Implications of Authorship: the Authorieditor Relationship from Proposal to Manuscript
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Implications of Authorship: The AuthorIEditor Relationship from Proposal to Manuscript Shyla Seller B.A., University of Victoria, 1999 PROJECT REPORT SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF PUBLISHING in the Faculty of Arts & Sciences Publishing Program O Shyla Seller 2005 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Spring 2005 All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author. Approval Name: Shyla Seller Degree: Masters of Publishing Title of project report: Implications of Authorship: The AuthodEditor Relationship from Proposal to Manuscript Examining Committee: Chair: Dr. Lorimer Thesis Committee: Rowland Lorimer, Ph.D. Senior Supervisor Nancy Flight, M.A. Second Supervisor Rob Sanders Publisher Greystone Books, an imprint of Douglas & McIntyre SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY PARTIAL COPYRIGHT LICENCE The author, whose copyright is declared on the title page of this work, lnas granted to Simon Fraser University the right to lend this thesis, project or extended essay to users of the Simon Fraser University Librarv, and to make partial or single copies only for such users or in response to a request from the library of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. The author has further granted permission to Simon Fraser University to keep or make a digital copy for use in its circulating collection. The author has further agreed that permission for ~n~~ltiplecopying of this work for scholarly purposes may be granted by either the author or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of this work for financial gain shall not be allowed without the author's written permission. \ Permission for public performance, or limited permissio~n for private sclnolarly use, of any multimedia materials forming part of this work, may have been granted by the author. This information may be found on the separately catalogued multimedia material and in the signed Partial Copyright Licence. The original Partial Copyright Licence attesting to these terms, and signed by this author, may be found in the original bound copy of this work, retained in the Simon Fraser University Archive. W. A. C. Bennett Library Simon Fraser University Burnaby, BC, Canada Abstract This paper looks at the authorleditor relationship in the early development stage of forming a chapter-by-chapter outline of a work of non-fiction for publication in book form. The relationship is considered using a real-world example of the developmental editorial work of Nancy Flight, Associate Publisher at Greystone Books, on a manuscript that is eventually published as Gardens of Shame: The Tragedy of Martin Kruze and the Sexual Abuse at Maple Leaf Gardens. Implications of the authorleditor relationship are considered through a step-by-step review of editorial correspondence and successive drafts of a book proposal for a single work of non-fiction, and by considering the example of developmental editing work on a book proposal within contemporary editorial theory and discourse. Acknowledgements Nancy Flight has taught substantive editing in SFU's summer publishing workshops, and generously gave me copies of her class notes and handouts, to which I refer in this paper. She also provided me with copies of consecutive drafts of a proposal and her editorial comments for analysis here, with the permission of their authors. I wouldn't have been able to submit this paper as part of the requirements of SFU's Masters of Publishing program without her generous assistance and desire to see the potential of early proposal- editing examined. I was also influenced by conversations with Karl Siegler, Rob Sanders and Howard White, and am grateful to them all for sharing their insight and experience. Contents .. Approval .............................................................................................................................11 ... Abstract .............................................................................................................................ill Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... iv Contents ............................................................................................................................. v Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One ...................................................................................................................... 3 A Brief History of Greystone Books .......................................................................3 Defining Terms ....................................................................................................... 6 Chapter Two ...................................................................................................................... 8 Editorial considerations for acquisition: for the editor and author ........................ 8 Editing by proposal ...............................................................................................13 Chapter Three ................................................................................................................15 First draft ...............................................................................................................15 Editor's response ....................................................................................................22 Second draft ..........................................................................................................25 Editor's response ...................................................................................................29 Third draft ............................................................................................................32 Editor's response ...................................................................................................34 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................38 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................43 Works Cited ...........................................................................................................43 Sources Consulted .................................................................................................44 Appendices .......................................................................................................................45 Appendix A ........................................................................................................... 46 Appendix B ...........................................................................................................55 Appendix C .......................................................................................................... 64 Introduction The following report will look at the substantive editing of proposals for works of adult trade non-fiction as it is used at Greystone Books, an imprint of the Douglas & McIntyre Publishing Group based in Vancouver, British Columbia. It will demonstrate how early editorial involvement in a project can be used to explore a publishing company's mandate and to impact sales. The information presented in this report was gathered during my internship in the editorial department of Greystone Books, under the guidance of Associate Publisher Nancy Flight, during the months of June through September, 2002. During those months, we were preparing books scheduled for publication in the Fall 2002 season and developing titles for future seasons. I had the opportunity to review many book proposals as they were received in the office and to evaluate these proposals, by assessing their strengths and weaknesses for possible development by Greystone. My main project at the company was to organize past editorial files (gathered by Nancy Flight) into date- and title-ordered files in preparation for including them in Greystone's archives, held by the University of British Columbia. While sorting pages of correspondence, notes, edited drafts and galley proofs, I developed a sense of what kinds of books Greystone preferred and of what the publishing company looked for in a proposal. The files dated back to the late nineties and documented the development of books published by Greystone over approximately a three-year period. I transformed the files from stacks of paper in boxes into files tracking the editing of each Greystone book. The files are labeled "correspondence," "proposal," "first draft," "second draft," "third draft" (if necessary), "first lasers" (designed text), "second lasers," "third lasers" (if necessary) and "index." This system was developed by a student archivist with the purpose of presenting a complete picture of what changes were made to a manuscript, when, and in what order, to a future researcher. While I was organizing the archives, I occasionally tried to imagine who these future researchers would be, and what they would be looking for in the piles of paper documenting ongoing conversations between author and editor. Would they be interested in questions of authorial intent versus a publisher's presentation of a writer's work? Would they be collecting a critical edition of a soon-to-be-famous author's