The Sales Meeting

Last year, my friend Kara, who is the Marketing Assistant on both of my book lists, came into work on a Sunday to paint a cardboard cutout of an ocean.

What does a blue-painted ocean have to do with publishing you might ask?

Well, it doesn’t relate at all except that my Michael Scott-like boss tends to have grandiose ideas when it comes to his presentations for the National Sales Meeting.

Most of the Acquisitions Editors and Marketing Managers present in lecture format; sometimes, they will do a little extra and bake cookies to please the crowd.

We do not peddle our books to customers at the sales meeting, rather it’s an internal meeting where we push the books on our sales representatives and prepare them for how to sell the product. Because most of the sales reps don’t have a background in mathematics, many are intimidated by selling the higher-level books like Calculus, especially when we have four different versions of the book that accommodate to individual professor’s needs.

Most of the sales reps cannot differentiate between each of the books we have to offer. There is an early transcendentals textbook, which means functions are covered from the beginning of the text, a later transcendentals textbook simply titled Calculus, discussing these functions in the latter part of the text, and two separate condensed versions of each of these books.

My boss, Tom, an awkwardly tall, goofy man who tends to avoid real work at all costs, wants to make selling calculus easier on these reps, so he thinks way out of the box in order to have the presentation resonate in the reps’ minds long after the meeting.

This year our team discusses the plan (or rather we listen to him ramble on about his absurd ideas). We appease him (because he is in charge of our year-end reviews… wait a minute, last year it seems I wrote my own review and he signed off on it) and agree to a sketch where he dresses up as a chef from the Italian region Sardinia, with a specialty in cooking geese, and a love for Italian opera composed by Bellini (yes, he creates a whole irrelevant back story). As the head chef, he is going to “cook our competition’s goose.”

He builds his own prop kitchen out of cardboard boxes, black Sharpie® markers, and duct tape for the actual presentation. He wants the rest of us to dress up like chefs, bring in kitchen utensils, and take photo ops for the creative services team to make a chroma (basically what we call a full color cardboard cutout).

I agree to dress in white, but I will not wear a chef’s hat and I refuse to bring in any of my wares!

Of course, Tom is prepared with cooking tools for our entire book team. Conveniently, downstairs in our office building is a kitchen store, with every person’s dream customized kitchen on display. We are all coerced into going downstairs, already dressed up in our culinary garb, as if we were going to contend for a spot on Top Chef (or maybe Hell’s Kitchen).

For whatever reason, the clerk at the kitchen store obliged to our request to take photos at one of the kitchens. Surmising our relationship, I held an egg beater; my boss held a butcher knife.

I haven’t felt this embarrassed since my mother forced me to take a picture with my college mascot, a wildcat, at parents’ weekend brunch for the freshmen class. As you can see from the photo above, I conveniently tucked myself away as close to the back as I could get.

Kara and I often apply the ludicrousness of our work life with that of the television show The Office. Then, the week before the sales meeting our feelings were reaffirmed (albeit with a stretch of our imaginations) by an eerily coincidental episode of The Office that involves Dwight’s plan to cook his road kill goose.



Tom stands in front of sales reps from each region of the country, as well as the VP, who is his boss, and in a butchered Italian accent he tells of the importance of reinforcing Algebra concepts if students are to succeed in Calculus.

He is professional despite his guise and makes his point as he places the competition’s textbook in his makeshift oven. And while this book is baking, he takes out his secret weapon, asking sales reps for volunteers.

He whips out the “Orgasmatron,” a backpack device reminiscent of the Ghost Buster’s Proton Pack.

The oblivious sales rep volunteer is told to put on the Orgasmatron and with each question answered correctly about the “assets” of our book and the “shortcomings” of the competition, the rep gets to shoot at the goose, which of course by this time is cooked medium-well.

Tom puts on a potholder and takes the competitor’s book out of the oven (the book is now magically charred with pages torn up, a bait and switch move).

He asks the first question, “What does early transcendentals mean?” The sales rep responds, “logarithmic and other functions discussed earlier on in the book.”

“Correct, you may now shoot the Orgasmatron,” he says. As crazy as this all seems, he gets the job done in having the reps retain all of the complicated information to sell these books.

A Nerf ball flies out of the vacuum like tube (how the heck did he create this thing I will never know).

“Feels good, doesn’t it. Maybe you’d like a cigarette now?”

The Design Meeting

“That icon looks more like a pen than a pencil. The desktop computer figure looks outdated, can we change that to a graphic that looks like a laptop?”

“Add more cyan or magenta for the annos?”

“Can you even read this? This b-head is too small, increase the font.”

Design meetings last the longest of all publishing meetings because everyone has an opinion. Often this leads to arguments over minor details, such as choosing a color scheme. “Go with the light green.” “No, I like the slightly darker light green.”

However, in textbook publishing, especially for collegiate mathematics texts, the design meeting is as creative as it gets.

In our cover meeting for our best-selling Business Calculus title, my boss suggests the artistic direction for the cover. He wants some sort of architectural design that represents applied calculus, perhaps a building with a lot of glass windows.

I have an idea in mind. I traveled to Berlin a few summers ago, and I remember this intertwining helix of glass that you walk up a spiral ramp to view.

