Wastin' Away Again in Kindleville?

Joe Wikert's got a brand new blog. Don't panic--he's not giving up on his wildly successful Publishing 2020 blog. He's just become so interested in Amazon's new e-book reader, the Kindle, that he wanted to give his exploration of it its own space. Thus, he's inviting us all to join him in Kindleville--not to be confused with the tranquil town of Kendallville, Indiana, home of 10,000 happy Hoosiers and famous for...uh...according to Wikipedia, its annual meth lab explosion?

Anyway, the Kindle represents another step (time will tell how big) toward the end of the printed book as we know it. It, or its descendants, has the potential to completely change the business of book publishing. And if anyone can discern the truth amid all the hype from Amazon, and the negativity from the Luddites, it's Joe. So let's all gather up the kids and hit the road to Kindleville!

Some Insight into British Publishing Careers

One of the ways I dig up ideas for my blog is a bunch of Google alerts, which let me know whenever their web crawlers run across something that contains my specified keywords. Often the results I get include pages relevant to publishing in the UK. I have tended to ignore those because I assume most of the people reading this blog are Americans (correct me if I'm wrong).

I love the UK. Heck, I used to live there. But I'm guessing it would be pretty difficult for an American editor to get into the field over there. Not only do they spell a lot of things differently, but their whole writing tone is different than ours (overly wordy and stilted by comparison, but with a lot of odd "cutesy-isms" thrown in).

Nonetheless, I couldn't resist sharing this link to the Publishing Skills Group's Work in Publishing site. For the aspiring British publishing professional, there's a wealth of information on the industry, training, qualifications, career paths, and job postings.

Come to think of it, I can name at least three Brits who worked for a time in Pearson's Indianapolis office. I wonder whether they had a tougher learning curve than us natives. And for the record, if there's a UK publisher out there that could use an American editor, Jason and I are ready to come back at the drop of a hat!

Do Aspiring Editors Know Enough (or Care) About E-Book Rights?

Earlier this week, Publishers Weekly e-book blogger David Rothman called attention to a startling discovery by a publishing veteran teaching a graduate-level publishing course: Of the 30 students Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti polled, none of them had ever downloaded an e-book or owned a PDA. Rothman extrapolates this to mean that young aspiring editors are more interested in the content ("nurturing future Hemingways") than the new and future forms of content delivery.

Rothman invites readers to prove him wrong. But most of the commenters just proved his point. For example, one said "Why is it the editor's job to deal with E rights? I'm a young editor, and I have yet had to deal with rights other than registering copyright on a book. Is it really the EDITOR's job to deal with subrights and such? Granted, it just may be the way my company deals with things, but the editors here aren't involved in rights issues. Yes, I'm aware of the issues, but I'm not the one going out and making deals. Are we expecting the editors to do a bit of everything now?"

My two cents on this is that if you want to move up to be an acquisitions editor and beyond, you'd better understand rights issues, especially electronic rights. Acquisitions editors often find themselves in the position of explaining parts of the publishing contract to potential authors before they will sign. And rights are a big part of the contract. So you need to know enough about them and how they work to be able to ease a skittish author's mind that they're not giving your company their first-born.

Then there's the other five percent of authors, the ones who know enough about rights to be dangerous, or have a lawyer advising them. You need to know what rights are important to your company so that you don't end up giving them away in a negotiation. And these days, you should never let go of your electronic rights. Any request from an author to keep these rights should be a deal-breaker.

Cathie Black Talks About Her Publishing Career on NPR Today

Thanks to Erik Dafforn for the heads-up on this:

Cathie Black: "Basic Black" (Crown)

In 1979, Cathie Black became the first woman publisher of a weekly consumer magazine. Today, she manages such well-known magazines as Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Harper's Bazaar, Esquire, and O, The Oprah Magazine. She joins Diane Rehm to discuss her rise to the top of the publishing world and shares her advice on balancing career and family life.

Says Erik, "It says it's on the second hour (11am) but you might check at 10am just to be sure. It's on NPR, which you probably knew. Also, the shows are available for download within several hours of airing, in case you miss it."

Some Days Are Better Than Others

What a morning! Because of the ill-timed snowstorm in Indy, it took me two and a half hours to get to work today. No sooner did I get here and read one e-mail, the phone rang. It was a potential author I really wanted to talk to. In the middle of the conversation, the entire office went dark. Thankfully, we didn't lose our connection and I was able to communicate what I needed to him.

