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Abstracts: Transition

Abstracts: Transition | Abstracts: Consolidation | Abstracts: Collaboration
Conference program

Thursday, 13 October 2005

Keynote address: Editors in transition

Michael Webster

Editors need to make the transition from being highly skilled niche specialists to broadly skilled practitioners again becoming central to the publishing process.

With publishing moving from being a trade to an industry and an industry competing for the entertainment dollar as never before, there is increasing ?tension? between editorial and sales functions functions that ever so slowly have diverged over the last decade. The trend has been driven home by the number of ?is-the-marketing-tail-wagging-the-publishing-dog? articles and discussions which have arisen this year. It wasn?t like this a few years ago, and it needn?t be now.

But if editors are to resist being shunted to the sidelines by the marketers, they have to do more than nurture their authors and collaborate with their colleagues. They have to be more than ?cogs in wheels within wheels?, as Jackie Yowell puts it, more than the imposers of standards and arbiters of good taste. These characteristics of the good editor haven?t changed and shouldn?t. These are all part of the editor?s natural comfort zone.

Editors have to get out of their comfort zone. They have to challenge the low recognition and poor image their profession has suffered, not only inside publishing (operating behind the scenes and increasingly out of the ?hard? decision-making processes), but also in the broader community where their role is not recognised or, if it is, seems to be misunderstood. It?s going to require the acquisition of a whole set of new skills, a very much more commercial approach to their role, a brashness not previously associated with the profession. Only by accepting this transition process will editors in Australian publishing enjoy the recognition, income and influence their fellows enjoy in the USA and UK.

With the help of participants Michael will explore some strategies to develop these new skills in a way that will enhance, not diminish, existing skills that are fundamental to the good editor.

Michael Webster?s publishing career started in 1970 when he was appointed a college representative and later schools editor with McGraw-Hill. He then held commissioning/editorial positions with Pitman and Thomas Nelson before becoming MD of D W Thorpe in 1981 - a position he held until starting his research business in the late 1990s, which included bringing what is now Nielsen BookScan to Australia. While still involved in industry research and analysis, since 2001 Michael has been running the Graduate Program in Publishing Studies at RMIT University in Melbourne. Over his career he?s also been fortunate to have served on many industry boards and committees, including the Literature Board, Copyright Agency Limited, National Library of Australia, State Library of Victoria, ABA and APA.

Presentation: ?W(h)ither our English?? language and change

Kate Burridge

Variability provides the vehicle for language change. The infinite variation in everyday speech the slipshod pronunciations, the mistakes in grammar, the coinages, the new-fangled meanings these are what provide the basis for real change. Some of these features will drop by the wayside, it is true. Some will remain as variation. But there will be others that catch on, be used more and more and eventually become established. Most of the time we fail to see the stirrings going on around us. Changes in language are as gradual and imperceptible as the changes in the growth of a plant or tree. But the clues to where our language is heading are everywhere. In this talk Kate will identify those non-standard features that might make it into the repertoire of standard English in the future. As part of this endeavour she will outline some of the most robust features that have been identified in non-standard Englishes elsewhere the so-called vernacular universals or ?Angloversals?. Unfortunately, predicting change is one of the trickiest tasks confronting historical linguists. We can take note of what we imagine to be changes underway, but we can never be sure they will run their full course. Clearly, language professionals such as editors are also in a difficult position. Unfortunately there is no magic time in linguistic change when misuse becomes use. It is murky and it is messy.

Kate Burridge completed her undergraduate training in Linguistics and German at the University of Western Australia. This was followed by three years of postgraduate study at the University of London. Kate completed her PhD in 1983 on syntactic change in medieval Dutch. She also taught at the Polytechnic of Central London before joining the Department of Linguistics at La Trobe University in 1984. In February 2003 she took up the Chair in Linguistics at Monash University. Her main areas of research are grammatical change in Germanic languages, the Pennsylvania German spoken by Anabaptist communities in Canada, euphemism and language taboos, and the structure and history of English. Kate is a member of the Australian Academy of Humanities. She is also a regular presenter of language segments on ABC Radio and has published numerous books on language and word usage.

