Newsletter of the Society of Editors (NSW) Patron: Ila/.d llawkc

ISSN 10/1(1-2557 JE.<>JBO\£5<l» BKOAmVAV,' NSW <02)̂ 552 0039 DEC JW94

Pat Woolley on Self-Publishing An edited transcript of the address by Pat Woolley of Fast Books given at the meeting of the society on 4 October 1994. First let me explain that self-pub-lishing is not vanity publishing. With vanity publishing, authors pay a publisher to put their name on their book, market it, and distribute it. They sign a contract and get back the royalties, but probably never make a profit because they have al-ready paid $2 000 or sometimes $10 000 towards the production costs. Unfortunately, there are a few vanity publishers in Australia; they advertise in little boxes in The Syd-ney Morning Herald, The Australian, and the Telegraph Mirror, saying, 'Au-thors, we are seeking your work'. One such publisher recently quoted a title as, The Spy That Came in From the Cold, not who came in from the cold, but that came in. You wouldn't want to go to a publisher that gets it so basically wrong.

Vanity publishers often tiy to take more and more from authors be-cause the more they pay, the more the publisher gets. We really should say that we don't want to see vanity publishing, we want to see self-pub-lishing. We should encourage self-publishing where printers, no mat-ter who they are, deal directly with the author. An author doesn't need that interface of an editorial machine that takes the money; the overheads are astronomical and the author just doesn't make a dime.

There has been a view within the publishing industry that self-pub-lishing doesn't matter and in Aus-tralia, some of that attitude remains in the Literature Board; it won't give grants to writers who self-publish.

But self-publishing is a big and growing activity and over the next eighteen months anyone who cares about books is going to have to start explaining the realities of self-pub-lishing.

There is now less stigma attached to self-publishing. Writers like Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle self- publish. The Commitments was a self-published book, so we can now say that Roddy Doyle is a self-publisher who has won the Booker and gone on to have his books made into films. Suddenly the stigma is going.

Self-publishing is the only crea-tive activity where people are at-tacked for putting their money be-hind them. Artists don't get at-tacked, why should writers get at-tacked? Publishers don't even like writers making multiple submis-sions. They're a bit like banks fi-nancing your print runs; they want you to come along to them and beg, then wait and wait, only to be told, 'Sorry, we don't have room for your book in our list this year. Try next year". Commercial publishers pro-vide the distribution, the promotion, and the risk. If you minimise your risk, they are providing nothing.

If a book is successful in its self-published version, a smart publisher will see it, take it up, and reprint it commercially. A self-published book called Mutant Message Down-under came out in the United States as fact and is now being published by Harper and Row as fiction. That hap-pens with only one out of three or four hundred self-published books. Writers come to us direct now, and if they have a viable looking manu-script, we'll send them away and sug-gest that they try a commercial pub-lisher or two. Fast Books has only been going three-and-a-half years, but in that time there's been some real gems among our products. In the future, we need to feed some of those productions into commercial publishing.

I started Wild & Woolley back in 1974 with Michael Wilding. In 1990, we were publishers and the maxi-mum number of books we could do in any one year was six. That year nearly bankrupted me; I could never sell books fast enough. I also ran a national distribution company called Allbooks. It was a division of Wild & Woolley, which meant that our name moved up to the 'A's in the alphabet and we were paid quicker as

Our Christmas Dinner Meeting Our December Christmas dinner meeting will be held at Sketches Bar and Bistro, the Hotel Inter-continental, 117 Macquarie Street, Sydney on Tuesday 6 December at 7.00 pm.

The set menu of pasta, salad, sweets, and coffee will cost $19 per head. Drinks can be bought separatelyat the bar adjacent to the bistro.

Book before 30 November. Send your name, the names of your guests, and your cheque made out to Society of Editors (NSW) to the society treasurer, Charles Beelaerts, 10/175 Bellevue Road, Double Bay NSW 2028.

Book now and join us for a pleasant evening with fellow members and friends.

Allbooks than we were as Wild & Woolley. We avoided the tyranny of the alphabet

Fast Books is now a division of Wild & Woolley, just as Allbooks was, because we wanted to make a distinction between being a pub-lisher and being a printer. A lot of writers who come to us don't know the difference (they think they are going to a publisher), but I tell them we are printing for them and they are self-publishers. In 1990, our 400 square metre building in Glebe was chocker, three pallets high with books I couldn't sell. I couldn't gets enough of the top sellers, couldn't get the numbers right nor could I keep financing the operation. Pub-lishing and distributing books is like a leech; it expands, and at some point you have to decide that this leech isn't going to drain you dry. If you look at the history of small book publishers in Australia, all the ones in the 70s have gone. I'm proud that Wild & Woolley is still going, but in a different way. Authors can come to Wild & Woolley and instead of going around the circle of publish-ers and being told by them, 'Not suitable for our lisf, they can pub-lish their work.