When I return to my desk, I scour Corbis and Getty Images (two photo stock websites the company subscribes to in order to avoid the hassle of royalty fees, permissions and licensing as this is included in the subscription fee) for pictures of the glass dome at the top of the Reichstag, the German parliament building in Berlin.

My team agrees to use the image for both the cover of the book and as a recurring image in the heads in the interior of the book. Aside from having your name printed on the copyright page once the book is published, this is the next best feeling of pride that makes the job worth it.

In all my glory, I take the book cover design (yes, I choose the image, but our designer created the cover) to show the VP, who is reluctant to be in favor of any cover that contains too much black, dark purple, or white (black being too morbid and white making scuff marks more visible). So, to get a second opinion without informing me that he was getting a second opinion, he has me show Rick, the VP of Sales for the Secondary School Division.

Rick, being quite blunt and the litmus test of all things positive and negative, says “looks great, as long as there is no one having sex in those reflections.”

The Millennials

I am part of Generation Y, also called the Millennial Generation. We are described as having been raised by cajoling parents who have coddled their children too much. As “narcissistic praise hounds,” as the 60 Minutes episode notes, we lack responsibility and often still live at home with our parents while in our twenties.

This episode, which first aired in 2007, does not take into account the economic woes of the times. As a twenty something who lived with my parents for a year after college, I feel that it was the only plausible and affordable solution as it took me 6 months after graduating to find a full-time job; this was in 2005 prior to the official announcement that we were in an economic recession and long before 60 Minutes covered the story.



Although our generation spends time “playing computer games at work while (they) wait to grow up,” there is also a lot of good in our work ethic. Millennials have a can-do attitude, want a variety of assignments, and easily multi-task, taking on more than one can handle but succeeding in completing all tasks. (Taking on more than what is asked of us sounds a bit grown up to me.)

However, we approach a job wanting positive reinforcement and praise from our superiors, and with all of our new technology knowledge, (again, despite the economic climate) we have the attitude that we can move on to another company if our structural needs and praise-seeking are not being met.

When someone else describes this generation, it sounds like we are pretty whiny and unlike our grandparents we are unwilling to accept situations the way they are; instead, we want it all from a job. So, I understand that I fit into this type in many ways, I too want recognition for my work (doesn't seem too much to ask for) and I enjoy the social aspects that accompanies a job. I do not necessarily, however, have the best technological skills compared to my peers. 

I always had support from my parents, although I wouldn't necessarily define it as coddling. I succeeded well in school, so my parents were never the type to have to call up my high school teachers and complain about a bad grade until the teacher gave-in to some sort of extra credit, although I did hear about this happening growing up. I’ve always been able to measure my merits through grades, but in the work force the way to really do this is by achieving a raise.

My first boss quit and now I am reporting to his boss, the Editor-in-Chief, in the interim. However, the Editor-in-Chief is so wrapped up in her own workload that I have to keep on top of all our books. I develop the five-year-plan for the book list and the revision plan for our Mathematical Proofs text.

The marketing manager for our book team is out on maternity leave and her assistant also quit, so I am in charge of completing the feature walk-through (a marketing tool shown in the inside cover of the book that demonstrates how to use the book’s features). I coordinate the e-mail campaign to market our newest books to our current customers.

Olivia, the boob-exposing, self-loathing Editorial Assistant gets fired a few weeks after HR put her on probation but not soon enough. I am left to take over her book lists and fix her mistakes like collaborate with Accounts Payable to redo the $1,000 purchase order she put in for a photocopy job. How the common sense that photocopies would cost that much money escaped her, I do not know. (Annoyingly enough, she is now in a Creative Writing program at NYU.)

No one ever stops to thank me or asks if I need help with all of these projects. I thought by doing all of this work it would get me somewhere, but I seem to still be on the first rung of the ladder.

So, I go to the VP of the company, who I had also been working for as an administrative assistant part-time, and tell him that I deserve a raise.

I explain all of the jobs I am currently doing, and the ways in which I succeed in performance, like bringing in a $170k sales order by being on top of the book adopters needs, and representing the company at the JointMath conference.

He informs me that he isn’t quite sure if I am ready to be a full on Editor, and there is no money for a raise at this time.

For the first part of defending myself, I am able to hold back tears, but after being shut down, my eyes start to swell.

I leave his office defeated; I know more than ever that publishing is just another business and I am just another expendable worker-bee in the trade.

Perhaps, I should move on as Millennials do when they feel unwanted.

Business Casual

In the office our attired is business casual, but on Fridays and during the entire summer, we get to go completely casual.

Most of us during the year bend the rules of business casual anyways; I often “forget” to take my sneakers off when I get to work and put on my heels.

Olivia (see Merry Christmas and a Happy Blue Year blog post) has ostracized herself socially from our social co-workers because every time someone asks her a work related question, she ignores it and asks us about our relationship status. She has issues with not being on the marriage-track at the age of 23. And she probably won't be with her blind dates that I've heard all about from her like the guy who dresses up as the Boston Baked Bean for a living.

My friend Tracy, the brain of the company with the librarian eyeglasses to boot, is in Olivia’s cubicle, explaining yet again how to use one of our databases.