Panel: ?What?s the big deal? It?s only a kid?s book!?

Maryann Ballantyne, Marjory Gardner, Denise Ryan and Carole Wilkinson
Chair: Lisa Berryman

There is more to editing/publishing for children than one would think, and this panel will attempt to cover some of the many facets involved. These include the criteria for editing children?s books for both the trade and education markets, including the differences, the similarities, the requirements, the demands and the difficulties of the task. Just a few of the considerations include language levels, em widths, typefaces and font sizes, leading, design, covers, and briefing illustrators and photo researchers.

The challenge of editing for an international market is another aspect of publishing children?s books that will be discussed. This area is not only fraught with difficulties and demands but also has its extremely hilarious moments.

And, looking at the publishing process from another perspective, an author will give her account of the experience of being edited. She?ll discuss what an editor can bring to her work and the difference between being edited for the trade and education markets. Finally, an illustrator will reveal his experience of having one?s visual interpretation and narrative edited. He too will tackle the differences between being edited for the trade and education markets.

The panel comprises a group of people who have a great deal of expertise in children?s editing/publishing, who are passionate about what they do and who want to share their knowledge, not only to demonstrate the complexities involved in the process of publishing for children, but also to divulge what fun it can be. Questions from the audience are welcome.

Maryann Ballantyne began her publishing career at Penguin Books in 1984 and then went on to work for Five Mile Press and William Heinemann Australia. In 1996, Maryann and her partner began Black Dog Books, packaging individual titles and series for an international market. Since 2000, Black Dog has been publishing quality children?s books under the Black Dog Books imprint.

Marjory Gardner studied graphic design at RMIT then worked in various design studios before becoming a freelance children?s book illustrator. She has illustrated a wide range of educational and trade books and magazines, published in Australia and internationally. Her work is distinctive for its humour, rainbow colours and appealing characters.

Lisa Berryman (Chair) has worked in children?s book publishing since 1983 and is currently the Children?s Publisher at HarperCollins Publishers Australia. Lisa has worked for a number of trade and education publishing houses including Rigby Publishers, Rigby Education, Reed Books and Roland Harvey Books. Lisa has also worked in children?s television at the Australian Children?s Television Foundation and taught Editing and Publishing at RMIT.

Lisa was president and past president of the Society of Editors (Victoria) from 19881992.

Denise Ryan is Senior Publisher Primary for Pearson Education Australia. Denise taught at all levels of education before she entered the world of educational publishing 20 years ago. She is a former President of the Australian Literacy Educators? Association and is a recipient of the ALEA Medal, awarded to her in recognition of her outstanding contribution to literacy education in Australia. Denise maintains her life-long interest in literacy education and is committed to helping develop educational resources that will engage and delight all children.

Carole Wilkinson is a children?s author. She loves history with all its amazing events, remarkable people and great outfits. She writes historical books, fact and fiction, as it allows her to imagine what it was like in those interesting times while still enjoying hot showers, television and food that you don?t have to bludgeon yourself.

She is author of the best-selling Ramose series, Black Snake: the daring of Ned Kelly (honour book in the CBCA awards 2003) and the multi-award winning Dragonkeeper. She lives in inner-city Melbourne.

Presentation: Dancing on the head of a pin: book editors in Australia

Diane Brown and Lee White

Since 1986 the book and the book industry have undergone significant changes. These changes can be tracked by asking: Who are book editors? What do we do? What are our tools? What is our status? How can we shape our working lives and, more broadly, the editing profession? Is there a viable future for book editors in this country? While the editor?s role has expanded beyond belief in response to changes in local and global economies and information and communications technology, some fundamental aspects of our working lives have not shifted. Over time, for example, the editor?s social, cultural and economic values have not been adequately measured, recognised or remunerated. More recently, there has been a national accreditation push to measure competency and standards in the editing profession and promote the profile of editors. Our paper explores and surveys an uneven history to contextualise the rapid changes that have transformed the book editing profession in Australia today. To help us gain a broader picture of the book publishing scene, identify key issues and evaluate the editor?s changing work environment, we invited working book editors (in-house and freelance) to participate in a survey and their narratives are included in our paper.

