Stranger than fiction

I am not making this up:

Go on. Click the headline. It’s real. Really.

Really real.

Hard-boiled detective: Someone, give me an opening line.

Jack was waiting for me in the street, leaning against the squad car and smoking a cigarette. "Maybe it's a retirement gift," he suggested, and I nearly punched him.

-bd

Red pen fever

Speaking of magazine editors ….

Did you know some educational theorists suggest that teachers should not use red pens in correcting students’ homework and tests because the red ink is widely perceived as intimidating?

Well, no wonder.

Okay, I know it’s a bit political, but did anyone catch last month when Vanity Fair took to former Alaska Gov. Sarha Palin’s speech announcing her intention to resign?

If you watched Sarah Palin’s resignation speech, you know one thing: her high-priced speechwriters moved back to the Beltway long ago. Just how poorly constructed was the governor’s holiday-weekend address? We asked V.F.’s red-pencil-wielding executive literary editor, Wayne Lawson, together with representatives from the research and copy departments, to whip it into publishable shape. Here is the colorful result.

Colorful, indeed. Obviously, I have a lot to learn about editing a manuscript. I mean, I always feel like I’m nitpicking when I read through friends’ manuscripts. Heavens to bogosians, though—I feel so lame, now.

At any rate, don’t let it frighten you.

-bd

Transitioning from magazine to book editor

The realities of being a book editor can prove challenging to those editors migrating from the magazine world, as this piece from The New York Observer attests.

Notes for Andy Ward, on the Eve of His Move to Random House
By Leon Neyfakh

Random House surprised the publishing industry Monday with the hiring of GQ executive editor Andy Ward, who will be joining the editorial staff of the house’s flagship imprint in mid-September. Though Mr. Ward began his career in letters as an editorial assistant at Little, Brown, he has spent the past 13 years working in magazines—the most recent six at GQ, and the seven before that at Esquire. Mr. Ward is just one of several magazine editors who have made the jump into the book business during the past year and a half, a trend that made us wonder: Just how different is the life of a magazine editor from that of a book editor, and do the people who trade one in for the other know what they’re getting into?

And so, having conducted interviews with a number of publishing people who began their careers in the magazine world, we’ve come up with the following crib sheet for Mr. Ward and anyone else who follows in his footsteps:

>>read entire article

Couple more literary reps added

The tentative SCWC*LA7 schedule for September’s conference is now posted. A couple more additions have been made on the literary reps front, as well. From Manus Entertainment, Marc Manus will be with us, accepting advance submissions of screenplay. In particular, he’s on the hunt for original voices with a strong sense of concept in the action, comedy and thriller genres. He likes good biographical subject matter too. And from the Andy Ross Literary Agency, agent Andy Ross is aboard, looking for narrative nonfiction dealing with history, politics and current events, science, journalism, and cultural subjects. Andy brings a unique perspective of publishing trends and the retail book market to the scene as, before forming his agency, he was owner and general manager of Cody’s Books in Berkeley, CA, recognized as one of the greatest independent bookstores in the nation. How cool is that!

–msg