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.