Where Is Everybody? Sick or at SXSW

It's been a crazy couple of weeks here at the JIST world headquarters. Half the office has been out sick. And we're not just talking a day or two. Our production manager was out four days last week with a near-death fever and cough. He said the thought crossed his mind, "I'm going to be one of those elderly people who dies from the flu" (even though he's only 50-something).

The entire sales staff has been coughing for, I kid you not, six weeks. Even my little girl had a touch of the flu (although we caught it early and got her on Tamiflu). I'm not sure why I haven't contracted it myself--I didn't get the flu shot, and she did. We're kind of going on a day-to-day assumption around here, wrapping everything up every day and leaving instructions for others just in case we don't make it back the next day.

Meanwhile, everyone in the blogosphere is in Texas this week for SXSW, a festival of media: music, film, technology, the web, social networking, blogging, gaming, etc. The sheer number of speakers is dizzying. Among the attendees are some people I have blogged about and/or who have read this blog at some point:

• Pearson Web designer Steph Mineart
• Wiley marketing director Ellen Gerstein
• Brazen Careerist Penelope Trunk

So have fun, folks, and don't worry about all us poor technology-deficient slobs stuck in Indiana hacking our lungs out.

Brazen Careerist Blog Network Launches

After many months of work and planning, the Brazen Careerist blog network has been launched. It's the collective brainchild of the Brazen Careerist herself, Penelope Trunk, and the two Ryans from Employee Evolution. Here you'll find career perspectives from 50 of the best and brightest 20-something professionals. So far, I haven't figured out whether any of them works in publishing; nonetheless, they have interesting and relevant things to say.

Readers of Penelope and the Ryans' blogs have been privileged to have a ringside seat as this startup got going. What happens when a 30-something celebrity blogger with marital problems invites two young go-getters to leave their high-powered East Coast jobs and come to Madison, Wisconsin, to start a blog network? Hilarity ensues. I've enjoyed the she-saids and he-saids of this venture. They're angling for a reality show, and I wouldn't be surprised if they got one.

Seeking a Hoosier with Fiction Experience

As much publishing activity as there is in Indiana, it's predominantly nonfiction fare: careers, business, computers, travel, history, cooking, and the ubiquitous Dummies and Idiots. But nine times out of ten that I am asked for publishing advice, it's about fiction. I always have to explain that there is a huge difference between the two types of publishing, and that I am versed in only one of them.

But surely someone out there in this state has worked for a fiction publisher. If you or someone you know has some fiction experience (editing, acquiring, agenting, etc.), please drop me an e-mail at loricateshand-at-yahoo-dot-com. A very interesting opportunity is cooking for the right person...

Lindsey Pollak on Working for a Small Company

We had a popular discussion on this blog last summer about the differences between working for a big publisher and working for a small publisher. So Lindsey's blog post this morning on the advantages of working for a small company caught my eye. She quotes a Wall Street Journal article on the subject and goes on to explore whether these advantages hold true for younger professionals just starting their careers. She concludes that they do.

I'll add my voice to the chorus: Don't overlook the smaller companies. You can get some excellent experience and contacts there, and these companies tend to not have the kinds of mass layoffs that the larger ones do.

CBS Sunday Morning on Book Titles

Between my job, the housework, and the kid, I rarely get to watch TV anymore. But I always make an effort to catch CBS Sunday Morning, which is like a weekly spa treatment for the brain. Nothing beats curling up with a hot chocolate to watch Charles Osgood and crew dispense truly arty and uplifting fare with just enough humour for that time of day.

So it was a happy surprise to see Osgood's story about a recent book on the stories behind famous book titles. Why Not Catch-21? was released last Otcober, but no doubt got a sales bump from being featured in this fun look at the art and history of book titles. Granted, the piece focused more on famous fiction than the nonfiction titles I wrestle with every day. But still, it was quite enjoyable--as this show always is.

Two JIST Titles Win Axiom Awards

And now for some gratuitous, self-congratulatory horn-tooting.

We just found out Friday that two JIST titles have won awards in the first annual Axiom Business Book Awards competition, sponsored by Independent Publisher Magazine and the Jenkins Group.

Nearly 400 books competed in 25 business book categories. JIST's two winners were in the Careers category (of course). We took home both the Gold award and the Bronze award in our category.