Olivia, wearing a skirt not near knee-length and a v-cut tank top with no cardigan like most of the rest of us don, lets out “I still don’t get it.” And as she says this, her left breast flings out of her shirt. She scoops it back in with ease and continues on without mention of the incident, “can you show me that again?”

Later in the day Olivia was called down to HR (not sure if it was Tracy or perhaps the misogynist, tattle-tail Tiny Tape, see blog post called Tiny Tape, who put in a complaint), and when she returned she was wearing someone else’s cardigan.

Supplement Disaster

I was given my first opportunity to project manage a supplement for our math for elementary teachers textbook. For an assistant, project managing is the next step up to getting promoted to an associate editor.

We chose to contact the author team that worked on the highest revenue pulling activities book from our book list. We figured the material from that ancillary could be re-purposed.

The authors agreed to our terms and the payment we offered on the initial teleconference we had with the female author, who was married to the other male author.

Weeks later I was looking forward to my vacation to Costa Rica. I was going to leave early on Friday, when I received a telephone call.

“We are not going to do this. What does this mean in the contract that we have to do this by a year? It’s going to take much longer,” the husband and author, who over the phone sounded like a grumpy, miserly old man, maybe like Andy Rooney.

“But we told you that the main textbook was to be published in a year and you all agreed to write this.”

Complain, complain, complain. “No, we won’t do this. It’s off.”

And what did they want, of course, like most of the need-to-be-coddled type authors, the group wanted more money and more time.

I called up my boss in a panic, showing my inexperience (forgetting that in publishing although we have due dates, rarely are they strictly adhered to). "Don't worry about it," he said, "we’ll figure it out when you get back from vacation."

The Business of Publishing

There is an informative discussion on the move from print publishing run by a high class culture to smaller companies being taken over by conglomerates in “An Archipelago of Readers: The Beginnings of Archipelago and International Publishing on the World Wide Web,” the typescript of a lecture given by Katherine McNamara at the University of Trier in 2005.

There is constant shifting of companies, where the big names, Random House, McGraw-Hill, Pearson, Harcourt, and Houghton Mifflin, are buying and closing subsidiaries. The industry is quite incestuous with employees moving up the ladder by transferring over to competitors.

While most people might think of publishing, whether educational/academic or trade, as cultivated by the quality of writers and intellectual minds, it is forgotten, as McNamara reminds us, that publishing has developed into an industry and a business.

I mentioned it in previous blogs, but I feel the need to hit this point again. Publishers are businesses and for-profit.

Books are driven by the market, in textbook publishing this means having a close connection to educational trends and knowing what would be useful to professors.

In recent years, we’ve seen trade books published by the likes of Sarah Palin and Carrie Prejean, both former beauty contestants and both with by-lines (ps- these books are ghost written). However, because of the publicity surrounding both of these women in recent years, these books, not necessarily with any sense of quality-control, will sell.

The types of books that are out there, the price of your textbook, the information contained within your books, these are all factors controlled in an effort to make money.

Pi Day

I notice grammatical errors everywhere, like walking by a piano bar with an “open Mike” night or wanting to order a Cobb salad sans “blue cheese”. I feel the innate need to correct mistakes.

However, I don’t work for authors trying to sell the next best fiction novel, who might share in this obsession for perfection.

Instead I am surrounded by mathematically inclined folks, including both the authors and customers. This is the complete opposite of my creative minded co-workers, who in college tried to avoid math courses.

Yet, we all connect with variations of the dork factor.

I fully came to realize this on Pi Day. What is Pi Day you may ask?



Well, it’s not the celebration of pizza or the success of Don McLean.

It’s in celebration of pi, the mathematical constant, 3.14159 (and as the cartoon expresses, most normal people, including us editors, know it to be 3.14).


At work, we e-mail icons of celebratory pi like the image below to our authors and the VP springs for pizza and someone bakes a good old apple pie for all the employees. The technology division decorates the halls with posters of the symbol. There is all out recognition for the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.

I thought perhaps this was a specific holiday that the mathematical division of the textbook publishing world would have interest in; but last year days before the big celebration, Congress approved a resolution to make March 14th (3/14) officially National Pi Day.

Acronymania

No, my workplace isn’t exactly full of IM jargon, but as the readable portion of the cartoon above notes, it is getting “acronymious.”

You probably know what an ISBN is, but you may not know what it stands for.

In case you are wondering, it’s International Standard Book Number.

In my first week of work I had an RTP meeting. I quickly learned that this meant “release to production,” and basically it was the first of several status meetings on the progression of making the textbook.

I furiously took notes when I was given the BBD and asked to get the CIP data and make copies of the MS that had AC and marks like tr, lc, or wf on it.

Translation: I was given the estimated book bound date. My co-workers wanted me to order the Cataloging in Publication data for the Library of Congress and make copies of the manuscript with author comments and proofreader’s marks.

I used to think that nothing was as irritating as being required to come up with the work login password that must require a capital letter, number, symbol, must be at least 13 digits long, and cannot be anything close to any of your last five passwords.

How are we supposed to remember all of this without writing it down?

And if I have to write it down doesn’t that take away from the confidentiality element of a password when this secret is written on a stick-on note attached to my computer.