We accept books as manuscript, on disk, or as camera-ready art. Un-der modem technology, the best and easiest way is as camera-ready art; everything that needs to be done to the book has been done before we get it. The pages are all in place, the bolds, italics, romans, and footnotes are all there; everything is ready. Lots of writers think that if they give us a disk, it's all there. It is, but so are 20 000 spaces and 40 000 carriage returns and if all those carriage re-turns were put through the manu-script, the book would have 25 pages of blanks.

We use acid-free, archival quality paper , which doesn ' t discolour around the edges, but does have variations in colour; the trees are dif-ferent from year to year and month to month. At the moment, except for coloured covers, all our books are printed in black and white; it is achievable, inexpensive, and most books only require black and white. The odd coffee table book requires 2

colour, but it costs a little bit more than four times the price of black and white. Most writers who come to us pay for the job by Bankcard and that price generally puts colour outside the bounds of a Bankcard purchase. We ask for 50 per cent deposit with the order and the rest on completion. We accept Bankcard, Mastercard or Visa, but no accounts and no credit.

Our prices and what we do for our clients are all explained in the brochure that we send to people who ask us for information. We hope they read it. They may not know the A4, A5, etc. jargon, but we do have to use some jargon in the brochure be-cause if we explained everything in detail, it would be a 25-page book-let. We give them easy-to-read, easy-to-understand prices. If they are very, very, very concerned, can't understand the brochure, and phone back, we read it to them.

We have two price lists (one for printing from disk and one from camera-ready copy) because we have to clean up disks that come in. We are just about to link our Docutech reprographic system with disks, but when we do, writers will have to follow a very regimented system for submitting manuscripts. Most of our authors don't like rules and since they are going to have to follow some, we hesitate to change.

Distribution of small numbers isn't a problem. One thousand cop-ies is a lot to sell, but a print run of 100 or 200 is not. At Fast books we specialise in printing 50 to 500 cop-ies. If somebody asks for a quote for 1 000, we ask, 'Why? What are you going to do with them? How many friends have you? Why would your book sell in a bookshop?' When they say, 'But my friends tell me if s good', we suggest they sell them one each.

Self-publishing writers have mar-ket research in their own hands. They can do what big multinational publishers do, engage in market re-search — out in the street, within their family, and with their friends. The mark of a successful publisher is finding out the number that can be sold and only printing that number. Self-publishing authors should do what a sensible publisher

N Welcome:

to our newest member, Kathryn

I K n » l J does, go through the exercise of list-ing the bookshops, family members, and friends who will buy, and the numbers they will take, aiming for 100 per cent sales. The rule is if you print 100, sell 100; if you print 20 000, sell 20 000; but don't print 20 000 and sell 100. Get the numbers right.

Authors should think around the bookshops; there are many more outlets for books than bookshops. It was only in about 1986 that Reader's Digest started selling through book-shops. If they put their mind to it and don't just look at the easy, obvi-ous answer of bookshops, writers can find other ways of distributing —maybe walking around the neigh-bourhood putting slips of paper in letterboxes.

We tell our self-publishing writ-ers to double whatever they are pay-ing us outside of set-up costs. We want them to get their money back by selling half the print run. If they have paid money for a design or layout, they will not get their money back on a short run. They should do the design and layout themselves; they will get better as they produce more and more books. We have an author who did his first book with a basic 16-pin strike-on printer, then upgraded to a 24-pin, then went on to a laser printer, and each time he sold all his print run.

Authors are impressed by lower unit costs. If 100 copies cost you (say) $10 per book and 500 copies cost you $6 a book (a total of $3000), you may say it costs you less to print 500, but if you only sell 100 copies, they have cost you $30 a book. It is better to print and sell 100 and then reprint small amounts as they sell. You can set the retail price accord-ing to the short runs so that the read-ers pay more for each book and the risk is transferred to them. TheRead-er's Digest conducted a survey to find out how much people would pay for a particular book. They found

Blue Pencil

that many were prepared to pay more than expected. It may well be that you can sell more copies of a book at $30 than at $20, so sell them at $30.