Diane Brown is a Melbourne-based freelance editor, scholarly writer and researcher. She holds a graduate diploma (editing and publishing) and a PhD (arts/publishing). She is a member of the CASE/Society of Editors (Victoria) planning committee for Editing in Context 2005. She is the founder of the Occasional Series on Australian Editors (OSAE) project and convenor of the 2004-05 OSAE working group (Victoria).

Lee White has worked in book publishing since 1965 and commenced freelance editing in 1979. Her editorial training was completed before structured courses were available in Australia and the UK. She holds a BA (Journalism) and an MA (Linguistics and Media). Her MA dissertation The Role and Status of Book Editors in Australia (1986) is still being read by trainees today. She is an honorary life member of the Society of Editors (Victoria).

Presentation: Content management versus content quality: raising the profile of editors in the online world

Maree Kimberley

Despite the catch cry ?content is king?, many managers and decision makers still view their organisation?s websites as a technical domain. Numerous large websites, including those of state and local government, do not employ an editor to review website content before it is published. Of those that do, some website editors are faced with the impossible task of being responsible for a group of sites totalling more than ten thousand pages. Other editors face an uphill battle dealing with contributing writers with little or no knowledge of web writing skills or have their authority bypassed altogether by content management systems that use decentralised authoring and publishing.

This paper looks at the impact of content management systems (CMS) on the quality of content in government and corporate websites and discusses the issues faced by editors and possible solutions to overcome them. In particular, it looks at a website where the editor?s role is valued compared to a website where a decentralised editing and publishing process largely bypasses the web editor. The paper also discusses opportunities for web editors and how the time has come for editors to embrace technology and market their skills as content quality experts.

Maree Kimberley is a writer and editor specialising in web writing and editing for government, semi-government organisations and statutory authorities.

She is currently a website consultant for the Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines and was formerly the senior editor with the internationally awarded Brisbane City Council corporate website. Her other clients have included Smart Service Queensland, QUT creative industries, Brisbane Water and Museum of Brisbane. She is a member of the Queensland State Government?s standards implementation group to revise and update writing standards for all Queensland Government websites.

In her spare time Maree writes fiction. She has completed three manuscripts for young adults, has published short stories, articles and a children?s chapter book and has won several prizes for her writing. She is a member of the Queensland Society of Editors, the Queensland Writers Centre, the Australian Society of Authors and PEN.

Presentation: Holding on and letting go

Kathie Stove

This lighthearted look, with a serious undertone, at the way editors move, or not, with the times is based on a not-very-scientific-at-all survey of selected editors from across the country who were asked to name about 5 new word or phrase uses they would allow and about 5 traditional uses they could not let go even in the face of the onslaught of overwhelming popular use in their practice of editing. The survey asked them to justify, if they could, their choices.

The choices covered a wider than expected range but also missed some current language trends the author thought worth mentioning. Though there was disagreement between editors, the fact that they care enough to think about change may well be an indicator of how valuable the profession is to the language.

Kathie Stove has spent the last 2 years of her 14 years as a freelance editor and writer averting her eyes from the stunning view from her office window and trying to concentrate on her work. She lives at Penneshaw (population 450) on Kangaroo Island and recommends the ?mouse race? life to anyone who cares to listen. Most of Kathie?s editing work is on government documents and she also writes internal newsletters for organisations.

Kathie is a member (ELS) of the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences, holds a BSc and a Postgraduate Diploma in Library and Information Management.

Panel: Some of the finest: honorary life members

Sheila Allison, Pamela Ball, Loma Snooks and Lee White
Chair: Renée Otmar

Special session presented by the Occasional Series on Australian Editors Victorian working group and sponsored by the Society of Editors (Victoria) Inc.

