Say It Ain't So, Fake Steve!

I was hit with some disappointing news this morning: Fake Steve Jobs is quitting his blog. I could always count on FSJ for a belly laugh from The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, even if it was sometimes over-the-top cruel and ridiculous. It's a parody, after all.

The good news is that Daniel Lyons, the real Fake Steve, is starting another blog under his real name. He's also published a book based on the blog's premise (Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody), is working on a screenplay, and is making available two Blurb versions of the blog's greatest hits.

Much love, Fake Steve. We'll be watching you.

Taking Personal Branding to the Grave

When I heard what my uncle had engraved on his tombstone (nevermind that he's only 64 and nowhere near dying), I had to go see it for myself. Uncle Larry has always been known as the sportsman of the family, taking every opportunity to hunt and fish. He became known for this--it was his brand. I wondered whether he got tired of getting fish-themed Christmas gifts, such as the largemouth bass downspout covers. But apparently not. He's chosen to put fish on his tombstone.






While I was at the cemetery (which also contains three of my great-grandparents and is ideally situated next to the mall), I spotted a few other tombstones that perpetuated their occupants' personal brands. For example, this guy apparently liked cars:











Inevitably, my thoughts turned to how I might be able to sum up my life and brand on a slab of marble. I'll have to ponder that one further. My husband suggested the slogan "Gone Editin'," but maybe instead it should be "I'm with Stupid."



I did find one fellow whose method rang true with me:




It's succinct, it's classy, and it's fairly nice (although don't you sometimes use "unique" to describe the weird people you know?).

So what about you--what do you want on your tombstone?

Motley Fool Editor Job Posting

I just read this job posting and got a good giggle from it. I sometimes catch the Motley Fool radio show on NPR, and it's good to see that their sense of humor carries over even to their job postings.

Want to work for them? Here are a few of the qualifications you'll need:

• Ability to leap tall buildings and catch typos in a single bound


• Grammar neurosis--you just can't stop thinking about it


• Ability to juggle porcupines


• Patience of a saint

If you want to work in Alexandria, Virginia; have at least two years of experience; and have a sense of humor, check this one out!

Jane Friedman: Editorial Director, F+W Publications

Today I am thrilled to share an interview with Jane Friedman. No, not that Jane Friedman. This Jane is Editorial Director at F+W Publications in Cincinnati, and also a fellow graduate of the University of Evansville. She's already had phenomenal career success and has a lot of interesting and valuable insights.

In undergrad, were you a composition major or a literature major? How did what you learned in college help you get into publishing?

I was a creative writing major (BFA), which is a somewhat uncommon degree. I took a combination of creative writing and literature courses, and had nearly complete independence in choosing what I studied. It wasn’t my coursework that was particularly helpful in my career, but rather my practical experience on the university newspaper and literary journal, as well as community publications work. It was also amazingly helpful to be schooled in AP style (which I did learn as part of a copyediting course through the journalism department).

Who were your favorite and most influential professors at UE and what did you get from them that helped you propel your career?

I was lucky enough to have two professors with connections to prominent people in publishing, Dr. William Baer and Margaret McMullan. Both of these professors were involved in publishing in one way or another, and Dr. Baer’s connection to someone at F+W Publications resulted in me securing a valuable internship between my junior and senior years at UE. Also, both professors were actively publishing their own work or others’ work, so they had significant practical experience, and offered very grounded and career-oriented advice to students. Based on what I’ve heard from other people’s experiences, particularly in MFA programs (or in just your basic English major program), this type of mentoring can be rare or neglected.

Tell us about your work on the Evansville Review. How did you get involved with the publication and how valuable was that experience?

The year before I became its editor, the journal was called the University of Evansville Literary Review, and it published only work from the UE community. At that time, I served as a volunteer reader of submissions. Every year, a new editor is chosen by a university publications board, and I was happily selected in spring 1996 to serve as the 1997 edition editor (I ran unopposed, so not a tough battle). Dr. Baer served as the journal’s adviser, and he and I talked about raising the profile of the journal by soliciting submissions from the public, rather than limiting it to the university. So we decided to change the journal’s name to the Evansville Review, and we ran an advertisement in the AWP Chronicle. From that point on, the dynamics of the publication changed tremendously; the staff become much more formalized (I hired a Poetry Editor, Fiction Editor, etc.), we designed a streamlined process for reviewing submissions, and we met on a weekly basis throughout the year. I learned a lot about how to build a team, the quirks of a nonprofit journal, and also just how much unpublished material is out there in the world!

