New Monikers in the Tate Editing Department

I recently sent out this company memo:

Subject: The Conceptual Editors Have Vanished! 

Here’s the short version: We are changing the name of the process “Conceptual Editing” to “Developmental Editing.” And it follows that Conceptual Editors will be called Developmental Editors.

If you’re interested in knowing why, keep reading! If not, just skip the middle and move down to the * at the bottom. No hard feelings.

Manuscripts at Tate Publishing go through two rounds of in-house editing:

1. Copy Editing – with their perfect blend of smarts and good looks, Copy Editors (11 strong) are the detail people. They scour through our manuscripts hunting for the grammatical and formatting fouls our authors have committed. The average manuscript enters our production process with 3,000 mistakes per 100 pages, so, and these professionals gurus of grammar are an essential screen against typos.


2. Developmental Editing (formerly known as Conceptual Editing) – the creative minds in this department (three teams of 5-8 editors) review our manuscripts and give feedback and suggestions to authors on ways to better express their story or message. A Developmental Editor’s job is to be the author’s toughest (and often their first) critic before the book gets out to the public. They focus on problems with organization, structure, and logical argument in nonfiction; plot and character development, conflict, and dialogue in fiction. In other words, with their keen insights and comprehensive suggestions for improvement, they help our authors DEVELOP their manuscripts into something engaging for their readers.


And so after considering these duties and surveying titles and descriptions among other publishers around the industry, we’ve decided to make this switch. No procedures will change, but the process and job titles will.


*PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT to review and update any files you may have that reference Conceptual Editing. We have begun incorporating this change on the website, production guidelines, and all relevant author communication.

The Best Five Books I Read in 2011

The list someone, somewhere has been waiting for:


The End of Education by Neil Postman

According to Plan by Graeme Goldsworthy

Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto
The Disappearance of Childhood by Neil Postman
Growing a Farmer by Kurt Timmermeister

I'm considering taking on the 52-Book Challenge again in 2012. What should be on my list? 

Dispatches from the Publishing Frontier

Last week I had the opportunity to speak to a capstone English class at the University of Central Oklahoma. My presentation, titled “Dispatches from the Publishing Frontier,” addressed the new landscape of the publishing industry and opportunities for recent graduates to get their foot in the door.

As I prepared it was eye opening to look back over the last fifteen years and put the students’ generation in a historical context. There is no way to overstate the impact the Internet has had on all business, and especially media. The last ten years have been nothing short of revolutionary for our culture. As we know, revolutions can have good and bad results, and often a mix. In the next three posts, I’d like to delve into three dramatic shifts in the publishing industry in the last decade. Today, we look at distribution.


Part One: The End of The Distribution Monopoly 

The monopoly on book distribution has been all but wiped out. Forty years ago, the one route to getting your book in front of an audience was this: AgentàNY PublisheràDistribution ManageràRetail Book BuyeràCustomer. Today, it is possible to hurdle some of these steps and still reach an audience. Let’s take a look at these one by one:

1. Agents. The agency route is certainly still an option, but some publishers, like Tate Publishing, have Acquisition Editors who accept and review unsolicited manuscripts not tied to an agent, and this role has lost more than a modicum of its gate keeping authority.

2. Publisher. Some have attempted to argue that the role of publisher is losing importance as well. I would argue that this is actually the most dynamic and vital cog in the chart above. Nothing can take the place of experienced Editorial eye, elegant Cover Design, subtle and eye-pleasing Layout Design, and Marketing and Publicity, all of which Tate Publishing provides. And now communication technology has freed us up to do business in areas of the nation outside of Manhattan.

3. Distribution Managers warehouse books for retailers. With modern digital printing technology, we can print books in shorter runs and have them ready for retailers in weeks. Distribution is also dependent on traditional book retailers, which we will address next.

4. Retail Book Buyer. I could sum this up in one word: Borders. National book chains are struggling. It’s a painful thing to realize, but admit it we must: customers are much more likely to buy from an online site that in a bookstore. We still value our relationships with book buyers and bookstores. Yet there is another avenue we can approach customers, one at which the Tate Publishing Marketing team is both particularly experienced and adept: Events outside the bookstore; also known as Niche Marketing. Tapping into your niche market is the new way of the industry, and Tate Publishing has been pioneering the path for years. 

Part Two will look at Chris Anderson’s important work defining The Long Tail.

Book Review: The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

"Calm, focused, undistracted, the linear mind is being pushed aside by a new kind of mind that wants and needs to take in and dole out information in short, disjointed, often overlapping bursts—the faster, the better.”


You feel it. You sense it, tugging at you right now. “Am I being entertained? How much longer do I feel like reading this? This is boring. Is there a picture or video here somewhere? What’s going on on Facebook?” When you’re on the Net, there is a constant tug at your attention. In the back of your mind you’re sure there’s something that could bring you more pleasure. The possibilities are endless, and here you sit on a lowly blog about books. All you have to do is click two buttons and you could be watching a laughing baby or seeing what 600 of your friends are doing in real time. The average reader on this site stays 94 seconds.

The Internet grabs our attention the way no other entertainment technology has before, then scatters it in a wind of hyperlinks and search boxes. The gratification of the technology is immediate and seemingly limitless. The dopamine we get when we get a message, a like, a tweet, etc. is a powerful drug, and it’s a high we aren't keen to lose. 

In the western world over the last century we have adopted technology so wholly, accepted its necessity and inevitability so completely, and created its monopoly so rapidly that we’ve had little time to contemplate the blowback—the unintended consequences of maximum connectivity.

Technology and culture writer Nicholas Carr examines these consequences in The Shallows, an utterly compelling look at an ominous phenomenon that is well underway. Yes, most scientists agree that the Web is morphing your mind. Some argue this is for the better while others, contrarians like Carr, argue for worse. 

If you’ve recently noticed you look at your smartphone rather than look friends in the face, that your memory seems to be getting frazzled, that you have more trouble reading an entire book than you used to, this may be a consequence of using the Web. Carr explains with neuroscience that without repeated use our minds begin to lose the ability to concentrate on one subject for an extended period. It's the old axiom: Use it or lose it. Pertinent, fascinating studies are used to illustrate that our abilities to digest information and process complex arguments are dwindling. 

I could say a ton about The Shallows, but I'll end with this: I listed this as the most affecting book I read in 2010. It remains that, and I’ve just had the opportunity to chew on and discuss its content with with some of my coworkers, where it sparked much introspection and debate. This book will challenge (and possibly change) the way you live.

P.S. If you want a primer check out Carr's article in The Atlantic: "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"