Honorary life members are our societies? national treasures. Collectively they carry a wealth of knowledge, experience and memories based on career-long commitment to the editing profession. They are long-standing members of societies of editors, often serving as presidents and/or committee members. Some have been editors since before state and territory societies were established; indeed, some have helped found these societies. Having worked as leading editors for decades, they have been instrumental in shaping the industry. They have written and co-written books about editing and the profession, established and taught professional writing and editing courses and, importantly, have been mentors for many trainee editors.

Surprisingly, there are few state and territory Life Members in Australia. Perhaps this speaks volumes about the individuals who have been nominated, the significance of this honour and their enduring contributions.

Four honorary life members (and a participating Chair) will engage the audience in a discussion focusing on where an editing career can lead, illustrated with case studies and anecdotes from the panel members? working lives as editors.

This special conference session is sponsored by the Society of Editors (Victoria), and organised by the Occasional Series on Australian Editors Victorian working group.

Sheila Allison After studying journalism at the University of Minnesota and working as an editor for TV Guide magazine in the US, Sheila came to Australia for a working holiday. During this decades-long holiday she became an Australian citizen and worked in various facets of newspaper publishing and as an editor for the Australian Film, Television and Radio School in Sydney and Australian Teachers of Media in Melbourne. As a freelancer she edited and co-authored the high school text, Media Active, for Heinemann Education and wrote film study guides for Village Roadshow. Her writing has featured in The Age and her fiction was published in Island. Since 1989, Sheila has held the position of manager and publisher of the Australian Clearinghouse for Youth Studies, a federally funded publishing house based at the University of Tasmania, Hobart. ACYS publishes a national quarterly journal and books, and provides editorial and publishing services for external clients, such as the State Department of Education and self-publishers. She is active in two small presses in Tasmania as proprietor and director of Montpelier Press, and editorial production manager for Red Hill Books and is a past president and honorary life member of the Society of Editors, Tasmania.

Pamela Ball Pamela left Sydney University with a BA and a determination not to become a teacher. After 12 years of avoidance in market research, office administration, journalism, and advertising in Australia, England, Germany and France she gained a Graduate Diploma in Education and became a teacher of French and English with the education department in Adelaide. Seven years into that career the department offered her the chance to join their publishing unit first as editor of curriculum materials, then as editor of their journal, Pivot, and then as manager of the publishing unit. This was the ideal job, combining a love of teaching with a passion for words and their presentation in print. She began her editing career with a red pen, a blue pen and a bottle of whiteout. She ended her in-house career in front of a screen without a red pen in sight. Pamela is now a freelance writer and editor. She comments that her new laptop, printer, scanner, and broadband access cost a lot more than a couple of biros. Pamela was one of a triumvirate who got the South Australian Society of Editors off the ground in 1989 and was their first president.

Renée Otmar Renée started her editing career in a university research centre. She was so amazed to find out that what she was doing was ?editing?, that she immediately started looking around for others doing likewise. These like-minded souls she unearthed in RMIT?s Graduate Diploma in Editing and Publishing and through the Society of Editors (Victoria). Since then she?s amassed considerable experience in editing and publishingin-house and freelance. Currently she works part-time as Publishing Manager for a non-government organisation, and on a freelance basis for a host of different clients. She has recently become an independent publisher and has just published her first work of fiction. She is also currently undertaking the Master of Public Health program at The University of Melbourne.

Renée became a member of the Society of Editors (Victoria) in 1992 and served on its committee for 12 consecutive years, including three years as its president. In 2000 she was made an honorary life member of this Society. She was a founding member of CASE and an early champion for this conference to be held in Melbourne.

Loma Snooks Loma has more than 25 years? experience at a senior level in editing, information design and publication team management for professional services organisations and as a freelance. Some career highlights include assembling and leading the team preparing the sixth edition of the Commonwealth?s Style manual for authors, editors and printers; developing and managing a large team of editors and designers working around Australia and in the US and Asia on high-profile public reports; and creating a new brand (including logo, marketing material, web site and writing guidelines) for a publicly owned legal firm. Loma played a key part in the establishment of editing societies in South Australia and Canberra, and was Inaugural President of the Canberra Society of Editors, of which she is an honorary life member. She was also the ACT representative on the National Editing Standards Working Group, which produced the National standards for editing practice.