Clients have to make an appoint-ment and pay a $75 interview fee that comes off the price if we print for them. If we never see them again thaf s a little bit of compensation for my time. We do some editing at Fast Books, but all in the 50 minutes of the client interview. The most we'll ever do is suggest they think up a better title and organise their pre-lims: title page, copyright, dedica-tion, contents, acknowledgements. They might come in with it all over the place so we reorganise it. We don't tell them how it should be done, we ask them how they want it, but we might suggest how it is done in other books. To a lot of my family history writers I suggest that they figure out the most interesting element and bring it forward. They say, 'Oh, can I do thaf, and I say, 'You're the author, you can do what you like'.

There isn't any other editing than that unless they bring us a disk. We spell-check disks or manuscripts, but we don't check for punctuation un-less authors ask for it. At Fast books we will not even discuss changing grammar. If they do want their work checked for punctuation and gram-mar, I say, That's editing; do you want it edited?' Most of the time they say, 'No, leave it how it is', because they're worried about cost.

In the early years we did offer our services as editors, but writers don ' t want their manuscr ipt touched. If we say we will edit, they react, so we don't. Recently, I did a blurb on the back cover of a book. It was ungrammatical and I couldn't take the job without changing it. The author phoned and said, 'You changed the meaning'. I said I was sorry and that I would reprint the book completely and put the blurb on it the way it was, but she said that she didn't want that. I had changed the meaning only slightly, but in her mind, significantly. So I said I would do it again exactly the way she had written it, but she said she wanted it the way I had done it,

but wanted to change it again. So I said, 'OK, then I'll do a sticker'. We did her a sticker and she said, 'Oh it's not quite the same colour'. I told her, That's the breaks'. If we make a mistake, we will fix it, but we will not improve it.

At Fast Books we turn books around in three days a n d d o l 0 t o l 5 books a week, some reprints and others new books. Our writers don't want things yesterday; they've spent twelve years writing the book so they want us to take a bit of time with it. If we say it will be ready in three days they think thaf s too soon.

Self-publishing is just going to grow and grow and grow — half of Australia wants to tell its own story. There is a big market for editors to help these people tell those stories. The market is there, providing edi-tors can come up with some reason-able, fixed prices that are adequate compensation for their time, but not let the job blow out to a huge amount of time.

Where can editors fit into this growing area of publishing? I think they need to hold seminars for self-publishers through writers' groups. They need to teach, get out there and speak for $100 or $150, show people how to do it and charge for their services. Editors should go to the places where writers meet and advertise their services as editors. They should go to family history societies, but regionalise and not make them come into Sydney.

There will be a lot of computer entry in the future and self-publish-ing authors need to use computers. Almost everyone you know knows something about computers; there are all sorts of people with whom writers can liaise to get access to one. The Writers' Centre at Rozelle has a computer for hire and the State Library of New South Wales has a similar facility. I received a manu-script from an editor a while ago — a member of this society—who had marked up the copy and done it on disk. I don't know how much had been charged, but that editor could have done some value adding by preparing it ready to print, by doing camera-ready art. At Fast Books we have too much money tied up in

equipment to prepare camera-ready art, but editors don't have the over-heads we have, so I think you all should get a Mac, a LaserWriter, and a scanner.

There is a lot of business for edi-tors working with writers, if you can work all the way through to the cam-era-ready stage at maybe $500 a book or $1 000 a book. Clients want you to say that you'll do a job for a cer-tain price. You are not going to get the money you may get from a pub-lisher, so you don't want to deal with that client more than once or maybe twice. You have to say, as we do at Fast Books, These are the rules'.

I once thought of publishing as a very precious activity, but I'm help-ing more people now and my cli-ents are delighted. I've solved that terrible, monstrous problem of be-ing told to try publishers 2,3,4, and 5. We are a solution; authors get their books back published.

Meeting Dates for 1995

It's time to start putting dates into your diary for 1995, so if you haven't done it already, grab your new diary and write 'EdSoc meet-ing, 6.30 pm' into the first Tues-day of each month except Janu-ary: 7 February (AGM) 7 March; 4 April; 2 May; 6 June; 4 July; 1 August; 5 September; 3 October; 7 November; 5 Decem-ber.

December 1994 3

Blue Pencil Copy for Blue Pencil and let-ters to the editor should be faxed to (02) 529 9764 or posted direct to The Editor, Blue Pencil, 49 Evans Street, SansSouci NSW 2219.

The deadlines for the 1995 issues are: 13 December 1994; 10 January 1995; 14 February; 14 March; 11 April; 9 May; 13 June; 11 July; 8 August; 12 September; 10 October; and 14 Novem-ber.

