The Friday Wrap-Up 5/16/08

Wow...the last couple of days have been incredibly busy, both at work and in my personal life. Unfortunately, it means the blog has been slightly neglected. This makes me feel rather guilty. I haven't had much time to respond to your comments either, which I do appreciate very much. My apologies on both accounts! Things probably aren't going to slow down anytime soon either. But I'm going to do my best to keep my loyal readers happy by posting on at least a near-daily basis.

Here's some links to what I've read in the past week. Hope you find some interesting tidbits!

• An Unappealing Byproduct, Part 3 (Author Impact)
• Help us plan Publishing 3.0
• Publishing Is Like . . .
• I Can Make This Work
• Good Authoring Series – Getting Your Book into Bookstores
• A book publisher’s manifesto for the 21st century
• The fall of book publishing’s last don.
• HarperCollins to Launch Online Sales Catalog
• An Author's Humanity
• Getting Published
• Things Newbies Say
• is podcasting social media?

It's That Time of Year Again...

Our fiscal year is coming to a close at the end of this month. Of course, that means it's time for our annual performance reviews. I never like this time of the year because there's so much involved in the process:

• Scrambling at the last minute to complete performance and professional development goals.
• Completing the notorious (and dreaded) Self-Evaluation.
• Biting your nails waiting for your performance review to be approved by all of the "higher ups."
• Meeting with your supervisor to discuss your performance review and crossing your fingers that there aren't any surprises.
• Finally, about 4 months later, finding out your pay increase for the next fiscal year.

The end of the fiscal year always seems like it's really far off in the distance. But then it creeps up on you and you realize, uh-oh! I still have to finish up a few goals by May 31st. This year in particular, I've been trying to finish up some things at the last minute because I was essentially forced into changing one of my goals in April. (See my post a while ago about the developmental editing course I was supposed to take.)

And then of course, I still have my self-evaluation hanging over my head. I really have a hard time evaluating my own work and performance. I always seem to be a bit tougher on myself than I probably should and don't always give myself the "pat on the back" I truly deserve. Plus, how do you truly take stock of everything you've done in the past 12 months? I have a hard enough time remembering what I worked on last month, let alone 12 months ago.

This time of year has been hitting me like a ton of bricks, yet again. I know I'll accomplish everything I need to; but there may be some hair-pulling and nail-biting on my part before it's all over.

Phone Calls with Authors

I'm a fairly shy and quiet person. Most of the time I prefer to use e-mail or talk in person as opposed to making a phone call. Don't ask me why...but I just have never liked the phone much. Oftentimes I have to push myself to pick up the phone and call someone. (Heck, I don't even like ordering Chinese take-out over the phone!)

I had a phone call with one of my authors yesterday. I was incredibly nervous about how it would go because I had to rewrite a good portion of her manuscript to bring the reading level down. The manuscript I returned to her a couple of weeks ago looked like I had bled all over it in Track Changes. When she e-mailed me to set up yesterday's phone call, I got the impression she was really upset with my edits. It sounded like she thought my rewrites had diluted the content.

So, needless to say, I really was not looking forward to this phone call. Of course I want my author to be happy and our relationship to be conflict-free.

Luckily, I had nothing to worry about. She was surprisingly easygoing and open to my suggestions. The call lasted about 20 minutes and we just ran through a few areas she had questions about. Nothing terribly painful. But I sometimes think that authors expect to go from first draft to final draft immediately. In the case of this manuscript, we're currently on our third draft. And it may take another before we can officially call it "final" and ready for copyediting. I could tell the need for several drafts was definitely not what this particular author was expecting.

In the end, I feel like I learned several things from this phone call.

First of all, I shouldn't jump to conclusions or feel nervous about talking over the phone. It's just something I need to learn to deal with.

Second of all, it's important to have a connection with your author over the phone - not just through e-mail - because it makes your relationship a bit more personal. Hearing their voice over the phone is much more telling than reading an e-mail, in which the tone and intention can sometimes be misconstrued.

Lastly, it's important to help educate your author about what's really involved in the publishing process. Open their eyes to the possibility of delays and multiple drafts. No manuscript is the same...some require more work and fine-tuning than others. Since I'm fairly new to working with authors in the capacity of a developmental editor, I'm still learning the best ways to communicate these things to the authors I'm working with.

The Friday Wrap-Up 5/9/08

This week, the Friday Wrap-Up is a bit light. But I hope you will find at least a small tidbit of interest amongst these links. Enjoy...and see you next week!

• Great Production
• Which Author Remains Obscure Because of All the Ink Wasted on Barbara Walters?
• The Birth of a New Idea
• 12 Reasons to Start Twittering
• From the Department of Redundancy Department
• Dreams
• Adventures in Agenting
• Putting the Book Proposal First

Freelance Editing Update

A few months ago I wrote about wanting to break into freelance editing in addition to my full-time job as an Editorial Assistant. I was really excited about the prospect of getting more experience under my belt as an editor, and also making extra money on the side. I started working through some books on copyediting and trying to brush up on my skills. My momentum was going strong!

But then my life at work became even busier than usual. One of our editors left for a new job and I was given even more work to juggle. My focus was on my full-time job and I didn't have much energy at the end of the day to try my hand at freelancing. In all honesty, my 12+ hour days have been wearing me down for some time now and when my workload increased, I felt like I hit a brick wall.

Things have finally lightened up a bit. I'm still pretty busy with multiple projects at work, but I have more time to devote to my personal life and freelance work. So I'm ready to get the freelance ball moving again.

The big question is: how do I find my first freelance opportunity?

I really want to start out slowly and see if I can handle a full-time job and side projects. But nothing posted on Craigslist or some of the other freelance sites has struck my fancy.

Anyone have a good lead for me? Or know of a good resource for freelance opportunities?

Slow Week...Sorry for My Absence!

This has been a surprisingly slow week for me, and I haven't had much to say. Sorry I haven't posted anything in the past couple of days. I feel like my head is finally above water with all of the projects I've been working on. And believe me...it's a wonderful feeling!

I'll probably be a bit light on posting for the rest of this week. But I will be sure to do the Friday Wrap-Up and will be back to regular blogging next week.

The Friday Wrap-Up 5/2/08

I feel rather accomplished today. As I look at my daily to-do list, it's gotten much smaller over the past week. I was able to knock out some really big projects along with some boring-but-you-gottta-do-it stuff. What a great way to end the week!

Now I'm looking forward to a relaxing weekend. Hope you have a great one!

• Publishing role visualization
• On Publishing with A Small Press
• Ebook Format Primer - Tools of Change for Publishing
• Encyclopedia Britannica Now Free For Bloggers
• Day in the Life of a Freelance Writer
• 10 Reasons to Send a Letter Rather Than Email
• Choosing Which Books to Publish
• You’re an Author? Me Too!
• The Awful Revelation