Lee White Lee tumbled into editing (unwittingly) in 1965 when she commenced working at Sun Books, where she was trained in the usual and unusual aspects of author/publisher relations by Geoff Dutton. Her training continued at William Collins (London). On her return to Melbourne she returned to Sun Books and remained with the company through some lean and difficult times until it became part of the Macmillan Company of Australia. She was appointed Senior Editor, then Publisher (Australian Literature) of Macmillans, and stayed there until 1978 when the lure of a (much) higher salary, rostered days off and a prospect of a 9-to-5 job enticed her to State Government employment at the National Gallery of Victoria. This was followed by a job at Monash University with some part-time freelancing, before personal circumstances forced a move to a semi-rural environment and she became a full-time freelance editor. During her career, Lee has worked with many famous Australian authors and celebrities, including Geoffrey Blainey, Barry Humphries, David Foster, Roland Robinson, Phillip Adams, Stephen Murray-Smith and Patsy Adam-Smith, to name but a few. Lee has now been a freelance editor for some 25 years and continues to accept commissions because she loves working with words.

Presentation: The print-on-demand process

Peter Patterson

Advances in digital print technologies have now made the printing and distribution of books affordable, risk-free, and universally available without having to compromise on quality. In less than a decade we have seen the move from long-run offset printing to a combination, the gradual introduction of digital printing to full digital printing one book at a time.

Traditionally, book publishers pick texts that they think people will be interested in buying, and publish thousands of copies. Then they send out those books to booksellers and hope that they made the right choice. If the books sell, the publishers and the booksellers make money. If not, the publishers get nothing, and the booksellers end up with thousands of copies of books no-one wants to buy.

What BookSurge does instead is publish copies of a book only after someone offers to buy them, and only as many copies as there are willing buyers even if that means printing books one copy at a time. What inventory the company has is strictly in the form of computer files, along with the paper, binding materials and equipment needed to turn those files into retail- or library-quality books.

As a major producer of training publications and short-run and niche books, Mercury Communications Group has been part of this evolution in book production. Not having a print background enabled Peter to have an open mind about book printing and lead Mercury to becoming a partner in a print-on-demand inventory-free book operation called BookSurge. BookSurge is a global operation providing a low-risk, low-cost, high-quality means of producing a book. Books are uploaded in digital form onto an Internet database. The files are stored in print-ready form and produced within 48 hours of an order being received. Books are available for sale from www.booksurge.com.au and are listed on www.amazon.com. Orders are fulfilled in batches as small as one at a time. Authors can publish with relative ease and at reasonable cost. Publishers can keep books in print and readers are able to receive books in a timely manner from one of 11 production facilities around the world. This is the revolution in the book industry.

Peter will share his passion for the BookSurge concept and introduce you to the technology of printing books one at a time

Peter Patterson has been in the printing industry for four years, after many years in the utilities industry. As General Manager and a qualified accountant, Peter has been gradually changing the direction of his company, Mercury Communications Group, to more of a solutions provider than a printer. Mercury has been serving the boutique publishing sector for many years and prides itself on being one of Australia?s leading short-run book printers. Two years ago, Peter discovered at a conference in Cairns an inventory-free print-on-demand book company called BookSurge. In July 2004 Mercury became the printing arm of BookSurge Australia. Peter also took on the role of General Manager of BookSurge Australia.

Workshop: Is an ezine easy?

Pamela Hewitt and Shelley Kenigsberg

Electronic publishing has made it simple and cheap to put an ezine together. Right? Or is there a bit more to it? At this workshop, you will find out what?s involved. Using discussion, hands-on activities and hypothetical scenarios, the workshop explores the planning, production and ethical aspects of producing an online journal.

Working in groups, participants will:

• grapple with moral dilemmas
• select from competing submissions
• consider layout options
• juggle budgetary priorities.

