I'm sure that when people hear me talk about my job, they ask themselves exactly that question. Is working in publishing the result of one wrong turn or is it more like death by a thousand papercuts? Frankly, that's a damn good question. I mean, the route from art school to publishing production is hardly a direct one (though it's surpsingly popular, judging by the number of my coworkers who have Fine Arts degrees). The best explanation I can come up with is this:
In every industry, there are two basic kinds of people (okay - three, but we're not counting sales and marketing departments): on one side, you have the "What Are We Going to Do" people. On the other, you have the "How Are We Going to Do It" people. The first kind are the ones that come up with the brilliant ideas. The second kind are the ones that make those ideas reality. Publishing production thrives on the second kind.
Every day, some editor is coming up with a new "brilliant idea" and no matter how idiotic I may think it is, I have to make it happen. Not only that, I have to do it faster and cheaper than anyone else can do it, otherwise my company loses business.
But there is a different kind of reward in doing this job, too. I usually compare it to the feeling of climbing up a mountain - while you're doing it, it pretty much sucks, but when you get to the top of the mountain and look back down, you can say with pride "I did that."
Not the ideal route to happiness and job satisfaction, but sometimes you have to take what you can get. And that's a lesson that all art school grads learned early on. ;-)
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Monday, January 29, 2007
Why Are Kids So Dumb?
Even though I've been in the publishing industry for the past ten years, only a small part of that time has been spent in educational publishing. But even in that short time, I've discovered the basic question of American education - how can a process so monumentally stupid ever hope to create smart children?
Let me start with this:
My job is to move all that paper from one person to another, from writers to editors to printers and back again. For the record, that's the accumulated paper from only 4 months of work - roughly 50,000 pages of material. And all for a series of workbooks that will be given away free with the purchase of the hard cover student edition reading books that my client is producing.
Why would anyone spend that much on something that they won't make any money from? Because it's textbook adoption time in America. Here's a borrowed run-down of what textbook adoption is (thanks to edutopia.org):
"When it comes to setting the agenda for textbook publishing, only the 22 states that have a formal adoption process count. The other 28 are irrelevant -- even though they include populous giants like New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio -- because they allow all publishers to come in and market programs directly to local school districts.
Adoption states, by contrast, buy new textbooks on a regular cycle, usually every six years, and they allow only certain programs to be sold in their state. They draw up the list at the beginning of each cycle, and woe to publishers that fail to make that list, because for the next 72 months they will have zero sales in that state."
If you think Hollywood is nothing but a den of ass-kissing sycophants, try taking a look at the textbook world when Texas, Florida and California are shopping around for new textbooks. And the most comical part of all is when a company is trying to develop a program for both ultra-liberal California (where you can't say "snowman") and ultra-conservative Texas (where evolution is still a "theory"). And the best part of all is that all of this material must be produced between the time the last state releases its latest standards list (the list of skills that must be covered and when they must be addressed in a publisher's curriculum) and the time that sample books must be in the hands of the various state Boards of Education - typically three months.
More on this later, though. I'm damn tired right now. All that paper is really heavy.
Let me start with this:
My job is to move all that paper from one person to another, from writers to editors to printers and back again. For the record, that's the accumulated paper from only 4 months of work - roughly 50,000 pages of material. And all for a series of workbooks that will be given away free with the purchase of the hard cover student edition reading books that my client is producing.
Why would anyone spend that much on something that they won't make any money from? Because it's textbook adoption time in America. Here's a borrowed run-down of what textbook adoption is (thanks to edutopia.org):
"When it comes to setting the agenda for textbook publishing, only the 22 states that have a formal adoption process count. The other 28 are irrelevant -- even though they include populous giants like New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio -- because they allow all publishers to come in and market programs directly to local school districts.
Adoption states, by contrast, buy new textbooks on a regular cycle, usually every six years, and they allow only certain programs to be sold in their state. They draw up the list at the beginning of each cycle, and woe to publishers that fail to make that list, because for the next 72 months they will have zero sales in that state."
If you think Hollywood is nothing but a den of ass-kissing sycophants, try taking a look at the textbook world when Texas, Florida and California are shopping around for new textbooks. And the most comical part of all is when a company is trying to develop a program for both ultra-liberal California (where you can't say "snowman") and ultra-conservative Texas (where evolution is still a "theory"). And the best part of all is that all of this material must be produced between the time the last state releases its latest standards list (the list of skills that must be covered and when they must be addressed in a publisher's curriculum) and the time that sample books must be in the hands of the various state Boards of Education - typically three months.
More on this later, though. I'm damn tired right now. All that paper is really heavy.
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