I spent an entire week creating a binder for new-hires that includes a glossary of terms that are abbreviated or given an acronym, so no one would have to go through the guessing game of what these things mean like I did.

Print vs. Technology

With the collapse of several newspapers and print publications like USA Today International Edition, New York Sun, South Idaho Press, Christian Science Monitor, and Detroit Free Press, publishers are fearful of being shut down.

Most of this fear stems from the movement of print going online and the evolution of technology changing the industry.

Books can now be read on a kindle. Your news can be read online. I must admit I frequent www.cnn.com and www.msnbc.com, as well as turn to television to get my news fix.

Others argue that it is not the same and there is something to be said about having a physical book or paper to hold and read.

However, as a writer when asked if I would prefer to have my book published online or in print, I opted for print.

I feel that a tangible book that contains your work and your by line makes the success of being published feel concreted. Also, for a writer being published is the ultimate arrival.

Not everyone gets there, so there is an immense pride when you do. Print publications have always been competitive in this sense.

Unfortunately, online publications do not have the same reputation and the same level of competition as print publications. While online might be great for being accessible and reaching the masses; however, this is also a fault in that the quality of work published online is not monitored or questioned.

Anyone can publish, especially when it comes to self-publication. It is free to sign up for a blog and it’s a minimal cost to create your own website.

The New York Times has a great article about libraries moving into the digital age. In hopes to keep libraries from becoming obsolete, this institution is now offering the ability to download e-books.

The patron uses his library card in order to download a book to his laptop. About 5,400 public libraries nationwide offer this service for free.

The article also brings up the opposition felt by publishers. Although having only e-books would create a multitude of issues for publishers in regards to sales and creating subsequent , publishers are finding themselves having to quickly adapt.

In my own experience at textbook publishing companies, increase in demand for technological resources has added a competitive edge within the industry.

My company invested more money than they made to develop a technological platform specific to their textbooks and company. This investment paid off as many professors prefer to buy math textbooks that come with media options, such as MyMathLab.

MyMathLab is a platform that allows for e-books, supplements online, grade books for the professors, and additional practice through test generators.

Ideas are being brought up of having college lectures related to the textbooks as podcasts. In secondary school, publishers are developing better quality online games that reinforce concepts learned in the textbooks.

I am not sure if textbooks will ever become so archaic that they will be completely replaced by technology. Before I mentioned how I am an offender, by finding my news online and on television.

However, when it comes to textbooks, I would rather have the actual book in my hands. I tend to highlight and write notes in the margin, which enhance my learning. There is no online substitute for my education.

Big People Book Club

Book clubs can be intense, especially if the book club involves a bunch of members who edit and read books all day long. We are the mod book club; instead of the literati we are bookies (kind of like how gourmands are now considered foodies).

Those who choose the book must be careful, because choosing a bad book is social suicide. No one will show up to book club if it’s something that they did not want to read.

This happened to me once when I chose The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri. It’s a fictional book about the death of an alcoholic in a Bombay apartment complex and the conflict of all his neighbors over who will pay for the ambulance to take him away.

I know within five pages whether I will enjoy a book. It’s all about the writing style for me, while for most people not in the literary world it’s all about story and character development.

This cartoon entitled "Baby Book Club" that comes from the amazing website www.toothpastefordinner.com sums up how I feel about The Da Vinci Code. I could not even make it through five pages of this book before I knew I could not handle another bland, obvious description by Dan Brown.

Yet, everyone in my life who is not part of this literary world seems to have enjoyed this book for the "story" (thanks Oprah…).

The best book that was read for book club was The Secret History by Donna Tartt. This book is about six bonded students studying classics at a New England college and a mysterious murder within the group.

I know… it sounds like this could be some hokey murder mystery, but the author includes fascinating details and parallels on Greek tragedies.

My book club recommendation is to research the reviews and subject matter of the book you choose, especially if it’s for such a captious audience.

Meeting Your Boss

All publishing companies want different background experiences for their Editors’ curriculum vitae. One company wants an Editor to have prior teaching experience (no publishing knowledge required). Another wants prior field sales representative experience.

Because most of our Acquisition Editors come from a position as a sales representative, they usually work off-site from wherever they settled down for their sales territory. My boss works out of his house in Colorado.

Although he is responsible for my maturation at the company, we have never met face to face. Until now…

My boss, Carl, flew in for a story reading meeting. Why wouldn’t they just have a teleconference for this meeting, you may ask? Well, I mean it is a very important meeting where editors and marketing managers have to make up a story line about their book lists and sales plans to present to the Publisher and Marketing VP.

My calculus books are like Batman and next year their sales will take over Gotham City, leaving our competitor The Joker in the dust. You know a meeting to express a five year sales plan through comic book characters or fairy tales…

I learned quickly that meeting your boss for the first time is like going on a first date. (In my case, a blind date.) You want to be reserved and polite, yet make a good impression. And in some ways your stomach ties up in knots because your mind starts to wonder… What if he doesn’t like me? What if I’m not good enough?

Carl and our Marketing Manager, Brenda, offered to take me and Brenda’s assistant, Michelle, out for lunch.

We left at prime lunch time and the restaurant was packed. Luckily, we assistants have mastered the art of reservation making. Michelle made a reservation at Thai Basil.