The workshop looks at the philosophical and the practical aspects of publishing an ezine. How do you achieve balance in the content? What steps can you take to ensure quality? How do you expand the pool of contributors? What are the economic realities of e-publishing? And most important, is it fun?

In this workshop, Shelley Kenigsberg and Pamela Hewitt combine their experience of print and online journal editing. They are both members of the editorial board of The Fine Print, an independent online journal dedicated to editing.

Pamela Hewitt is a freelance editor, writer and trainer, and proprietor of Emend Editing, which she established in 1996. She has developed and presented editing courses and workshops for educational institutions, writers? centres, literary festivals, editors? societies and government agencies. In 2005, Pamela established Emend Editing online training courses and the online journal The Fine Print.

Shelley Kenigsberg is an editor and trainer. She has run SK Publishing freelance editorial services since 1998 and coordinated and taught the Macleay College Book Editing and Publishing Diploma since 1991. She has presented workshops at national and international conferences, trained in-house and corporate editorial teams and worked in publishing (educational and trade) for over 20 years. She is also a member of the editorial board of The Fine Print ezine.

Workshop: Freelance editing: starting out

Renée Otmar and Sally Woollett

Many editors and aspiring editors tend to focus on the technical aspects of their craft, to the detriment of their business skills. They mistakenly assume that if they are good at what they do, the work (and generous payment) will follow.

However, they soon discover a quite different situation in the ?real world?. Freelance editors are small businesses, and clients expect them to act as such. They want ABNs and itemised quotes; Rolls Royce delivery for Commodore prices.

Renée Otmar and Sally Woollett will present a workshop considering the realities of freelance editing.

The workshop will cover:

• assessing your readiness
• setting up your freelance business
• creating a business plan
• working from home
• setting rates
• marketing your business.

This workshop offers conference participants a taste of the longer workshops on Starting Out, Quotations and Negotiations, and Successful Freelancing presented by Sally and Renée and offered through state societies of editors.

Renée Otmar started her editing career 15 years ago. These days she divides her time between a role as publishing manager for a non-government agency, her freelance consultancy and study towards a Masters in Public Health.

Sally Woollett runs a successful freelance editing business and is a past Freelance Affairs representative of the Society of Editors (Victoria). She is currently part of the Society of Editors subcommittee for the 2005 national editors conference.

Between them, Renée and Sally have worked on more than 300 freelance projects.

Presentation: Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP) (UK) Accreditation in Proofreading

Paper prepared by: Valerie Rice, Pennie Lyons, Judith Wardman
Presented by: Valerie Rice

SFEP was founded in 1988 by Norma Whitcombe and other ex-employees of publishing companies who had been made redundant and who wanted to form a support organisation for people working as freelances in the publishing industry. There were 60 founder members and 47 of them are still active members of the Society.

At that time there were no formal qualifications in proofreading or copyediting although NVQs (National Vocational Qualifications) in publishing were being introduced.

In 1993 SFEP set up an Accreditation Board to establish and administer professional qualifications in proofreading and copyediting at two levels: Accreditation (lower) and Registration (higher). Finding designers to develop the tests took a long time. We also had to train examiners. This was not as easy as we had first thought and developing tests continued through the 90s. The first test was piloted in 2001.

Accreditation in Proofreading was launched in March 2002 to coincide with the relaunch of SFEP (Society of Freelance Editors and Proofreaders) as SfEP (Society for Editors and Proofreaders).

Since the launch 41 members have taken the test and 10 have been successful. Success automatically upgrades Associates to Ordinary membership and helps Ordinary members to upgrade to Advanced membership.

Valerie Rice trained as a bilingual secretary, and subsequently retrained as a teacher of shorthand and typing. After a career break to bring up three sons, she ran her own training centre and secretarial services bureau before returning to full-time teaching, specialising in office skills, business studies and IT. Teaching and examining in these subjects was an ideal grounding for proofreading and copyediting, to which she turned when she took early retirement. Valerie has now been freelance for 10 years, and joined the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP) in 1995, becoming a committee member in 1999. She took over as Treasurer in February 2001, and oversaw the incorporation of the Society in 2003, streamlining the administration at the same time.