Why did you decide to go to grad school and what did you study? How has it helped your career?

I started working at F+W Publications immediately after undergrad, even though I had wanted to attend graduate school instead. (I was strongly considering Emerson’s program in publishing at the time.) So it was always in the back of my mind that I would return to school once I was financially able to do so. However, rather than leave F+W entirely, I remained part-time while earning my master’s in English from Xavier University because a few key things fell into place: (1) It was across the street from the F+W offices at that time. (2) F+W was flexible with my hours. (3) I secured a graduate assistantship at the XU Writing Center that covered all my costs. The degree has been irrelevant to my publishing career, but I’ve put it to use by serving as an adjunct in composition at the University of Cincinnati, and teaching is something I do enjoy, so I’m glad I have it. It probably does give me a little extra credibility with some of our authors (particularly in the Writer’s Digest line), but still, the degree was more of a personal thing than a professional thing.

How did you get your first publishing job?

A few months before I graduated from UE, I e-mailed the editorial director who supervised my summer internship at F+W, and asked him for a job. Miraculously and generously, he said yes. (I can’t see that happening in the current publishing climate, at least not at F+W.)

At F+W, you went from managing a magazine to managing books. Was that a difficult transition?

Not at all, though I suspect my experience is unique. F+W is more like a media company that parcels out its content in different formats and packages, across a variety of niche audiences (in my case, writers). So I worked for Writer’s Digest magazine for a while, then moved to Writer’s Digest Books, which is really the same kind of game, with a lot of the same players. It also helped that I had previous experience in the book division before moving to Writer’s Digest magazine. But F+W editors often move between the magazine and book division successfully.

You've risen to the role of editorial director and yet you are still relatively young (at least compared to me!). What factors contributed to your amazingly successful career progression so far?

There’s that old saying that luck is where opportunity meets preparedness, and that has proven particularly true in my career progression at F+W. Within the past five years, I’ve advanced because I was the most natural person to take on the responsibility, plus there’s an element of making it up as you go along. If you go back 5 or 10 years, you wouldn’t find anyone in my role; I haven’t really replaced someone as much as I’ve nurtured a multi-faceted team that’s responsible for many types of products. Aside from pure circumstance (and sticking around one company for a long time!), I’d say my flexibility, passion for publishing, and desire to push boundaries has been integral.

What is your job description and what are you responsible for?

I’m responsible for the vision, strategy, and performance of multiple book imprints at F+W, including Writer’s Digest Books (15-20 new titles each year), Writer’s Market annuals (10 new titles each year), HOW Books (15 new titles each year), TOW Books (still evolving), and, to a lesser extent, Betterway Sports and what remains of the Story Press imprint. Day to day, I direct and support the staff who do the hands-on acquisitions, development, and editing/design of our titles, and of course I deliver reports and assessments to the people above me (or partnered with me). I feel like my job description changes month by month, given all the technological advances in media and publishing. Right now, I spend a great deal of time on the digitization and online efforts for all of my imprints, as well as on communication with our niche audiences, through my blog and other sites. I’m also becoming an active partner with our conference division, in an effort to launch a new event for writers.

What do you look for when you hire people (skills, experience, personality traits)? Do you find it difficult to find qualified people outside the east coast "hub" of publishing?

Yes, it is difficult to find qualified people, especially since Cincinnati is not exactly a cultural hotspot (yet), and F+W salaries rarely entice someone to relocate. What usually happens is we hire relatively young people, with little to no publishing experience, who demonstrate some kind of passion or sensibility for publishing and/or for the subject area in question. Then we groom them to advance into positions of greater responsibility. If I look at my staff, this is a very accurate description of how all of us came through the door and have landed in our current roles; there isn’t a single person who came to us from the coast (though some people have left for the coast!).

How many editors are on your team? How many titles do you produce a year?

There are seven editors on my team and three designers. We also have three data-entry assistants for the Market Books area. We produce about 50 books every year in my area alone.

Here's your chance to plug some books. What's new at F+W?

I’ll mention some of our most innovative books in 2008 that give a sense of the diversity of our list:

• Kawaii Not by Meghan Murphy (HOW Books), a collection of charming cartoons on perforated pages, so you can share them with friends.


