Handout version, 10 September 2013
AP/WRIT 3720 6.0 (Y) Books and Bookmaking in the 21st Century (2013-14)
Tuesdays, 2:30-5:30, VH 1005
Instructor: Geoffrey Huck, Ph.D.
Course website: http//:www.yorku.ca/ghuck/
General description: This course surveys the process of publishing a book from the evaluation of manuscript through the printing, marketing, and distribution of the final product. The structure and function of the organizational units of a typical publishing company – including acquisitions, editorial, production, art & design, rights & contracts, marketing, sales, customer service, fulfillment, and the business office – are closely examined. The focus is on both printed and electronic books, and attention is paid to technological developments that are changing not only how books are produced but also what constitutes a book, how it is written by writers, and how it is purchased, accessed, and read by consumers. Students participate in workshops in which they assume the roles of key personnel in a publishing company, Lion Cub Books, and learn how publishing decisions are made. Classes include lectures, discussion, invited guests (if available), and on-site tours (if possible).
This course is a prerequisite for AP/WRIT 4721 6.0 (Y) Book Publishing Practicum. Together, these courses constitute a two-year sequence that culminates in the publication of a real book through Leaping Lion Books in the second year of the sequence (see http://www.yorku.ca/llbooks). Students in AP/WRIT 3720 prepare for the publishing roles they will assume in AP/WRIT 4721.
Learning objectives
1. Understand the organization of the book publishing industry
2. Understand the organization of the typical book publishing company and the roles played by key personnel.
3. Understand the forces that continue to shape the industry and are likely to drive demand in the market now and in the near future.
4. Understand the technological context in which changes in the book industry are occurring
5. Understand the substantive editorial contributions that publishers make to the content of the books they publish
6. Understand the significant design, production, and marketing decisions that publishers make that affect the way books are received, perceived, and sought out by readers
7. Understand why publishers make the decisions they make concerning the content, design, format, price, and distribution of the books they publish
Prerequisites/Corequisites
PRWR 3720 3.0 Fundamentals of Editing, EN 3730 3.0 Substantive Editing, PRWR 3910 3.0 Mechanics of Style
Texts (All required books should be on reserve in Scott Library)
Required
· John B. Thompson, Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the 21st Century, 2nd Edition (2012, Polity Press)
· Kit Dobson & Smaro Kamboureli, Producing Canadian Literature: Authors Speak on the Literary Marketplace (2013, Wilfrid Laurier University Press)
· Bruce Jay Friedman, 3.1 Plays (2012, Leaping Lion Books) [Workshop Text 1]
· Nic Labriola, Francis and the Animals (2013, Leaping Lion Books) [Workshop Text 2]
· Course kit (containing Workshop Texts 3 & 4, which are still to be determined; the kit should be available in the York Bookstore by early November)
Recommended
· The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition (2010, University of Chicago Press). (Note that all York students have access to the electronic version of the Chicago Manual of Style through their library account, so it’s not necessary to buy this book for this course.)
Course requirements: Grades are based on four quizzes (12% each, total 48%), four workshop memos (10% each, total 40%), class participation (9%), a presentation (2%), and performance in the PubFight exercise (1%). The four workshop memos consist of one each on the two books published by Leaping Lion Books (Workshop Texts 1 & 2) and one each on the two manuscripts included in the course kit (Workshop Texts 3 and 4).
Tip for getting a good grade in this class: This should be an easy course if you come to class, participate regularly and avidly, and do all the assignments on time. Read this syllabus carefully and often – most of what you need to know about how the course operates is here. NB: You can lose lots of points by not following the directions given.
Brief description of workshop assignments: For each of the four assigned workshop texts (Workshop Texts 1 and 2 and the two unpublished manuscripts in the course kit called Workshop Texts 3 & 4), the class will be divided into teams representing the operating directors of a hypothetical publisher, Lion Cub Books. Although there will be a number of teams, for the purposes of the exercise each team is to assume that its members make up the entirety of Lion Cub Books and that there are no other teams or members of Lion Cub Books outside that team. Each team will comprise an editorial director, a production director, a marketing director, and a business director. Depending on the number of students enrolled, some teams may also have a rights & permissions director and a website director. The object for each team will be to come up with an integrated and persuasive book publishing plan for the designated book. This means that the team will have to submit plans for editing, producing, and marketing the book, with each operating director responsible for his or her area of operation.
In the first workshop exercise, all students will work on Text 1. The composition of the teams will be altered for Texts 2 and 3, so that you will have different teammates for those exercises. The composition of each team for Text 4 should be the same as that for Text 1. Ideally, each student will have the opportunity to fill the role of four different director positions (i.e., a different one for each text workshop) by the end of the course.
For each workshop text, each team will have an assigned budget. For the two already published books (Workshop Texts 1 and 2), the team’s plan should be to try to improve on the plan for the published book chosen by the actual publisher. In the case of the two manuscript texts (Workshop Texts 3 & 4), each team is free to consider any reasonable plan within the assigned budget. When a team reaches agreement on a comprehensive book plan, each member is to prepare a written memorandum to the Vice President of Lion Cub Books (in this case, the course director), arguing for the portion of the proposed book plan in his or her area of responsibility.