So we all filtered out of our offices and cubes to find out what was going on. Some people launched a flashlight expedition to the restroom. Others fretted that we could freeze to death if power wasn't restored soon. I opened all the blinds in my office and several of us converged on a printout of a near-final cover design, really working it over because we couldn't do anything else. Then I graded an applicant's editing test (we make people take it on hard copy because if we gave it to them online, they could use spell-check).

An hour and a half later, the lights came back on--just in time for lunch! Jim, the world's nicest CFO, is here from Minnesota and had already planned to bring in an Olive Garden buffet to celebrate year-end. So that was festive and fun.

So I guess it's been a pretty good day, despite not getting anything done. Yesterday wasn't bad, either: We got unexpected year-end bonuses; and I got in and out of the BMV to renew my license in less than 30 minutes. I must be living right!

Eight Tips for Using Fonts Effectively on Your Resume

Part of my job as queen of the resume books at JIST has been to take the sample resumes from the authors, proofread them (or have them proofed by someone else), check the fonts to make sure they look as the author intended, and fix as needed. Then I PDF them and send them to layout. Many of my books have as many as 100 sample resumes, and some have more than 300. So, many thousands of resumes have passed through my hands this way. And as you might recall, I am in the midst of hiring a new editor. So I’m looking at lots of real resumes now, too.

I love fonts—I just adore them—and using them correctly can have a big impact on your resume’s success (or failure). Here are some ideas for using fonts as effectively as possible on your resume.

1. If you’re using a font nobody else is likely to have on their computer, convert your resume to a PDF before you send it. Twice this week I got resumes that used some very obscure fonts. When I opened them on my computer, they had turned to generic-looking Courier because I don’t have those fonts installed. (And I just inherited a computer from a graphic designer, so I’ve got hundreds of fonts now.)
2. Don’t use more than two fonts on your resume. I like to use a nice true bold, sans serif font for the headings and a readable serif font for the text. There are always exceptions to this rule, and they can work fine. Just don’t make your resume look like a ransom note. (OMG, is that my own original thought, or did I subconsciously plagiarize it from Mike Farr? Sometimes I lose track.)
3. Stick to black text. I’ve seen some resumes that used color on the fonts for emphasis, and they were stunning onscreen. But when they were printed on a black-and-white printer (and not many offices have color printers), they were almost unreadable.
4. Don’t use goofy fonts. If I see one more resume done in the cartoonish Comic Sans font, I will scream. People, that is so 1990s. And it doesn’t help your credibility.
5. Don’t be afraid to keep it simple. Susan Britton Whitcomb, author of Résumé Magic, generally uses Times New Roman on most of her resumes—the most common font imaginable. But she makes it look elegant with proper boldfacing, small caps, and well-placed rules.
6. Use your font choice to perpetuate your personal brand. If you want to emphasize your creativity, you can use a script font (as long as it’s readable) for headings. If you’re an accountant, Times New Roman is a good choice. I’m experimenting with old newspaper fonts on my resume to put forward a “retro-but-savvy woman of words” image.
7. Pick the right font size. Some fonts are just naturally bigger than others. Experiment with sizes until you find one that’s readable and allows you to keep your resume on one or two pages.
8. If you’re pasting your resume into an e-mail or an online database, use Courier. In this case, font doesn’t matter, and it will probably end up looking like Courier, anyway. Be careful not to use rules or bullets, because they will drop out. Instead, you can use keyboard characters to imitate these elements.

In all honesty, if the perfect candidate's resume came across my desk and broke one of these rules, I would hope it wouldn't keep me from calling them in for an interview. But in the ultra-competitive game of job seeking, why not give yourself every advantage possible?

Directory of Publishing Associations from John Kremer

John Kremer is a book marketing consultant and author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books. He caters to the small indie press and self-publishing crowd. But still, I get his newsletter every week and there are often tips I find useful.

So I was happy, as I was trolling for more publishing associations to mention here, to find his list of nearly 100 of them. He freely admits that some may be out of date (for instance, I can't find much online evidence of the Indianapolis Publishers Association that he mentions). But there are still plenty of good leads here for ferreting out smaller publishers and contact names.