Roz Morris, based in London, is an independent literary author, a ghostwriter with hundreds of thousands of copies sold, and a former traditional publishing house editor. She teaches in The Guardian’s programs for authors, and she writes and self-publishes craft books for authors as well as novels. Morris was a delegate to Author Day and assisted in facilitating the closing discussion. She has given us permission to excerpt from her response to the experience of being there.
Call me skeptical, but I think Conference World is not the same as Real Publishing World. A brief example: an author had a meeting with a publisher’s top brass about partnering on a series of books. The author’s people would provide a finished book interior, would brief the publisher’s art department to design the cover, plug into the publisher’s distribution chain, and benefit from a high-profile marketing push.…
Away from the lofty reaches of the boardroom, the editorial, art and marketing departments were completely at sea. The art folk ignored the cover brief and designed something so truly unsuitable that it looked like sabotage—fonts that suggested the Wild West instead of pirates, for instance. When the author asked for a redraft, they refused. The marketing campaign consisted of advice to use Twitter and to contact friendly bloggers. Even after extensive wrangling, none of the original promises were kept, and the deal was cancelled.
I can see how this could happen. The first publisher I worked for, I wound up running the editorial department. I was producing about thirty titles a year with six staff, some of whom I was training from raw graduate level (unpaid interns, anyone?). Every week was wall-to-wall deadlines, and not enough competent eyes and hands to do a thorough job. From time to time, edicts arrived from execs who had no idea what it took to meet our schedules and budgets.
Years later, when I was ghostwriting and editing as a freelancer, I was aware of how far the editorial people were overstretched. One book I rewrote for a Big Five publisher went to press without a copyedit—not because the editor was incompetent, but because she had far, far too much to do. An overworked department will chiefly be worried about keeping out of trouble. They won’t have the time or energy for new methods of working.
Bottom line: Morris describes a well-known condition in business, where the aspirations of the corporate leadership may be many floors above the realities and resources in the departments that produce the work. Her frank, unsentimental viewpoint is welcome: “These promises of author-empowered relationships are made by executives at mission-statement level.… While the blue-sky thinkers at conferences are making plans for a bright future of partnership with authors, are they helping the ground staff make it happen?”
Editor’s note: This issue of The Hot Sheet is dedicated to coverage of Author Day in London. Author Day took place on Monday (November 30) as part of the fifth annual FutureBook Conference, Europe’s largest publishing conference.
Author Day was not focused on writing tips or inspirational goals, but on industry and business challenges, and it was limited in size to about 100 delegates, 20 speakers, and 15 staff members.
The concept of trust is the fundamental issue that arose from the Author Day discussions. From many trade authors’ mistrust of royalty statements they can’t read to many indie authors’ mistrust of agents and editors, we witnessed severe—even crippling—gaps in trust between virtually any parts of the industry you might study.
The stories and comments in our coverage from Author Day have not yet been published elsewhere and point to key issues that affect the author experience.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
