Editors on Editing: What Writers Need to Know About What Editors Do (56 page)

A month later Rosemary walked into my office with a dummy for
Max’s First Word
. It was marvelous. I sent her home to do three more young books about Max and Ruby, the brother and sister rabbits, and in 1979 I published four Max and Ruby books, which were the first high-quality board books in the United States. They were different from any that preceded them because the texts were wonderful little stories with a beginning, middle, and end. They were immediately successful and quickly spawned a huge number of board books here and abroad. My first contribution in this case was to tell Rosemary to concentrate on these books, but after getting production estimates, and even before editing them, I needed to figure out a way to successfully sell a huge quantity of Max board books in the first
year. Board books must be priced very low, which means a large number must be printed in order to keep costs down. In the 1970s the idea of a high-quality, non-mass-market publisher like Dial selling that many books, almost exclusively to bookstores, was certainly a gamble, but they were so successful that we had to reprint them very quickly. We published Rosemary’s second set of board books in 1985, and they continue to be popular, as are her Max picture books, which are larger and for a somewhat older, but still a mainly preschool, audience.

After publication Rosemary and I forgot just how much work had gone into them until years later, when we were asked to do an author/editor talk on the board books. I went through our files and had slides made from the early dummies to show how the books had evolved, so we could point up the editor-author working relationship, which was the theme of the conference. When we got to
Max’s Breakfast
but before I showed the slide, which Rosemary had not yet seen, she said, “That one was easy to do.” What she had forgotten was just how much work she had done before she made it, as I’ve always thought, a perfect book.

Max’s Breakfast
now starts: “‘Eat your egg, Max,’ said Max’s sister, Ruby. ‘BAD EGG,’ said Max.”

When the
original
dummy was flashed on the screen, it showed Ruby’s same opening sentence, but that dummied version continued: “‘POISON,’ said Max.” Ruby then proceeded to drag Max throughout the house pointing out all the
real
poisons to avoid. My major contribution to that book was to point out that although an instructional story about household poisons was important, this was not the book to do it in. The metamorphosis of
Max’s Breakfast
from its original form couldn’t have happened without Rosemary’s willingness to rethink and reshape her initial concept.

I’ve always felt that the major aspect of the editor-author relationship is the revision process itself. With hard work on both sides, a talented writer or artist can grow and turn a good story into an even better book. However, without the author’s willingness to do revisions, some manuscripts just miss being published, and others are accepted for publication that could be much improved. An editor’s suggestions must make sense to the author, and it’s important for an editor to make it clear why the change is important.

At best, most professional writers listen carefully, take suggestions, and revise, while writers who are unsure of themselves are less likely to revise well. Rosemary Wells has told me of a “Phyllis who sits on my typewriter.” At this point in our long association she often can anticipate how I’m likely to react to something before I’ve even seen it.

Even the word
revision
is anathema to a number of writers and would-be writers, but the night Mildred Taylor received the Newbery Medal for her second book and first novel,
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
, she told me that
she’d come to Dial with her first book,
Song of the Trees
, turning down two higher offers from other publishers, specifically
because
I’d asked her to revise it.
(Song of the Trees
had won the Council on Interracial Books Award in 1973, after which the council sent a number of publishers the winning manuscript.) Mildred continues to be a meticulous reviser, as well as an excellent writer.

Manuscripts come to children’s book publishers in many different ways. But when an author or author-artist whom we have published previously brings in a new manuscript, the chances of its being right for our list are far better than average. Often the new work will have been “talked out” long before it was ever written down.

But finding new talent is important too. It is the lifeblood of a publishing house, and there have been new writers and artists every season at Dial. Many new people come to us through recommendations; others through literary agents. For unpublished authors, however, getting an agent can be as difficult as getting published, and every publisher receives thousands of unsolicited manuscripts every year from aspiring authors all around the country. In an average year we log in approximately six thousand such manuscripts, and we read each one. Although this is an enormous job, it is one I am committed to, and from time to time we do find books in this way.

One such book is John Bellairs’s
The House with a Clock in Its Walls
, which we published in 1973. A few years before, John had sent in an unsolicited three-hundred-page manuscript. A young editorial assistant, Karen Andersen—now an author-artist—wrote to him to say that if he would cut it in half and make the main character the boy instead of the middle-aged uncle, we’d like to see the manuscript again. The revision appeared unheralded a year later and became the first of thirteen successful novels we’ve published by John Bellairs, all of which are still in print in hardcover as well as in paperback. Over the past few years, we’ve contracted for several picture books and two novels that have arrived over the transom—not a high percentage, but I do feel that the chance of discovering a gem makes reading the unsolicited manuscripts worthwhile.

Some of the greatest publishing successes have been repeatedly turned down by other publishers. A first novel,
Summer of My German Soldier
, is one such book. Soon after publication Bette Greene told me that her manuscript had been rejected by eleven houses before her agent sent it to me. It proved to be an enormous success when we published it in 1973. Considering how many rewrites and changes had to be made before publication, it is perhaps understandable why other publishers had chosen not to take on such a major job. But from the first time I read the manuscript, I was hooked by both the story and the emotional content.
Summer of My German Soldier
is still in print in Dial hardcover, it has sold well over a
million copies in paperback, and it was a two-hour prime-time television show. But there were many times before the manuscript was ready for publication when I wondered if I had made the right decision.

