The twenty interns for the Cambridge University Press Summer 2010 Internship Program began our first week with an orientation meeting with Benjamin Jeremiah, the Employment Manager.  He gave us an overview of Cambridge University Press, such as the structure of the publisher, and an ample amount of information about fire safety. When it came time to filling out forms for contact information, I belatedly realized I should have packed a pen when I was nervously crammed nearly everything else – from tictacs to chapstick – into my bag, and two of my neighbors immediately offered me their pens. There were several awkward silences when we were left on our own as Benjamin headed off to photocopy whatever each of us had brought along as identification.

Put twenty young adults alone in a room dressed up especially nicely because it’s the very first day in a fancy conference room with one wall composed of glass, and it begins to feel a little like a zoo exhibit or a psychological experiment. Instill in these interns an interest in publishing and things will warm up rapidly.  Once the introductory business and the paperwork were completed, our respective departments came to collect us. Anticipation and tension were both high, and early on, Ashley and I were picked up by Caitlin, a Publicist from the Publicity Department.

My name is Becky, and I am a recent graduate from Bryn Mawr College where I majored in English. My fellow intern is Ashley, a rising Senior at Hofstra University who is majoring in Journalism and minoring in English.

Frances - Laura - Becky - Ashley - Cindy (Photo by Caitlin!)

The individuals in the Publicity Department are basically amazing. To do a brief roll call, they are: Caitlin, Frances, Cindy, and Laura. Not only are they incredibly helpful and willing to teach us everything from the essentials to the complex, but they are also hilarious in the best sort of way. There is plenty of work to go around, but we’re constantly asked whether we feel overwhelmed or underwhelmed. They earnestly want to know what we are interested in to guarantee that we take away the most that we can from this experience. On Wednesday, we all had lunch together at South’s where we could converse in a laidback environment and occasionally crane our necks to check out how things were going in the World Cup. Later that day, Caitlin and Frances met with us to explain how exactly publicity functions and provide us with nifty samples to guide us along.

Ashley and I share an office just a few feet away from where the Publicity Department’s cubicles are located.  Each of us has a proper chair (that rolls and spins) and a desktop, and I’ve never felt more grown-up. We have even begun to decorate the space. Located nearby is a kitchen with free coffee and vending machines that possess better selection than the ones I had at college.

So, what does an intern in the Publicity Department do precisely?

Logically, there are the expected office tasks, such as photocopying and mailing, but they constitute as only a small portion of our overall duties. Maybe I’m a little weird, but I kind of find them relaxing in that they’re just a little mindless and allow me to explore both of Cambridge’s two floors in the process.

Shelving books became an opportunity to meet other members of the staff who were always friendly and curious about the new face wandering about the office with a stack of alphabetized books.  I was eagerly questioned about what college I attended, what department I was in, and how were things going. As a New Yorker, I’m astounded when strangers smile brightly at me and say hello, but this has proven to be the norm at Cambridge. (Just to note, I only spent about fifteen minutes organizing books. It was actually a great break from doing intellectual work and offered me a chance to stretch.) I’ve been welcomed and congratulated on graduating more times than I could count.

Our more engaging tasks include assembling databases, writing press releases and eblasts, and, of course, blogging. Additionally, we have assignments that correlate with our interests. We each selected which books we’d liked to work with, and Ashley is going to help out with the Marketing department because she wants to be involved with design. Of all of these duties, I find the press releases the most challenging. It requires me to buckle down and utilize the book’s AQ (author questionnaire), the catalogue, and the manuscript to create an engaging piece of writing that presents a summary of what the work has to offer, and then, even more intimidating, it gets sent out to a number of important individuals. Some of books I have worked with so far are: The Sexual Culture of the French Renaissance by Katherine Crawford, The Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics by Luciano Floridi, and A Global Green New Deal: Rethinking the Economic Recovery by Edward B. Barbier.

So far, my very favorite job has probably been writing a transcript for an interview. When I was first assigned the duty of listening to a small cassette I became somewhat anxious. I haven’t used a cassette since I was eight, and that was a nursery rhyme collection.