BULLETIN BOARD

Writing and Editing • In January 1995, the Australian Institute of Professional Communicators (AIPC) will repeat the course on writing and editing held last November at the Artarmon Inn, Pacific Highway, Artarmon.

The dates are from 4 to 10 January and from 18 to 24 January. Enquiries should be directed to Bill Smith, AIPC Course Controller, on (02) 4501342.

It's Out! The society's Register of Editorial Services is now available. Priced at $8.95, including post-age, the register can be ordered from the society treasurer, Charles Beelaerts, by ringing or faxing (02) 388 1456, or by post to 10/175 Bellevue Road, Double Bay NSW 2028. Make cheques out to Soci-ety of Editors (NSW).

Canberra Checklist At a three-day conference held in July this year, the Canberra Society of Edi-tors launched its Commissioning Checklist which lists the issues that should be considered before starting work on a manuscript and itemises the likely range of editing tasks un-der three levels of edif. The checklist is now available for $1 plus postage; orders by phone to the secretary, Canberra Society of Edi-tors, on (062) 274 6788 [w] or by fax to (062)2746816. New Charter for The Galley Club

In response to technological changes in the traditional book publishing industry, The Galley Club — the Sydney-based associa-tion of book production, design, and edito-rial personnel—has broadened its focus. In a referendum on 19 October 1994, members of The Galley Qub voted over-whelmingly to alter its constitution to in-clude people who work in magazines, jour-nals, and multimedia. The Galley Club's enlarged purpose now is to encourage the highest standards of production of books, magazines, journals, and multimedia and to act as a forum on major issues affecting the production of works in these fields. For further information, contact Carrie Hutchinson on (02) 956 1947 or Rex Finch on (02) 418 9254. 9

A Workshop on Successful Freelancing

Society immediate past President, Margaret Foster, together with other presenters, will convene a workshop on Successful Freelancing on Saturday 18 or Saturday 25 February 1995 from 12.30 pm to 5.00 pm at the NSW Writ-ers' Centre, Rozelle. The cost will be $30. If you are inter-ested in attending on either of those dates, contact Robin Appleton on 560 1017 before 7 February.

4 Blue Pencil

AusSI Conference, 1995 The First International Con-ference of the Australian So-ciety of Indexers (AusSI) will be held in Marys ville, Victo-ria, from 31 March to 2 April 1995. A copy of the conference brochure giving details of the program ana registration has been enclosed with this issue of Blue Pencil

Expose Yourself... in the pages of Blue Pencil. Bare and snare your opinions or prejudices about those things that concern you in the profes-sion or the society or both. We need to read your ideas on future society events, speak-ers, and meeting venues. We want to know wnat you think about ethics, accreditation, freelancing, multimedia, de-sign, desktop production... Send your views to the edi-tor.

I TheMacquarie Dictionary Workshop

If you are thinking of at-tending Style Council 95, it may interest you to ar-rive one day earlier and participate in a discussion of the Third Edition of The Macquarie Dictionary. The workshop will take place at the offices of Mac-quarie Dictionary on Fri-day 10 February 1995 and will begin at 11.00 am. For details contact Maureen Leslie, phone: (02) 850 9800 or fax: (02) 8882984.

Style Council 1995 Style Council 95 will be held at Macquarie Univer-sity, North Ryde, on 11 & 12 February 1995. The conference will pay particular attention to the roles of English in a plu-ralist Australia—in work, recreation and education, and as a medium for ex-pressing Australian iden-tity at home and overseas. There will be sessions de-voted to political correct-ness in language, and to the politics of Plain Eng-lish and communication. Papers have been invited on the topics of The lan-guage or special interest groups' and 'Exporting Australian English'. Registration must be completed by 20 January 1995. For details of the pro-gram, cost, and registra-tion, contact Maureen Leslie, phone: (02) 850 9800, fax: (02) 888 2984.

Postgraduate Course in Editing and Publishing The University of Canberra will offer a postgraduate course in editing and publishing in 1995. The course consists of 8 units of 40 hours each and has been designed to improve the editing and production skills of those working or wishing to work in various parts of the publishing industry. It covers fiction and non-fiction publishing in different media for a variety of audi-ences and will have particular relevance to publishing in Can-berra . For enquiries, contact the University of Canberra.