It ended up being one of those restaurants where you were required to take your shoes off before entering the private-room booth. (I’ve never seen this at a Thai restaurant before and only know of one Japanese restaurant that does this.)

I was wearing nylons, so removing my shoes left me nearly barefoot. Carl was embarrassed and at first he refused, but then Brenda made him do it.

There is nothing that builds an appetite more than the smell of feet in a contained area. It was even worse than the guy who thinks it’s ok to take his shoes off in an airplane. Even Janeane Garofalo has a comedy bit about guys’ feet in mandles (you know, guy sandals).

My advice is if you’re meeting your boss for the first time, like you would consider for a first date, find a neutral restaurant. Do not aim for anything exotic, but just in case the choice is not up to you, be prepared... with socks.

E-mail Etiquette and Eu De Toilette

You can probably relate to getting the annoying “reply all” e-mail from co-workers (unless you are the one who hits the reply all button.) You just want one answer from one person and all of a sudden everyone is hitting the reply all button.

One time at work there was a spam e-mail sent out to a distribution list of over a hundred people. I think it was a portion of text from Anna Karenina or some other literati nonsense that you would think publishing people would actually embrace instead of sending to quarantine in a spam mail box. Somehow the quarantine did not catch this one.

Next thing you know there was a reply all, “Please take my name off this list.” Then more reply-all e-mails follow with the same remove from list plea.

Then, of course, people became irate. Now, they replied “STOP SENDING REPLY ALL E-MAILS ABOUT NOT WANTING TO BE ON THE LIST. BY DOING THIS YOU ARE CREATING MORE SPAM FOR ME.” (The all caps means they are yelling, yelling! So angry that they must express it with capitals and again sending it to everyone just to ensure no more reply alls come in.)

However, this makes the reply-all people feel ashamed. (Insert sad emoticon here.) “Sorry, I didn’t mean to reply all” e-mails start pouring in to everyone. My typical 50 e-mails a day doubled in size. I became irate.

I started e-mailing (while only hitting the reply button because I understand these things) to the individuals responsible for the backlash. “Please do not hit reply all or send out any more e-mails. No one wants to be on this spam list but you are making it worse. Also, please do not even reply to this e-mail” I tell them.

And what do they do? They reply to my e-mail, apologizing. (Insert even sadder emoticon here.) This brings about another problem. The instant gratification of e-mails causes this other problem, where often the recipient doesn’t even read the whole thing and never makes it to the bottom.

Thus, my advice in writing a professional e-mail, cut the small talk “Hope all is well,” etc. and put the most important information at the top.

Perhaps people need to get in touch with Outlook's "unsend" application. Or Outlook needs to create some sort of warning system for those who want to press reply all like how Google created a function called E-mail Goggles against drunk e-mailing. If you want to g-mail late at night to who knows (probably an ex or a boss), this function makes you pass a quiz (such as completing multiplication problems within a given amount of seconds) to make sure you are sober enough.

It is also important to educate yourself on e-mail distribution lists. Know who is on the list before you send out a mass e-mail.

Like one time this guy Rick something or other (yeah, I have no idea who you are) sent an e-mail saying he’d be out on vacation on Friday. Did I need to know this just in case Friday was the day I was supposed to meet Rick for the first time and start working on a gigantic project that crosses two departments that have never heard of

each other? And thank you Rick for rubbing in the part about vacation.

Have you ever been on an e-mail distribution list that didn’t seem to apply to you at all? I received a mass e-mail from a manager, balding around the rim but still maintaining a long ponytail and hippy-like natural scent. Actually, it was from his secretary, oops I mean administrative assistant. (Insert angry emoticon here.)

The e-mail was about not wearing perfume in the office because that might offend people in the olfactory sense. Well, this guy clearly wasn’t thinking of the eu de toilette of natural BO that he sent out to the rest of the office. Nor did he consider that perhaps he is offensive with his pony tail or his tacky e-mail or his directing this to women only with “perfume” instead of cologne or deodorant that makes me think he is somewhat sexist or just insensitive?

Or maybe he is directing this to one person, and I should have placed him in the blog post about the passive-aggressive employee. And in fact the rest of us knew that he was most likely directing this to his own secretary administrative assistant.

So friends, be cognizant of proper e-mail etiquette in the professional realm. It is proper to reply to e-mails within 24 hours of receiving one (I didn’t mention this before but it is essential.) Check out your distribution lists before hitting send. And just remember not to hit reply all when the e-mail doesn’t really apply to all.

Merry Christmas and Happy Blue Year

If I could give one piece of advice to an employee, especially a new entry-level employee, it would be… do not over drink at office parties.

The first year our office holiday party was a fancy outing at the Ritz Carlton. The CEO of the company had hired a New Orleans Zydeco band complete with the instrumental washboard. There was a dance floor, appetizers passed around on trays with toothpicks and cocktail napkins galore, and of course, an open bar.

I had barely put in two weeks worth of work so I knew better than to drink too much. However, the editorial assistant named Olivia was not privy to this rule. She drank glass upon glass of wine.

The rest of us tried to do our due diligence to cut her off. I would hold her glass for her and then strategically place it on a buffet table. “Where did my drink go?” We told her we had no idea and maybe it’s time for some coffee.