Static tumbled into my ear as the interviewer set up the recording device before the interview actually began several seconds later.  It was a wonderful opportunity to listen in on a personal, enlightening conversation without being expected to try to contribute, like a private lecture with an amazing professor who was perfectly fine with you greedily tapping in on all of his or her knowledge.  Engrossed with what the man had to say, at times I would find myself looking at a solid block of text on the screen that I couldn’t quite remember typing since the material was that entertaining. He shared anecdotes about his career at Cambridge, which had begun well over a decade before I had been born. That cassette gave me an in-depth glimpse into a lifelong career at a publisher dedicated to expanding human knowledge. The gentlemanly voice informed me about how Cambridge has changed, the impact of technology, and what it means for the future… with the occasional, classically British, humorous remark.

And then, in what felt like a twist of fate, he began advising young people interested in a publishing career to delve right into it. It is a field that is rapidly changing, but the core nature to produce book driven to broaden knowledge remains the same.

Engraving of printer using the early Gutenberg letter press, 15th century.

With the rising popularity of POD publishing, The Economist considers the impact of new technology on our industry. As the power of print becomes the power to press print, will POD prove a boon or a burden for publishing’s supply chain?

You might argue that Cambridge benefits from the new form. Our books are topical, subject-specific, and stand the test of time; with the changing tides of the news cycle, readers might find a book published five years ago of interest next month. And, though it breaks my heart to say it, publishing is ultimately a business, and sales and warehouse space can often dictate the lifeline of a book. This is no longer the case with POD – there is no such thing as “out of print.”

At the same time, POD has spurred on a surge of self-publishing. So are traditional publishers becoming the odd-men out?

While Kindles and iPads continue to (literally) change the face of publishing, POD offers yet another avenue of access to books. Does it prolong a book’s life and democratize knowledge? Are we opening the floodgates and loosening cultural controls?

——–

Via The Economist: The boom in printing on demand: Just press print. New technology promises to prolong the life of the book.

ESPRESSO might seem an odd name for a bookmaking machine. But the wardrobe-sized apparatus at Blackwell, a bookstore in central London, and 30 other locations worldwide can print a paperback in about the time it takes to make and drink a shot of caffeine. A black-and-white printer produces the pages; a colour one the cover; they are then glued together by a third device which sits behind Plexiglas for passers-by to admire.

To some this is just “retail theatre”, a clever way to lure people into bookstores. But others view it as the logical step in a development that has picked up speed recently, yet has not received nearly as much attention as electronic readers or touch-screen tablets: the printing of books on demand, rather than on a publisher’s hunch.

About 6% of books in America are now printed on toner-based or inkjet machines—a rough proxy for print-on-demand (POD)—as opposed to on offset presses, estimates InterQuest, a market-research firm. Over the next five years, it predicts, this figure will increase to 15%. In 2008, the latest year for which data are available, about 285,000 titles were printed on demand or in short runs—132% more than in 2007 and for the first time more than in the conventional way. Amazon, the world’s biggest online bookseller, uses POD machines, although it does not reveal how often.

Keep reading at The Economist >>>

As a side note, the Book Design Review just posted its favorite book cover designs of 2008.

My local second-hand bookstore, Books On Bronte (referring to the Sydney suburb not the writers), takes full advantage of its large front window. A rapid turnaround of titles makes for pleasant gazing on my morning or evening walks with the dog. Indeed, she has learned to stop and sit patiently while I peer at the display. A recent example – there one morning, gone that evening – was How to Succeed in Business Without a Penis. The owner of the bookstore told me later that it was in the window barely a nanosecond before it was spied and snapped up.

Title-gazing certainly reinforces the power of a book’s title. I’m not discounting the other para-texts – messages transmitted via colour, texture, size, smell, typographical choices, back blurb, etc. – all collaborators in the process of impression-management. But titles do it for me. The truth is my own shelves are lined with books acquired for their titular allure alone. The day I bought the expensive hardback Khrushchev’s Shoe, I wasn’t looking for something on public speaking. But it resonated with my inner Baby Boomer – so clearly do I recall the shocked world on that day when, in the United Nations, Mr K took his shoe off and delivered his prediction (erroneous, as it turned out) that communism would bury capitalism (though, I’ve since been told by a Russian speaker, the text was poorly translated).

