(View entire post here)

In the previous Blog, details were revealed about that perennial question, ”Why did you do this book?” Today we’re looking at “What” goes into putting a book like this together. If you’re coming up with your own material, based on real-life or fiction…..you’ve got yer job cut out to get those experiences over in the most entertaining way. With non-fiction you’re in a different ball park.

It was 2001 and my space oddity was to be filled with other peoples work! I’d decided to pull together a compendium of the maps to every subway system on earth. Issue number one to tackle: how many are there? This it turns out is less a question of counting than the more thorny issue of editorially deciding what does or what does not constitute a “subway”, “metro”, “u-bahn”, “underground” or “T”. In fact there are almost as many collective nouns for the worlds urban rail systems as there are types of system. For instance there are “subway” systems which include sections that run on elevated track. There are “Els” that pass into tunnels for part of their route. There are also Metro’s that turn into trams and trolleybuses that pass into U-Bahn tunnels! The choice of what to include and what to leave out became a daunting one!

By 2002 I’d got several reliable - though at times conflicting - lists of what should constitute a “proper” subway system and I’d collected the required official maps of about 80% of them. The next few tasks though would form the deal breaker of the first publication of this collection.

(View entire post here)

If this blog post had a nineteenth century subtitle, it would be In Whiche Meetings Make the World Go Round or possibly In Whiche Our Heroine Discusses Manuscriptes That Shall One Day Be Bookes in Front of a Large Grouping of People Who Work at Penguin, Purveyors of Fine Bookes Ltd.

Today I went to three meetings. The first one was an editorial meeting. Because Roc is really a sub-imprint of NAL, I attend the NAL editorial meeting. There, we bring up anything that's come in and we'd like to get another read on, or that we think we want to buy. Sometimes editors even bring up books they don't think are right for our imprint, because they think they might sell elsewhere or are otherwise notable. Discussion ensues, and very often kind colleagues will offer to take a look. Publishing really is often a process of consensus, which I like very much.

In the afternoon, I attended the publisher's meeting about Roc's July 08 mass markets (for example: Justine Musk's follow up to Bloodangel, Lord of Bones) and the strategy meeting about Roc's August 08 mass markets (including, but not limited to, Gale Force, Rachel Caine's new Weather Warden novel!). They are fairly similar in scope and style--an editor introduces each book and gives the major selling points for it. The sales, publicity, ad/promo, art and copy department representatives hang rapt with attention to every brilliant pearl that springs from our lips. Well, maybe not every word is brilliant (possibly 1 in 20?), but it's a good chance for every department to make sure we're on the same page about a book (unintential almost-pun) and to talk about what each department plans to do for the book. At the pub meetings, which are about a month after the strats, the covers are generally ready and they get passed around. This is the first time the sales department has seen the covers, and they'll sometimes suggest changes.