The Copyeditor's Desk

This is the third installment in a series of posts suggesting ways authors and small publishers can save headaches, time, and money at the manuscript stage. We’ve already talked about working with coauthors, using standard style manuals, and processing words like a pro. Now let’s discuss…

Images, Tables, and Textboxes

Please. Please, please, please DON’T embed these in the manuscript!

Tables, images, and textboxes do not just pop into InDesign or Quark. The graphic artist needs to place them, one by one, into the layout in the appropriate places.

If that’s not a good enough reason for you, here’s what happened when one author got fancy with tables:

At 1:30 one morning, I finally finished a perfectly awful amateur manuscript produced by one of my clients. Eager to get the work, when I quoted my page rate I hadn’t looked carefully at his “tables,” most of which were jury-rigged with tabs and hard returns, nor had I realized that half the copy consisted of these fake tables, because he hadn’t numbered them. The manuscript contained a good two dozen of them. One actually had been created in Word’s table function, but then somehow he’d embedded a graphic inside the table. Another was a table stuck inside a textbox, which I could not remove from the copy no matter how hard I tried. A third was a table over which the author had superimposed a text box, apparently unaware that he could merge cells to create a space in which to enter the paragraph he stuck there.

Because he was trying to do the page layout himself in Word—this document was a book accompanying a course in personal finance he was peddling, and he intended to have it printed at a KwikCopy—I converted his tab-and-return monstrosities into tables, cleaned up the real tables, and left them embedded in the edited file.

What a mess! It took hours and hours and HOURS to untangle, and by the time I finished, the $4.50/page quote I’d given him stuck me with an hourly rate of about three bucks. Finally, on the fourth night that I’d spent working until I couldn’t hold my eyes open another minute, I was about to wrap the job up…and Word hung. I managed to save the file and shut down the computer, and then I stumbled off to bed.

The next morning when I opened it to add a few finishing touches before sending it and my puny bill to the author, what should come up but an error message: “A table in this document has become corrupted. To recover the contents of the table: select the table and choose Convert Table to Text from the Table menu.” (This strategy, BTW, converts your table, all right: into scrambled eggs!)

This problem was a known issue in MS Word 2002. I was using Word 2004 and so never had encountered it until his Word 2002 file came along. Nothing I tried would recover the file. Days of eye-glazing work had been lost. I did not get paid for my time and labor, and my client did not get his edited copy.

This was a direct result of embedding large numbers of complex tables in a Word file.

The solution is to create the tables in a separate word file—one file per table, preferably, each given an identifiable filename, such as “table 1.doc” or “Jones table 1.doc.” Format the table according to Chicago style (or whatever style you’re following) and give it a title. Here’s an example.

In the MS where you want the file to appear, enter a call-out to the layout artist, like this:

<COMP: Please insert Table 1 here>

You can boldface or highlight them as you like; the compositor (layout artist) will use the layout program’s search function to look for a symbol such as < to find them all, and so is unlikely to miss any. Where she or he finds a callout, she will place the appropriate table in the layout, using InDesign or Quark.

Do the same for material you would like to place in textboxes.

Do not, do not, do NOT stick textboxes in a Word document and then drop the thing on a layout artist! This creates headaches of migraine caliber. Just because Word will do something does not mean you should do it!

For textboxes, you can use a single file. Call it something like textboxes.doc, Jones textboxes.doc, or chapt 1 textboxes.doc. Do not place the copy inside textboxes in this file. Just type it, and number each blurb in the order in which you would like it to appear.

Textbox 1

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Etiam nunc. Donec consectetur ipsum nec est. Quisque at dolor.

Textbox 2

Nunc luctus risus in tortor. Vivamus tristique, lectus a pretium aliquet, felis mi lacinia erat, sagittis rhoncus metus arcu accumsan ligula.

Indicate in the copy approximately where you would like to place the textbox:

<COMP: Please place textbox 1 near here.>

Remember that unless you’re publishing in 8.5 x 11-inch format, the page size for your published document will be different from Word’s default page size. In any event, because the layout program’s font size and margins will be different, what you type in Word will not look identical when it’s laid out. So all your effort to trick out pages using Word’s bells and whistles will be just so much wasted time and energy.

Images and graphs need to be saved as JPEGS or PDFs, and absolutely positively NOT embedded in Word files! An embedded image is useless to a layout artist. These are not print-quality images, and they do not flow into page layout programs in any sane manner.

Handling images and graphs entails three steps:

1. Save the file as a JPEG or a PDF.
2. Write a caption and save it (with all the other captions) in a separate Word file.
3. Type a callout in the manuscript to tell the layout artist where you would like to place the image.

