendors presented their services to publishers. Miral Sattar, a graduate of the M.S. in Publishing program, presented her start-up company BiblioCrunch, a digital community where writers can write, read, and distribute their digital books into any format to any eReader. “One thing I learned,” said Miral, “was that being able to demonstrate your product live, one-on-one is very powerful.”

All in all, Digital Book World 2012 was proof of this very challenging and changing moment in the billion-dollar (and growing) U.S. eBook industry. I think DBW is an appointment no one will want to miss next year!

by Joana Costa Knufinke