Friday, October 31, 2008

Tidbits to come...

On Thursday and Friday, October 30 and 31, I visited two academic publishers in New York: NYU Press and Columbia University Press. It was an amazing trip, punctuated by a wonderful evening at Broadway Baby hearing Jan Constantine and Sue Elicks sing. Jan serves as General Counsel for the Author's Guild, but what many don't (yet) know about her is that she performs cabaret at various venues in New York, and that she and her singing partner are amazingly wonderful alone and together. I went with literary agent Milly Marmur, and we had so much fun.

You won't believe what I learned about publishing from visiting the two presses. I have visited university presses since early 2006, going to The University of Chicago Press, Northwestern University Press, The University of Arizona Press, Johns Hopkins University Press, and Oxford University Press in addition to these two most recent visits. But every trip is different, and the conversations vary as publishing evolves (and yes -- things can change just that fast). I came home with five remarkable trade secrets that I'll share here, one blog posting at a time, starting tomorrow when I'm better rested.