Give your JPEG an identifying name, numbered in the order in which it should appear. Images are called “figures.” Thus:

Figure 1.jpg
Jones Figure 1.jpg
Jones Chapt 1 Fig 1.jpg
Jones Fig 1.pdf

And thus:

Nunc luctus risus in tortor. Vivamus tristique, lectus a pretium aliquet, felis mi lacinia erat, sagittis rhoncus metus arcu accumsan ligula. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Curabitur commodo purus. Nam varius. Aenean id sem quis sem porttitor adipiscing. Suspendisse tempor elit ac mi.

<COMP: Please place Figure 1 near here.>

Aliquam scelerisque lacus placerat purus. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Quisque arcu. Vestibulum sit amet lorem. Nunc enim velit, placerat nec, fringilla vitae, elementum ac, arcu. Fusce mattis. Donec sodales. Donec augue tortor, pretium eu, posuere quis, volutpat non, nunc. Nullam varius dignissim nisl. Vivamus lobortis.

<COMP: Please place Figure 2 near here.>

Type all the captions in a separate file, in the order in which the images should appear, and clearly identify them:

Figure 1

Little League players at a public park in Cincinnati, 1951.

Figure 2

Like their big-league counterparts, Pop Warner teams had mascots, among them the Erewhon Lumberjacks’ Musky the Muskrat.

What You’ll Give the Publisher or Layout Artist:

So. When you finish compiling a manuscript that includes tables, pullouts (textboxes), and images, you’ll hand over a package for the layout artist that contains the following items:

The manuscript
Files containing the tables and their titles
Images and graphs formatted as JPEGs or PDFs
A file containing captions for the images and graphs.

This seems like a lot of trouble, eh? Well…trust me. It’s a LOT less trouble than a single Word file with all that stuff jumbled up in it. When someone else has to untangle the mess, the process is time-consuming and expensive (you, dear author, ultimately will pay for the time required), and the potential for error is hugely magnified.

Do it right the first time. Please.

Simplest answer: Write nonfiction.

Yah, I know: you want to write the Great Novel of the Western World. You want people to read your poetry.

The GNotWW has already been written, and it probably can’t find a publisher. And everyone on the planet wants people to read their poetry…but they don’t want to read anyone else’s.

Publishing is a business. Publishers buy what readers will read. Just now readers are reading nonfiction and genre novels. Precious few genre novels will ever make GNotWW; it’s difficult to get one published (though less so than “mainstream” or literary novels); and when you do, you’ll be lucky if you earn 10 grand on the thing. Ten thousand dollars for a year’s worth of work is not worth the effort. Even if you can crank one in six months, that still gives you a grandiose gross income of $20,000 a year. You can’t live on that. Well, you can, but no one in her right mind would want to.

Nonfiction works have the advantage of being marketable without the aid of an agent. If you have a subject—any subject—that’s useful or interesting to a reasonably large coterie of readers, you can find a publisher on  your own. Or you may be able to self-publish and sell enough of them to make it worth your while. One guy who realized he could write about maintaining his RV discovered he could make a ton of money by marketing a book on that subject through Amazon.com.

Yah, I know: crass. But my dears, business is crass. And publishing is a business.

You can find subjects that make you feel less whorish than some. A friend of mine, for example, a high-school teacher who took up magazine writing as a hobby, wrote a book on how to help your teenager succeed in high school. It was a subject that was right under her  nose: when you write about something related to your job, you are an expert on it. And anything you write that will help people in their lives will sell.

Later she went on to write YA novels. Not GNotWWs, but at least she can say she’s a novelist now.

So, look around you. What do you know, what do you do, what can you share that can make someone else’s life better? There’s your first subject.

My second published book (the first was a rewrite of my dissertation) was a trade book for Columbia, The Essential Feature. It simply described what I did for a living (I was writing for magazines at the time). The target audience was the kind of person who takes community college courses in feature writing out of a desire to become a writer with a capital W. It was not designed for journalism majors, but for people with a laptop on the kitchen table.

You’re listening? Target your book tightly for a specific reader. Tell that person something that matters for him or her.

Visualize the person in your mind and address that reader. Do not write for yourself. Do not write about yourself, except insofar as some experience you’ve had can demonstrably be useful for the reader. Writing is not an ego trip. It’s a business.

Next: Organize your content efficiently and intelligently. With the reader in mind, present the subject in a way he or she can understand easily and access quickly. Map out a rough table of contents before you start writing. You can always change this as you go, but it will serve as a guideline to keep you going in the right general direction from the outset.

Write tight! Get yourself a copy of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. Read it. Memorize it. Internalize it. Use it!!!!!

When you have a draft, revise and rewrite until you have clean copy that you feel confident actually will work for your target reader.

Edit your  manuscript. Produce clean, grammatically correct, double-spaced copy with correct spelling and consistent style throughout. Follow Chicago style for book manuscripts and Associated Press style for magazine and newspaper copy.

Find a publisher. We’re talking about books here: for periodicals, you must have a contract before you begin writing. Here’s how you find a publisher for a nonfiction book:

1. Go to the library and get a reference worked called Literary Marketplace (LMP). This book, the bible of the American book publishing industry, indexes publishers by the subjects that they publish. It also gives the names and addresses of the relevant editors.