Somehow Olivia made it back to the bar and on to the dance floor to join us. Mid-dance move she dropped her glass of red wine, which of course back splashed onto the khaki pants of one of the higher-up managers.

This was the more successful of the two holiday parties I attended. The second year I thought I could handle it all, especially when the head of the marketing department fell into the cheese platter (luckily most everyone had left).

The invitation told us that we’d be able to leave work early to attend the holiday party around 2:00 and appetizers would be served (not dinner which should have been the first hint to load up on breakfast or eat an early lunch). Again, open bar.

Not only were the group of well-bonded editorial assistants going to attend the holiday party, but it was also Ashley’s (beautiful Indian co-worker from last blog) birthday, so naturally we had to keep the party going with a bar crawl.

The holiday party went well and we all received our free booze and schmoozed with our co-workers. Then, off to the first bar of many, which at the end of the night would result in Ashley’s literal crawling up the steps inside her building to reach her apartment on the third floor.

There were probably four bars hopped to and the night may have involved some shots at one point. But we were young and thought we could handle it. However, we did not have the next day off from work.

Two of my co-workers woke me up the next morning (they slept over instead of making a the trek back home to the suburbs). I woke up feeling fine. We made it to work on time. I got an egg and cheese breakfast sandwich from Davio’s (usually when I’m hungover I do not like to eat anything).

The other distinct characteristic of my hangovers are that they get progressively worse as the day goes on. After breakfast, I didn’t feel so well, so I went to get a Gatorade. The convenient store only had Blue Frost Gatorade (I'm partial to lime or berry Rain).

I did not do any work. I sat in front of my computer screen with my elbows on the desk, propping my head up with my hands. Ashley had her stash of vitamin water on her desk too.

All of our older co-workers thought it was hilarious. Perhaps it spiked a bit of nostalgia for their drinking days. They jabbed jokes about being too hungover after the holiday party to us during our meetings. We declined to respond, knowing we deserved it.

At lunch, the administrative assistant who sits next to me told me her and the rest of the girls were going to go to Wendy’s to get some greasy food for lunch. I told her I wasn’t going to make it. The hangover had taken full control over me at this point.

I sat in my cubicle, trying to distract myself from feeling so crappy. Then, the nausea got to me. I was going to throw up. But the bathroom was a good walk down the hallway and if anyone saw me or happened to stop me in the hall to chat, it would be disastrous.

I debated for half a minute on whether I could make it. Physiologically I found my answer when the vomit rose up in my throat. I grabbed the trash bin in my cubicle and threw up. Some landed on my desk top, bright blue liquid vomit.

Thank gad everyone was out to lunch. I didn’t want anyone to know about the incident in fear of the repercussions, most likely to be written up or fired. But now I had a bucket full of puke in my cubicle.

I tied the trash bag in a knot and shoved the trash bin as far under the desktop as I could.

I asked one of my friends to come over to my cubicle. Do you smell anything horrible? She told me she didn’t (although I don’t know how) and I was relieved. I would keep this story a secret from her until days later.

At the end of the day I made sure to leave a little later than everyone else. I disposed of the trash bag in the ladies bathroom.

I got off pretty easy considering none of my bosses realized I acted so improperly. I also learned my lesson and in subsequent years remembered to both eat a hearty meal during the day and limit myself at the open bar.

So, again my advice... although the free booze may be wonderful, it is probably not worth your job.

Phone Etiquette and ASSumptions

My friend and former co-worker Ashley is a gorgeous, independent Indian woman with the married name O’Shaughnessy. She called me over to her cubicle to listen to a voice mail.

A customer had called in mid-day about his wife finding some error in one of the math textbooks. I listened to it, but the guy’s mumbling was hard to decipher.

“Wait a minute, is he slurring?” I asked. All I could hear was an incoherent “My wife find some error in math book and she studies math and I just think something is wrong in math book…” (Think Danny DeVito on The View.)

“No, did he?” I asked.

“Oh yes he did” she said.

Mid-sentence the guy burped into the phone. Confirmed. He was drunk. (While, it is against proper telephone etiquette to burp into the phone, he did at least apologize.) It was hard to hold my bladder laughing so hard and the voicemail only got better.

I imagined some bloated middle-aged waste of life sitting in a lazy chair surrounded by beer cans and reading up on… pre-algebra?

At the end of his one-way conversation with himself he mumbled something about her last name O’Shaughnessy. Then, he summed up his jackassness by exclaiming “Go Irish!”

Price Tag Woes

The Advanced Accounting textbook by Fischer/Chang/Taylor costs $195.99 on Houghton Mifflin’s website www.cengage.com.

Math textbook Finite Mathematics and Calculus with Applications 8e by Lial/Greenwell/Ritchey is $158.00 on Pearson Education’s website www.mypearsonstore.com.

English textbook The American Tradition in Literature (Volume 1) by Perkins & Perkins costs $91.25 and the second volume (because we know most classes require

the set) also costs $91.25 on McGraw-Hill’s website http://catalogs.mhhe.com.

What the F*@#! Why do textbooks cost so much money? After students or parents pay a hefty tuition/fees bill, giving another few hundred for textbooks would piss anyone off.