No doubt, if not for that shoe, his rant would have disappeared down the drain of the forgettably ordinary. Then there’s How to Visit America and Enjoy It. I’m struck by the power of the ‘and’ – the implication is that visiting and not-enjoying America is the default position, but it’s not obligatory. Subtext: buy me and find out how! A sobering lesson for a writer – never take an ‘and’ for granted. Published in 1964, this book emits a gravitational pull of nostalgia for a bygone world. A title can teach you something you didn’t know you didn’t know; then make you want to know more. Such is Edmund White’s The Flâneur: A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris.

The back blurb tells me a flâneur is one who strolls about aimlessly, a lounger or a loafer (hence the type of shoe?). I tumble in love with the subtitle, partly for its alliterative ‘p’s, partly for the dissonance of warm-and-fuzzy (stroll) alongside hard-and-sharp (paradox). I’ve strolled in Paris but not contemplated the paradoxes. This book urges me to buy it, hop on a plane, and go stroll in said paradoxes – altogether well in excess of the price of the book. More reason, then, to buy it and live vicariously.

Some titles trick you by hopping inside your head, seeing the world momentarily through your eyes, and representing this emblematically in the title. This lends legitimacy to your ignorance while rewarding your curiosity, as with Why a Painting is Like a Pizza – a guide to modern art that allows you to find something ugly before you find it meaningful and that actively encourages you to interrogate the nature of art.

Others offer immediate comfort. I saw Bruno Bettelheim’s A Good Enough Parent when in the throes of baby-raising and in that instant of ‘phew!’, gave myself permission not to be perfect. Amazing what a load is lifted when the expectations are lowered. I’m convinced that Stanley Coren’s How to Talk Dog was titled with me in mind (linguist with new puppy). It made me pick it up and then it walked me briskly to the cashier. It’s an intelligent phrasebook – of Doggish, as distinct from doggerel – translating canine language into human terms. For example, a slow tail wag with tail at a moderate to low position means ‘don’t quite understand what’s happening but I am trying hard to get the message’.

I’m so thingy about titles that I derive great pleasure simply from browsing through them in publisher’s catalogues. I noticed one in the relatively new genre of poop-fiction: So Grotty! by J. A. Mawter, promising more than enough toilet humour to satisfy the apparently insatiable demand for same. At the other end of the seriousness continuum is the recent Learning to Speak Alzheimer’s – a title more than replete with meaning and sadness.

Certainly mystery is a factor in making a browser pick up one book and not another. Consider: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Reading Lolita in Teheran, Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, In Cuba I was a German Shepherd, Fierce Invalids from Hot Climates and Leaning Towards Infinity. The last, a friend tells me, apparently has nothing to do with leaning or infinity but has an entrancing nipple on the cover. An irony about titular allure is that it too, like parenting, can be good enough. You can flâneur through a bookshop, bypass the bookas – text, and browse those titles unfettered by material constraints.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has stopped accepting manuscripts, in other words, working only with what they already have in the pipeline until they end the freeze. What will the literary agents do? I interned with an agent before landing at Cambridge, and I can understand the sensation this is causing amongst agencies; this only narrows their opportunities to place manuscripts with the most appropriate editors.

Meanwhile:

At the other end of the spectrum was Hachette Book Group, whose Little, Brown and Grand Central Publishing units together represent some of the biggest commercial authors, including David Baldacci, Nelson DeMille and James Patterson, not to mention the category-killing vampire queen, Stephenie Meyer.

As first reported by Publishers Lunch, an industry newsletter, Hachette is giving bonuses equal to one week’s salary to every employee in the company, in addition to the regular bonuses for which staff members are eligible. Just last month Reagan Arthur, a star editor at Little, Brown, signed a deal for a reported $6 million with the actress and writer Tina Fey to write a book of humorous essays.

Some are bracing for tough times, others are doing just fine because of their big hits. It’s the great battle of the long-selling backlist classics vs. the short-term smash hits. The article largely focuses on trade houses. While academic publishing has produced its star authors and big-sellers (always nice), I’m curious to see how it’ll work out on that end. Furthering scholarly discourse produces a lot of backlist, and online sales can keep the books around for a long time.

In our case not testing the waters of popular tastes, we’re looking for and highlighting intellectual trends. That is a nice place to be.

Have a great holiday, American readers! I won’t be around to update the site or moderate discussion until Monday.