An important part of each workshop exercise is determining how to allocate scarce resources so they have the maximum impact on the success of the book. Each director will estimate the costs of her/his particular plan on a worksheet that is to be distributed first to his/her other team members and, when agreement is reached, then to the course director along with the memorandum.
For the assignments concerning Workshop Texts 3 & 4, each director will have added responsibilities. For both Workshop Texts 3 & 4, the editorial director will be required to submit with his/her memo a copyedited version of pp. 1-20 of the manuscript. For both Workshop Texts 3 & 4, the production director will submit a cover design, with both a visual representation and a written description of, and argument for, the design. For both Workshop Texts 3 and 4, the marketing director will write copy for the back cover or jacket of the book. And, for both Workshop Texts 3 and 4, the business director will justify the print run and also estimate the potential for exploiting the intellectual property associated with the manuscript (e.g., serial rights, movie rights, audio versions, greeting cards, derivative works like instructors’ manuals, workbooks, indices, etc.). If there is a rights & permissions director for Workshop Texts 3 & 4, he or she will prepare an additional memo, justifying any rights & permissions charges and describing any potential for the sale of subsidiary rights. If there is a web director for Workshop Texts 3 & 4, she or he will design a web page for the book she or he is responsible for.
It should be emphasized that, for the purposes of the four memos and worksheets, each director must work together with the other team members to produce a persuasive, integrated total bookplan. If the directors can’t work together, that reflects poorly on each of them, and notice will be taken of that in grading. Each team, of course, is also competing directly with the other teams. The teams will be ranked according to the persuasiveness of their plans and, as indicated above, that will figure into each student’s grade.
More detailed instructions about the workshops will be handed out in November.
Presentations: During class on March 31 and April 5, the members of each team will be scheduled to provide the class with an oral presentation of their bookplan for Text 4 (TBD). Each team will be given 20 minutes to explain and boast about the great plan that they have come up with. Thus, each team member will have four or five minutes to discuss the plan for Text 4 in his or her area of responsibility.
PubFight: PubFight is a simulated auction for rights to publish books that is conducted in our classroom by BookNet Canada (http://www.booknetcanada.ca/) on October 29 and November 5. The purpose of the exercise is to acquaint students with the book auction process, and the simulation allows teams to bid on actual books published by major publishers in previous years. The subsequent sales for all books are known, so teams will see how well their choices performed.
For this exercise, the class is again divided into teams of three to six members each. The composition of the PubFight teams will be more or less the same as the composition of the teams in the first and last workshops (though, for mathematical reasons, it is not always possible to partition the class so that every class member can depend on this). Unlike the workshops, PubFight team members do not have separate areas of responsibility. A PubFight team’s members will be equal partners in arriving at an acquisition plan for the team. PubFight simulates real-life auctions for real books published in Canada the previous year, and each team will be given a budget to spend in the simulation for the rights to publish these books. After the auction, actual sales figures from the previous year will be presented, so that teams will see the results of their auction purchases in a simulation of real time. Teams also have the opportunity to submit a reprint order for a particular book if their initial print-run was too low and sales have exhausted stock. Teams will be ranked over time according to the profit or loss they’ve achieved with their list and will report on these results in the presentation segment of workshop IV. (The business director of workshop team IV should also report the PubFight results in an attachment to his/her fourth workshop memo.) His or her team’s ranking will account for 1% of the final course grade for each team member).
Quizzes: Quizzes will test students’ knowledge of the assigned readings and the content of lectures, presentations, and class discussions. The first quiz will cover the assignments, presentations, and lectures through October 8, the second quiz from October 15 through November 19, the third quiz from November 26 through February 11, and the fourth quiz from February 18 through March 18. Please note that all the material presented in class in the two PubFight sessions is fair game for quizzes.
Rubrics
Memos (max. 40 points)
I Consistency
2 – fully consistent with other team members’ plans
1- somewhat inconsistent with other team members’ plans
0- importantly inconsistent with other team members’ plans
II Style
2- no stylistic errors
1- one or two stylistic errors
0- three or more stylistic errors
III Argumentation
2 – very persuasive plan
1- generally persuasive, but with minor problems
0- not very persuasive
IV Depth/breadth/originality of coverage
1- better than average
0.5- average
0- importantly defective in some respect
V Team participation
2- missed no deadlines
1- missed one deadline
0- missed more than one deadline and/or removed from team
VI Team rank (based on total team scores for I-IV above)
1- top half
.5- top ¾ (i.e., between bottom quarter and top half)
0- bottom quarter
Total = 10 possible points on each memo
4 memos X 10 each = 40 points
Quizzes (max. 48 points)
Each quiz will be worth 12 points and will consist of either 24 multiple-choice questions or 20 multiple-choice questions + 2 short-answer/essay questions. For the multiple choice questions, each answer will be worth 1/2 point. The short-answer/essay questions (if any) will be worth 1 point each. Thus, 4 quizzes X 12 points each = 48 points
Class Participation (max. 9 points)
9 – contributed regularly and productively to class discussions (independently of team participation)
6 - attended regularly, but contributed only occasionally to class discussions
3 - attendance spotty with occasional participation in class discussions
0- have you dropped the course?
Presentation (max. 2 points)
2- good / excellent
1- fair / absent without documentation & someone else read your presentation for you