The anger heightens especially when buying a used book. If you go to your campus bookstore at the end of the semester to sell your books back, you get a measly fraction of the price that you originally spent on them. Then these same books are sold the following semester at an unreasonable mark-up.

For my first semester as a MFA student at George Mason I got off easy with a bill of $222.13. This is because I am receiving my MFA in Creative Writing and have to buy more paperback books than large textbooks.

There are a few reasons for these ridiculous prices, but after working in publishing I realized that it’s not so unreasonable and the publisher isn’t the one to always wave your finger at. (Ok, perhaps I downed the cult Kool-Aid® too easily and yes, I have learned from acquiring text permissions for an entire Technical Mathematics textbook that you do need to include trademarks hence the ®).

Although it may seem like weathering a financial meltdown to buy books after paying tuition, take a deep breath and consider how relative that expense is to the total price tag. You need these books to learn; you don’t need a freshman-fifteen inducing extra plus meal plan when the regular meal plan will do.

A sales representative once presented to us during a lunch-and-learn series. She basically answered the pricey textbooks question by turning it back on the student. Most students would not hesitate to buy the Wii or a new pair of designer jeans for over $100. We often spend money on overpriced shit every day but not everyone is complaining about the cost of their precious gaming systems or skinny-leg jeans.

Is this really how we value our education?

Reason 1. Most people forget, don’t know, or fail to recognize that textbook publishing companies are FOR PROFIT. These are businesses not NPOs or NGOs. In order to produce the books there needs to be a reason, and that reason is cash money.

A budget is planned for a textbook based on a sales forecast. Money is funded for the project and used in preparation (this includes getting reviewers, having focus groups, paying the author’s advance, etc.). Basically, money is allocated and spent before there is ever a finished product.

The anticipation of how much will be sold is based on crunching numbers between past edition sales (or like-book edition sales and market considerations if it is a first edition) and the budget (called the plant cost) to write, edit, manufacture, and market the book. A supply is determined with a variable demand.

Reason 2. Do you know who writes your textbooks? At the collegiate level the authors are professors hired to write by the Acquisitions Editor. At the secondary and elementary level for-hire vendors and in-house editors often work on writing revisions with the author team’s oversight. Yes, I have written text that will teach America’s children or guide teachers with absolutely no pedagogical experience at all… frightening (but that is a blog for another day).

Those professors who have “made it” with a successful brand/product receive a decent advance on subsequent editions and a fair percentage of royalties. But even the newbie authors get money at the risk their books will flop. So, while there is money being spent on the creation of the book, money also needs to be accounted for to pay the authors.

It’s not the authors fault though that the book is priced so high; it just so happens that they get paid for their smarts and labor of writing as they deserve to be paid.

The professors who are not authors might lack a bit of understanding. The collegiate level textbook publishing company gives away a lot of freebies. For marketing purposes, all of the Teacher Editions are given to professors at their request for free. Most of the supplements like Student Answer Books and Teacher Resource Manuals are also given away or as we say in the industry bundled with the main textbook.

The problem is professors are asking for more and more ancillaries and are ok with pinning publishers against each other. Well, Company A said they’d bundle an Interactive CD for free. So, the sales rep for Company B promises that this service can also be provided. Unsatisfied with a free Teacher Edition, professors will demand an Annotated Teacher Edition, customized because their course is special and so is their special university.

Well, with more free products being made, where do you suppose the money comes from to create these? Free is rarely free. Of course, the plant costs for these products are built into the total cost for the main textbook. Thus the cost of your textbook rises even if your professor is not the specific professor requiring all of this “free” stuff.

Have I mentioned that some professors have been caught taking their free Teacher Edition copies and reselling these online. Not only is this illegal because it’s basically stealing, but like with any other company that has to consider “loss” as well as “profit,” this also hikes up the price of your textbooks.

In fact, anytime a book is sold back used by a professor or student this is considered a “loss” and the publisher loses money. Hence, new copyright updates and editions are produced every 3-4 years in order to keep the business profitable.

Reason 3. If you thought publishing companies are located around a lake of fire with devious executives that have horns, really the publisher could be thought of as Beezlebub and the campus bookstore as the devil.

The publishing company sells the books to campus bookstores, the sales representative often has to negotiate quantity and price in the bookstores’ favor. Then, the books are marked up from their whole-sale value (from what I recall) as much as 30% more.

While everyone wants to blame the publisher, has anyone ever asked the employee who places orders at the bookstore why the books cost so much? This is often why a lot of students turn to Amazon and other new and used book resellers on the web.

It’s not going to be a likable solution, but in reality if you want to keep the costs of textbooks down then; stop reselling your used books, educate your professors that wanting extra materials drives up the cost of your books (or perhaps convince them to donate a part of their royalties), and start inquiring about the mark-up prices at your local campus bookstore.

And instead of buying those designer jeans... perhaps save the money for next semester.

Tiny Tape

You work overtime on a project and whenever your boss asks for a little something extra to be done you graciously accept the task. However, your co-worker does not put in the same effort, but will falsely say that he will get his part of a project done on time and has great ideas to input.

You ask your co-worker to handle one section of the project and he agrees, but in reality he is playing finger football in his cubicle.