Your Committee

1994

President and Publicity Robin Appleton Ph: 5601017 Fax: 5601017

Secretary Val Phillips Ph: 6974345 (w)

918 7031 (h)

Treasurer Charles Beelaerts Ph: 388 1456 (w)

327 6273 (h) Fax: 388 1456

Catering Terry Johnston Ph: 805 7465 (w) Fax: 805 7480

Membership Rhana Pike Ph: 569 7831

Newsletter John Fleming Ph: 529 8638 Fax: 529 9764

Carol D'Costa Ph: 954 0711

December 1994 5

T O T A L K O F . . .

A January Blue Pencil There will be a January issue of Blue Pencil containing, amongst other items, all the information you need to know for the Annual General Meeting on 7 Februaiy 1995: the agenda, notices of motion, nomina-tions received for committee posi-tions, and a copy of the constitution.

If you wish to raise a matter or move a resolution at the AGM, give notice to the secretary by phone (918 7031) or by post to PO Box 254, Broadway NSW2007,by 13 Decem-ber 1994 so that it can be included in the agenda and appear in the Janu-ary issue. Membership Membership of the society expires on 31 January each year and becomes due on 1 February. A membership renewal form has been enclosed with this issue of Blue Pencil. If you com-plete the form now and send it to the secretary with your cheque made out to Society of Editors (NSW), you will be a financial, voting member for the AGM in February. Changes of Address We want you to receive your news-letter regularly, so if you have changed your address recently, ring the membership secretary, Rhana Pike, on 569 7831 and let her know. Newsflash! The University of Western Sydney is considering including an Editing elective in its Professional Writing course. Meanwhile, there is a lot of interest in the editing process from all kinds of communicators. In a six-day period, I have presented papers and courses on that and allied sub-jects at four different venues to more than 100 participants. It is good to know that there is a growing awarenesss of the need for responsible preparation of material generated from desktop systems. However, a publisher has told me that the editors in that house are now working on hard copy because of the volume of work they have

and they cannot afford the time to edit on screen. Another is not al-ways using authors' disks because of the amount of 'undoing' of hid-den codes. This indicates that we haven't yet answered all the prob-lems associated with computer- gen-erated typescripts. Camera-ready copy is encouraged by some publishers, but regrettably, such work is usually unedited. The Register The committee plans to update the society's recently published Register of Editorial Services in 1995 and is looking for someone to prepare copy and canvas advertisements.

If you can help in this way, ring me (5601017) and let me know what you can do.

Robin Appleton

Publishing Industry Development and Export Initiatives

Publishing industry development and export initiatives have gained rapid momentum over the past few months.

A comprehensive statistical and economic profile of the publishing industry will be undertaken by the Australian Bureau of Statistics from August 1994 to identify growth ar-eas and export potential in the in-dustry. Results from this study are expected to be released in early 1995.

Market research has been under-taken by Lesley Dow, a market reasearcher with the Australia Book Publishers Association. Ms Dow has studied the publishing industries of Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia and will soon begin researching the markets of Hong Kong, China, Tai-wan, and Japan. The aim of this re-search is to identify market oppor-tunities in these countries.

The results of the study will be published in a series entitled, Book Publishing: Export to Asia: Market Re-search Reports, and will be available to publishers through the Austral-ian Book Publishers Association.

A network of independent pub-lishers has been formed through the

Enterprise Networking Scheme of the National Industry Extension Service of NSW. Known as the Aus-tralian Independent Publishers Net-work, the group joined forces on 22 June 1994.

The business plan and the formal structure of the new group is cur-rently being completed with the as-sistance of Rowan McLean of Dench McLean Associates.

These recent developments have been the result of partnerships forged with the Commonwealth Department of Industry, Science and Technology, the NSW Department of Business and Regional Develop-ment, and the Australian Book Pub-lishers Association. Reprinted xvith the permission of the Department of Communication and the Arts from the VJinter 1994 issue of Dis-tinctly Australian.

Letter to the Editor Meetings Again

I'm sony that Sandra Bernhardt and Jo Rudd have such difficulties in making their way to the Australian Museum for meetings, but it doesn't seem to have occurred to them that much as they may favour the Kirribilli Neighbourhood Centre, there are people who don't live on the North Shore.

The Australian Museum seems like an excellent choice of venue — near public transport and about as central as you can get for most peo-ple.

When I first joined the Society of Editors, meetings were at the Kirribilli Neighbourhood Centre and making the over-the-bridge trip at that time of night was certainly a disincentive (if you'll pardon the ex-pression) for attending.

Be reasonable, Sandra and Jo, either brave the Sydney traffic or arrange to travel on public trans-port together.

Brenda Pittard

6 Blue Pencil