Then too, there are the times when I see something and say to myself: It’s brilliant, but is it a children’s book? If it’s really special, I’ll often take a gamble with someone who just might be able to expand the horizons of children’s books. This is true of illustrators as well as writers. From the moment a manuscript first comes in, we at Dial ask ourselves: What kind of child would like this? Will it have meaning and importance for children? And if it’s a picture book, what artwork will bring it to life?

The selection of an illustrator is perhaps the single most important and also difficult choice to be made in publishing a picture book, the success of which depends on a harmonious interplay of text and artwork. I do not look for a literal “picturing” of the story, which is likely to be dull and repetitive. Instead I want to find an artist who can emphasize or balance certain elements in a story—its humor, its warmth, its beauty, etc. But the right artwork can also extend a book’s meaning and even add a totally new dimension.

In cases when an artist both writes and illustrates a book, the dummy is usually the form in which an editor will first see it. This makes sense of course when you consider that an artist must work out ideas visually. From the dummy the editor can see what the artist is trying to say—the story he or she is telling—and thereby help to work out both the text and the artwork. Often there won’t even be a manuscript separate from the dummy until the concept is quite far along and it’s time to have the printer set the type that will be in the finished book. Both aspects of a picture book, text and art, are thus thought about and worked on by the editor
together
rather than as separate entities.

Steven Kellogg and I have worked on twenty-seven books together, and fifteen of them are picture books he has both written and illustrated. Steven is a wonderful writer and illustrator, and many of his books have gone easily and quickly, with the final books following the general outlines of his original dummies.
The Christmas Witch
, his most recent book, is one of these. With others, the process has been more complicated. An example of this is
Best Friends
. Several years ago when we were both asked to speak at the Vassar Summer Publishing Institute, we decided to discuss
Best Friends
, a picture book that captures the sometimes exhilarating, sometimes troubling emotions of childhood in a warm and humorous manner. Steven sent me his original dummies so I could have slides made to illustrate our talk. His accompanying note said: “Dear Phyllis, How’s this for nostalgia: old dummies from
Best Friends
. You saw the first one twelve years ago!” The six dummies—each with some notes of mine—showed a fascinating progression
from an interesting, very promising idea to a wonderful, fully realized book.

When a manuscript we plan to publish comes in, Atha Tehon, Dial’s art director, becomes involved in both the choice of illustrator for, and the concept of, a picture book. Every house operates differently, but at Dial we all work together as a team and can easily switch roles, each going between a consideration of the text to a close, hard look at the artwork and back again. A good picture book should be a collaboration between two talents if the author is not also the artist. In most cases, however, the author is not involved in the choice of who will illustrate the story and will never even speak with the artist as the book is being developed. The author’s vision tends to be quite specific and personal, and it
can
limit the artist’s freedom and work against the book. It really is a situation—and as far as I know the only one—in which the “separate but equal” principle applies and should be put to use.

As a publisher and editor-in-chief I need to know what the market is for a particular book in order to decide whether it is worth our while to publish. Sometimes I discuss new projects in their early stages with our sales and marketing people to get their input about the potential market for a book and other considerations, such as how many copies they think could be sold. More often than not these are “novelty” books, such as pop-ups. It’s often hard to discuss authors’ ideas with sales and marketing people—even those as talented and supportive as ours—when most of the book is still in the discussion stage between author and editor.

There is always an element of risk and adventure in working on children’s books: No one can be sure at the beginning of a project whether it will ultimately be successful with children, or reviewers for that matter! But taking such risks is one of the reasons I have found it such a pleasure to be involved in this field. The discovery of a promising new writer, the challenge of helping an artist attain his or her particular vision, and the satisfaction involved in creative, collaborative work are some of the things that make editing and publishing children’s books continuously worthwhile.

Linda Halvorson Morse

L
INDA
H
ALVORSON
M
ORSE
is executive editor at Oxford University Press in New York, responsible for the Press’s Trade Reference Department, whose core projects include “Companions” (one-volume encyclopedias), richly illustrated narrative histories, and edited anthologies. Ms. Morse began her publishing career at Macmillan Publishing Company, with responsibility for a major academic encyclopedia, then spent several years at D. C. Heath & Company in Lexington, Massachusetts, acquiring textbooks in history and political science
.

Today more publishers are producing more reference works on more topics than ever before. “We live in a world,” Ms. Morse writes, “in which people need and want easy access to systematized knowledge
.”

Ms. Morse defines academic reference books as often multivolume “works planned for academic or professional readerships [and that] find a substantial portion of their market through libraries and other institutions,” and trade reference books as usually one-volume works “written to satisfy the avocational interests of a broad general readership … and [that] are available through retail bookstores, in addition to direct mail and other channels
.”

Single-author reference works are edited in much the same way general nonfiction is handled. “Multiauthor reference projects, however, bring with them unique issues of intellectual coherence, teamwork, and long-term project administration.” Ms. Morse uses as her model for discussion “a multiauthor trade reference encyclopedia; though directed to a more specialized
audience, a multiauthor academic reference work would present the same kinds of editorial challenges, writ large
.”

Ms. Morse’s encyclopedic essay touches on every important aspect of editing reference works: from planning subject areas in which to publish, to selecting and working with editorial boards and contributors, to developing the content of a volume, to overseeing long-range project administration
.

Looking to the future, Ms. Morse sees increasingly sophisticated use of computers affording reference book editors greater speed and flexibility in handling detailed editorial development and administrative work and more choices in how “the material we generate reaches its audiences, with brave new technologies (CD-ROM, on-line services, and the like) coexisting with—but, we know in our hearts, never replacing!—the wonderful, reassuring bulk of a reference book
.”