This co-worker is said to have a passive-aggressive personality. He is fine with the bare minimum, which can irritate both management and staff. How do you handle this type of co-worker?

I have no idea. Because in publishing everyone is on deadline and overachieving, willing to impress the higher ups. You either get it done or get the boot. However, Company A (the first publishing company I worked at) has its own passive-aggressive personality.

Our office is a mostly female demographic (either middle-aged and single, or newbie young professional), especially at the lower end of the ladder. There are some men mostly in management positions.

There is no water cooler, but we find time to chit chat throughout the day at each others’ cubicles. Just the typical gossip about the marketing manager who slept her way to the top and how we shouldn’t have had those shots of bourbon at last nights happy hour. Nothing too suspect and nothing that anyone else would really hear in ear shot?

At least we thought. Someone posted a sign up near our group of cubicles that stated “Would you still be having this conversation if your mother could hear you?” Ah ha, we discovered the publishing industry passive-aggressive personality.

We were not sure who posted the sign, so we had to investigate. Editors have a keen eye for detail; it’s part of the job. So, it’s not surprising that one of us noticed that the sign was posted with tape that was much thinner than any of the tape in the dispensers on our desks.

We scoured the office, looking in each cubicle, for the dispenser with the different tape. Finally, we found him, “Tiny Tape”.

He was a contract employee, a former college mathematics professor who now dealt in customer service for our technology products. And he was… bitter. Bitter about having a cubicle and not an office. Bitter about being surrounded by young females who take part in debauchery.

Of course, none of us make mention of his phone calls to his wife who he keeps kept. “You didn’t leave the house today did you?” “Remember to lock the doors.”

I suppose we could go to Human Resources to tattle. Or we could be aggressive and confront him on his sign and watch him shrivel up into a passive mess. But, we all figured it would be much more fun to continue our conversations, a little bit louder.

Of course, keeping the content prudish so we would not be embarrassed for our mothers to hear…

Landing the Editorial Assistant Position

I should have known something was up when the Vice President asked me in my first face-to-face interview what I thought about working for someone who is a bit weird. Was he implying that he was weird? Was this a trick question? It felt like he had been trying to intimidate and trip me up the whole interview. "Is your work deliberate or intuitive?" (I would later learn that intuitive was a staple term in the world of publishing. Our database was intuitive, our authors worked intuitively, we liked the design of a textbook because it was intuitive.) What answer was he looking for? I said deliberate...no wait intuitive... no wait it's both.

Grace under fire. I turned the original question back on him and asked, "What do you mean by weird?" He told me there were two different positions open for two different Acquisitions Editors (these are the editors who seek out authors and acquire book deals) for this textbook publishing company, which in keeping anonymity I will from here on out dub Company A. One of these Acquisitions Editors, he redacted, wasn't weird but perhaps more eccentric, you know... quirky. Well, it had been six months since I had graduated and although it wasn't considered the "recession" during that time it sure felt like one. I was desperate to land a full-time job and because my major was appropriately titled "Writing, Literature, Publishing," I felt grateful that I would be applying my degree. So, yes I can work with all types of people including the weirdos. Bring on your slackers, bring on the freaks, and bring me on board with Company A.

I did not get a call back. After a few weeks, I did my obligatory "hey, I'm pushy... I mean persistent" follow-up call. Nothing. About a month later I received a call from one of the Acquisitions Editors, the normal one. "Well, the person we hired turned it down, so would you still be interested?" Great, I was sloppy seconds for a job that was clearly too good for sloppy first. Still desperate, however, "Yes, of course I'm still interested." But it wasn't a job offer it was just another hoop. "Can you come in again to interview with the VP? By the way the position now requires about 10-15% of the time to work as an assistant for the VP."

I went into Boston a few days later for my second interview with the VP, which was my 4th interview for this position and my 6th interview for the company. (I had interviewed in the collegiate literature textbook division; however, while explaining my mock book proposal project for my Publishing 101 course, the Vice President of that division, who had a venti Starbucks on his desk, did not understand the title "Fair Trade Coffee.")

After this second round of interviews, I received a call back from the Acquisitions Editor. Not only did I get the job, but the salary around $26k got bumped up to almost $27k. Rejoice! I had a few extra hundred to budget my Boston living (landlords tend to require 1st, last, and one month for a security deposit before you move-in and sometimes a realtor's fee if you found the apartment through an agency.) As sarcastic as I may sound, I was thrilled to have a job and in a field that I sought out to be in based on my undergraduate studies. I was going to be the best Editorial Assistant to a math textbook Acquisitions Editor and assistant to the Vice President as I could be.

I actually received the most publishing experience in my two years at Company A, although somewhat by circumstance. One of these circumstances was a fellow Editorial Assistant, whose lack of clothing and administrative skills led her to be fired 9 months too late and led to me taking over her work for the other "eccentric" Acquisitions Editor.

Welcome to Delete or stet? (stet, a Latin term meaning "let it stand" is a publishing term indicating to disregard the edit previously marked.) This blog will introduce you to the colorful characters of the publishing world, more strange and awkward than you can possibly imagine, while providing incite to what an Editorial Assistantship actually entails, and what the deal is with these textbook publishing conglomerates.