2. Make a list of subject headings and genres relevant to the book you’re writing. For example, if you are writing a book on how to beat alcoholism, look up subjects such as “self-help,” “addiction,” “recovery,” “psychology,” and the like. If you’re writing on how to sew quilts, look up “crafts,” “interior design,” “fabric art,” and such.

3. Look up publishers that say they’re publishing in those subjects and genres. Carefully note down

a. the acquisitions editor’s name (look for titles such as “managing editor,” “nonfiction editor,” or anything that appears relevant to what you’re doing);
b. the person’s correct title;
c. the publisher’s complete address, including the zip code; and
d. the publisher’s telephone number, FAX, website URL, and e-mail address.

4. Double-check to be certain you have spelled all of these things right! The fastest way to put off an editor is to misspell his or her name. The second fastest way is to get the person’s title wrong.

5. Compile a list containing this information for ten or twelve publishers.

6. Write a proposal package (more about which below).

7. Write a cover letter to go with the proposal. Customize it for the first six publishers on your list (i.e., address it to the correct editor and adjust whatever you say in the first paragraph to target that publisher).

8. Mail out a half-dozen proposals at once. (Yah, I know: publishers hate that. Writers hate getting screwed, too.)

9. As each rejection comes in, send another proposal to the next publisher on your list. Always keep your proposal in circulation!

10. In the unlikely event that you go through the whole list without selling your book proposal, go back to the library compile a list of another dozen potential publishers, and repeat the process.

Sooner or later you will find someone who will publish your book. If you don’t, then it’s time to come up with some other subject.

What is a book proposal and how do you write it?

A nonfiction book proposal is simply a description of what you’re writing plus an argument for why it should be published. It consists of these elements:

1. a cover letter stating what the book is about, who will read it and why, what similar works are on the market, and who you are and why you are so eminently qualified to write it;

2. a table of contents;

3. a detailed outline of the book’s contents (i.e., what’s in each chapter); and

4. three sample chapters, or an introduction and two sample chapters.

As you can see, the beauty of this for the wretch who dreams of making a living as a writer is that you need not have completed the book before you present it to publishers. A proposal is just that: a proposal. Once you have a running head start on your  manuscript, you’re ready to start marketing it. If you’re even moderately successful, you should land at least a small advance that will help support you while you’re writing.

Unless you stumble upon a very hot topic, as a beginning writer you can’t expect much in the way of an advance. Once you have a couple of books in print, though, you should be able to command $10,000 or $20,000 for a salable proposal. Maybe.

If you want to earn any more than that—or sell future books to publishers—you’ll need to do most of the marketing yourself. That’s another story.

Just remember: Publishing isn’t art. Publishing is a business.

–vh

Academics the world over flinch in terror at the phrase “publish or perish!” Graduate students must publish to have any chance at finding a suitable position,and once said position is secured, promotion or tenure is awarded only if publishing of one’s work continues. Although there are no simple ways to get your work published, here are a matters to consider when submitting your work to a journal or scholarly press.

1. Is your work right for the journal or publisher you are submitting to?

All journals have mission statements. To get your work published, you must target your work to fit this mission statement. Seems simple. One of the journals I am familiar with,Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering (MBE), notes that

Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering (MBE) is a quarterly international journal focusing on new developments in the fast-growing fields of mathematical biosciences and bioengineering. Areas covered include general mathematical methods and their applications in biology, medical and biomedical sciences and bioengineering with an emphasis on work related to mathematical modeling, nonlinear, and stochastic dynamics. The editorial board of MBE is strongly committed to promoting cutting-edge, integrative and interdisciplinary research bridging mathematics, life sciences and bioengineering.

Authors seeking to publish their work in MBE must ensure that it fits within these parameters. Most of the editor’s rejections happen when authors submit articles that have nothing to do with the biological sciences.

2. Does your work fit the submission guidelines?

In the case of scholarly journals, submission guidelines give authors information on acceptable word counts, formatting, and even the best means of ensuring that submitted material is reached by the editors. Go to the journal’s web site to find submission guidelines. If they don’t appear there, then you should obtain a hard copy of an issue and examine it for an author’s guidelines statement.

3. Do you have the patience for peer review?

Scholarly works are always sent out to be reviewed by two or three experts in the subject matter. This process, although seemingly simple, takes time. Reviewers are seldom compensated for their work and thus fit reviewing in with a number of other duties. It is in an author’s best interest to be persistent, yet patient, when asking for the status of a submission. This does not mean that a publisher should keep your work for years with no reply. It does, however, mean that a decision will not be made in a few weeks.

The bottom line is that editors reviewing submissions will not look at your work unless it fits within a basic framework. The content and format matter: even if your article is brilliant, if it contains too many words, it will be rejected.

-TM