#publishing nerd

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Some Vic's-kitchen-at-the-Anchor nerdery. 

The cookbook at the front is delicious.: 5 of the Best, by Valli Little. It collects recipes from delicious. magazine. I happen to own a copy. It's pretty great.

Here's the blurb: 

Stuck for a simple yet scrumptious midweek meal, or searching for an exciting new recipe for a special dinner party? Then look no further: ‘5 of the Best’ is the answer to a cook’s prayer, offering all this and more. Internationally known food editor Valli Little has trawled through five years’ worth of delicious. magazine’s favourite feature recipes to bring you a stunning selection of dishes for every day and every occasion. This book will quickly establish itself as the only cookery book you’ll ever need, as it fast tracks to the very best recipe in a wide range of categories. No more searching through other books for the simplest starter, the most successful fish dish or the most delectable dessert. Whether it’s side dishes or main courses, meat or vegetarian recipes you’re after, you’ll find it here in no time in this easy- to-access collection.

All the dishes are quick and easy to make, with creative yet accessible combinations of ingredients and simple, straightforward methods. Beautifully illustrated and with a total of 150 recipes, ‘5 of the Best’ really does provide a complete – and, of course, delicious – culinary repertoire.

Allow me to get my publishing nerd on.

This is an Australian book but that copy was obviously purchased in the UK (see: price sticker in pounds). I can't quite make out the logo on the spine but it's definitely not the ABC Books logo, which makes it a coedition rather than an export copy. A quick dig online says Quadrille licensed UK rights, and I guess the spine logo matches that, although I can't say for sure.

It doesn't look like a library book, which means Vic probably didn't 'long-term borrow' it, as we know he did some of his other cooking reference materials.

5 of the Best was first published in 2007 in the UK and is the most recent-looking of all of the cookbooks visible here (with the possible exception of the one at the back, which I can't get a good look at).

Headcanon: Vic feels like he's across most of what he needs to know about cooking, but he likes to read some more recent stuff every now and again to try out new things. And to feel a slight sense of moral superiority when he finds errors and inconsistencies in the recipes: the ingredients list don't match the method, for example. He doesn't get to feel morally superior all that often. 

I'd like to think that he didn't outright steal this book, but, well. Who can say with Vic. This is definitely the kind of cookbook a middle-to-upper-class family might keep in their holiday home, so.

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Somehow our culture has persuaded itself that the naked quest for financial gain, often through the devising and trading, on monstrous amounts of (very low interest) borrowed money, of what Warren Buffett has called instruments of mass destruction, is a more urgent and honorable calling than the passionate pursuit of truth and beauty. I’ve tried to suggest that at least a portion of that pursuit can have gratifying economic results. (Plus it will not plunge us into an endless recession!) But that’s not really the point. The point is truth and beauty, without which our lives will lack grace and meaning and our civilization will be spiritually hollowed out and the historical bottom line will be that future epochs will remember us as a coarse and philistine people who squandered our bottomlessly rich cultural inheritance for short-term and meaningless financial advantage. And that is why you should major in English.

Triumph of the English Major, by Gerald Howard

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The editor’s job has always been a combination of elements, of which actual editing is just one part. The first thing an editor is is an investor: They are trusted by their company’s owners to invest their money in writers. They are publicists for their company and themselves, getting authors and agents to submit great books to them for publication. They are negotiators, working to arrive at contract terms that will, if all goes well, enable their company to make a profit selling the book. The editor is the first point of contact the publishing company has with the writer, and often the closest relationship, and the core of that relationship is the work of editing. The writer trusts the book to the editor, to read before others and perhaps suggest improvements. If the writer values that advice, the bond can become deep and long-lasting. So after good judgment about what books are worth investing in, editorial skill is the editor’s most important qualification. In modern publishing, as the business has grown in sophistication, size, and complexity, the editor's other big role has gotten bigger. That is, the editor as product manager—the person who knows the entire length and breadth of the business and can communicate all that complexity to the author and agent at the same time that he represents the author’s work within the company. This is the part of the job that takes up all the time: working with the writer, the publishing company, and the world outside on things like title, subtitle, timing, pricing, positioning, cover art, type design, selling copy, publicity strategy, marketing approach, budgeting, and all-round enthusiasm spreading. So to edit a book is to work on all this and much more, for many books at once at different stages in those books’ lives. But like editing, all that work is invisible in the long run. The thing that lasts, the miracle at the center of it all, is the string of words that a writer has strung. That's it.

Michael Pietsch, CEO of Hachette, in conversation with Donna Tartt (absolutely cannot wait to read The Goldfinch)

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One of the reasons I knew I had no future in publishing/editorial was that I always sat down to edit a manuscript with a feeling of dread. But I agreed to freelance edit an ms, 4th in a series and I'd done 2 and 3, for my old boss, both for the money and because I adore the author. And I enjoyed it a lot more than I had in the past.

It sounds kind of dumb to say, "I hated editing because it's so time-consuming," but since it's 30-50 hours of work done almost entirely at home at night and on weekends, for no extra pay, it encroaches more than a little bit on your non-work life. But doing it freelance, for a nice chunk of change and at 2pm on a Thursday at the library with a lovely desert view, is a lot easier to swallow. Doing the first rounds of edits was really satisfying, because the book is great and wraps up the series really well. I'm going through the author's revisions right now, and remembering how really really satisfying it is to see an author take a comment like, "The tension isn't high enough in this scene" and turn it into a nail-biting, breathtakingly exciting showdown. To tell someone "I know you can do better" and have them go even higher than the bar you set--that's fun.

And the other fun thing is writing dumb comments in the margins like, "Now I have the The O.C. theme song stuck in my head" and having her respond back, "Californiaaaaaaaa!"

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The Brazilian cover for one of my favorite books, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landeau-Banks by E. Lockhart. I want this as a poster.

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That’s why I think why Don was mystified [when Megan] wanted to go into acting, which, to most people is the dumbest thing you could ever do because there’s absolutely no security or guarantees in that. Other than music it’s probably the world’s most corrupt and filthy business. Or publishing.

Jon Hamm speaks the truth

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Grant Ginder on his new novel DRIVER'S EDUCATION:

Honestly, when I first started writing this book, I had a lot of trouble with it, and I wrote like two drafts of it that were shitty and terrible. I was having a conversation with my friend Max that I went to grad school with and was sort of lamenting with him about the trouble I was having with it, and he asked, “Well, what are you trying to do?” And I said, “I really just fucking want to tell a good story." And I was sort of in the midst of the [N.Y.U. Masters of Fine Arts] program at this point, and when you’re in an M.F.A. program, everyone’s so worried about the significance of his or her work. I was thinking I really just wanted to write a good story. Very fun, you know, with plot twists and turns.

The longer I work in publishing, the more I pay attention to what makes me say, "Ok, I'll add that book to my Amazon wishlist." Like I read A Brief History of Montmaray because I kept seeing gorgeous graphics of it on Tumblr, Gone Girl because an agent I follow on Twitter kept linking to rapturous reviews, Pulphead because I really like the author's NYT essay on smoking pot at Disneyland. It's pretty rare that an author interview will push me into picking up a book (because duh, of course the author thinks it's great--but off the top of my head, an interview with Emily Danforth where she describes the research she did for The Miseducation of Cameron Post and another with Erin Duffy about owning the "chick lit" label for Bond Girl are exceptions) but this one did the trick. There's no bigger warning sign than "I wrote this for my MFA while I was studying Camus and Hesse, and was really striving to channel the truth of the universe onto the page." Ugh. Just fucking tell me a good story. [Of absolutely no consequence is that the author appears to be kind of hot.]