• The Serfitt & Cloye Gift Catalog by Bob Woodiwiss (TOW Books), a parody of upscale gift catalogs, with wonderful illustrations; coming out later this fall and one of my favorites this year (maybe because I did the editing).


• Alone With All That Could Happen by David Jauss (Writer’s Digest Books), perhaps the most sophisticated fiction-writing instruction guide we’ve ever published; should impress even the writing-instruction naysayers!


• Chicken a la King and the Buffalo Wing by Steven Gilbar (Writer’s Digest Books), a gifty reference (with recipe cards!) of how certain foods got their names from people or places. Coming out this fall.


• Written on the City: Graffiti Messages Worldwide by Josh Kamler and Axel Albin (HOW Books), a book of photographs of text-based graffiti. Striking and lovely, also coming out this fall.

Do you get tired of living in the shadow of "the other Jane Friedman"?

Quite the contrary! I adore having a doppelganger, considering how admirable and forward-thinking TOJF is. When she exited HarperCollins just last month, I received a few misdirected e-mails wishing TOJF all the best, and one of them referred to her as “El Jefe.” Could I really ask for anything more?

A New Take on the Cover You Critiqued

After some very frustrating floundering, I think we have remade the cover (and title) for Be Your Own Agent into something that hits our target audience a little better. If you'll recall, the old cover and title looked like this:

The general consensus was that the cover looked like it was meant for 40-year-old women. In fact, the target audience is young graduates and college students, and even though the author is an accomplished woman in a man's world, I think guys will be more interested in her career as the agent to people like Jon Smoltz, Jeff Francouer, Chip Caray, Isiah Thomas, Mark DeRosa, and Ryuji Imada. Even the title confused people. So it was back to the drawing board.

Here's the latest incarnation. What do you think? I think we will be tweaking the subtitle to change "connect with" to "score." And the colors are all out of whack here. But you get the idea.

Update: I tried a different file format and got the colors right now.

Giving an Informational Interview Today

I don't know how it happened, but somehow I became the official informational-interview go-to girl at JIST. An informational interview is when a job seeker or career explorer requests a meeting with someone in their target field, just to get information and advice, despite the fact that there is no job opening. Because so many of our books tell people to go out and set up these interviews, and because they are really helpful to people, I never felt like I could turn anyone down when they asked for one.

For a while after I started this blog, though, I was telling people to just go read it and then contact me again if they had further questions. Being an introvert, it was nice to be able to avoid meeting strangers and taking time out of my day.

But I've agreed to meet someone today at 11. I don't even know the person who referred her to me. She found me in a roundabout way through LinkedIn. But she seems very nice and I am happy to try to help her.

I'm in a weird position, though, because I read so many books about how to conduct these interviews (from the job seeker's perspective). I feel like I have an unfair advantage. Do I go ahead and hit her up with sports agent Molly Fletcher's key interview question: "Who are you and what do you want?"

I don't have to prep too much for this beyond reading her resume ahead of time (most books tell you not to send a resume, but I always request one because it helps me know the person and figure out how to advise him or her). I am trying to do some neglected filing and recycling so that she doesn't think I work in a dumpster with a window. And I managed to put on makeup today. But no pantyhose--not on a 90-degree July day.

Jumping on the Meme Bandwagon

One popular game that bloggers like to play is to take one of those lists of "things you didn't know about me" that we used to get via e-mail and put them on their blogs. Then whoever reads them is tagged and has to put them on their blogs. They call these sorts of self-perpetuating cultural phenomenons memes.

Not to be left behind in the latest fad, I'm going to do a meme today. I saw it on Krisan Matthews' Publishing Curve blog, and also on bluelightful, bluelicious, bluelovely (the blog of a publishing job seeker in Washington, D.C.).

Here are the instructions--consider yourself tagged:

(Disclaimers--Where is #51? I'm not counting books I haven't read completely. Seeing the movie also doesn't count.)

The National Endowment for the Arts has an initiative you may have heard of called the Big Read. According to the website, its purpose is to "restore reading to the center of American culture." They estimate that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

For fun, let's see how many of the top 100 books we've actually read. My list is below. How well did you do? Have you read more than 6?

Here's what you do:
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE. (We're using square brackets since Blogger won't underline)
4) Reprint this list on your own blog.

1 [Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen]
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 [Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte]
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
[12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy]
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (close, but no cigar)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
[22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald]
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
[54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen]
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
[68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding]
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - A. S. Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (the author and I share a birthday)
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

My score: 33/100