The Gold award winner was a book I acquired and edited: Double Outsiders: How Women of Color Can Succeed in Corporate America, by Jessica Faye Carter.

Our Bronze award winner was When Your Parents Sign the Paychecks: Finding Career Success Inside or Outside the Family Business, by Greg McCann. It was acquired by Sue Pines and edited by freelancer (and former JIST staffer) Heather Stith.

Congratulations to everyone who helped produce, market, and sell these wonderful books! It's our hope that the exposure they get from winning these awards will give them a sales boost. That's the main reason publishers enter awards contests (that, and having something nice to add to their resumes!).

The Sixth Sense: Detecting Plagiarism and Errors of Fact

Many thanks today to freelance editor Gayle Johnson, who presents an intriguing study on how to use your intuition to spot errors as you edit.

If you’re a copy editor, you need more than just excellent spelling, grammar, and punctuation skills. You also need an ability to spot text that just doesn’t sound quite right. I call this “editor’s sixth sense.”

Blogger and former newspaper columnist Nancy Nall recently used her editor’s sixth sense to excellent effect in a story that made national headlines. As she wrote on her blog a few days ago, she became suspicious of a column written by White House aide Tim Goeglein, which appeared in the Fort Wayne, Indiana News-Sentinel.

So what in that particular column caught Nall’s attention? One small thing: a person’s name. Nall wrote on her blog: “I started to read, and a name jumped out at me—‘Eugene Rosenstock-Hussey,’ described as a ‘notable professor of philosophy at Dartmouth.’ ... Surely [Goeglein] can acquaint himself with notable professors of philosophy at Dartmouth while I watch the Oscars. But this name was so goofy, just for the hell of it, I Googled it.”

Nall’s online search revealed that Goeglein’s column matched almost word-for-word a Dartmouth Review essay written by Jeffrey Hart years earlier. After learning of Nall’s blog post alleging the plagiarism, newspaper staffers began reviewing Goeglein’s past columns. They found that 20 of 38 had portions copied from other sources. Goeglein resigned his White House job after admitting to the plagiarism.

Editor’s sixth sense can help you do more than just spot potential plagiarism, however. It also can help you find factual errors. (Even if your official job duties don’t include fact checking, I still recommend investigating anything that seems questionable.) In addition, your sixth sense can help you notice repeated text. I’ve edited more than one book in which the author inadvertently included the same sentence or even an entire paragraph more than once within the same chapter or in two different chapters. In such a case, your sixth sense says, “Hmm—that text sounds awfully familiar.”

Today it’s easier than ever to use technology to aid your editor’s sixth sense by checking out suspect text. It’s easy to search the file(s) you’re working on for repeated text and for inconsistencies in the spelling and use of terms, acronyms, and people’s names. You can use the Internet for occasional quick fact checking. (I also sometimes do online searches to learn more about a subject that the author mentions only briefly. Or when the author uses a term, acronym, or abbreviation that I haven’t heard of, I’ll look it up to see what it means.)

Take a moment to test your own sixth sense. Can you spot the mistake in each of the following sentences?

• In a speech made in 1960, John F. Kennedy challenged the U.S. to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
• In 1964 a group of mop-top teenagers from Liverpool, England—Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr—took America by storm with their engaging brand of rock ’n’ roll.

In the first sentence, JFK made this statement in 1961, after he became president. In the second sentence, the Beatles were not teenagers in 1964. In February of that year, when the Beatles began their first U.S. tour, Starr and Lennon were 23, McCartney was 21, and Harrison was 20.

I remember the JFK example from a book I edited a couple years ago. I was pretty sure that Kennedy introduced his man-on-the-moon vision early in his presidential career, not while he was still a candidate. I thought maybe it had been a part of his inaugural address. But when I looked it up, I found that he made this remark in a speech before a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961. Concerning the second example (taken from an article in Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History, Fall 2002), I happen to know a lot about the Beatles. But I suspect that even someone with limited Beatle knowledge might wonder if they were really just teens when they arrived in America.

If you’re considering becoming an editor, certain traits can help you develop your editor’s sixth sense:

• Being well-read
• Having a wide range of knowledge
• Interest in a variety of topics
• Curiosity
• Attention to detail

Having a good memory also comes in handy!