First Real* Job!

I just accepted my first real job, to start January 4. Hooray!

I'll be working as an editor with A K Peters, a small publisher of college textbooks. They publish a lot of mathematics and physics books and are the leading publisher of computer game designing books. Don't worry: I don't have to check the math. Scholars do that. So you can all rest assured that none of your computer games will start spouting staticky Shakespeare anytime soon.

I am really excited about the job. In a numbered list, here's why:

1. It's in Natick. I get to stay in Boston!
2. It will be an editing position! What could be better?
3. I like everyone in the company. (It's quite small.) They are some of the nicest people I've met.
   
4. Because the company is small, I'll get to have a broad range of experience. When I was choosing a major a zillion years ago (that's an exact mathematical quantity) two specific things tipped the scale in my choice to go into English and editing. One was the day I spent job shadowing the editor of a radiology journal. She was working at a very small company where she got to work with manuscripts at all stages of publication. Her work sounded fantastic. And she had a very cool pantsuit. Ever since I've been hoping for a similar sort of opportunity: to lend my writing expertise to those who are experts in their subject matter, and to get to be involved in all parts of a project.

So I'm having a very merry Christmas looking forward to a working new year.

*By "real" job I mean no offense to any of my previous jobs, which have turned out to be really good experience (even if they didn't seem like it at the time) but really short term and really not a real career. Dion's, nannying, Sandia internships, research assistant, teaching assistant, data enterer, freelance editor, Friend intern, teacher. And of course all the really good experiences (too many to list) that were really valuable and that really didn't pay me so they didn't count as real careers either.

Presses Large and Small

Last week my roommate Camber (also an editor) and I walked all over Manhattan looking at publishing houses. Well, peering in the front windows really. We set out to find Simon & Schuster, Random House, and HarperCollins, and along the way also saw a number of the non-trade publishers—Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and half a dozen news corporations, and walked past the so-influential New York Public Library. I knew publishing was all in New York (which had the historical good fortune of a great harbor that gave quick access to book shipments from England), but I had no idea they were so close together. We gazed at the impressive book display in the lobby at Random House and for lunch chose a café with windows that looked directly onto HarperCollins.

Last week I glimpsed this most impressive collection of corporate trade publishing; yesterday I stopped in at the Harvard Book Store (no affiliation with Harvard except proximity, I’m told) to admire their brand new Paige M. Gutenborg: a print on demand machine that Jason Epstein predicts will be the future face of book publishing. This enhanced laser printer prints from electronic files (at this point mostly scanned books on GoogleBooks) and wraps them up in a quick perfectbind to create your paperback in a matter of minutes. I watched one print job go through the process and paged through some others on display. The binding is sure to fall apart as any cheap paperback will, and the print quality varied widely, depending on the quality of the electronic file, from very fuzzy to nearly indistinguishable from offset. This emerging technology is the book equivalent of an iPod: instead of choosing from among the CDs offered at your local music store or ordering one you especially like, you can choose the music you like most, even songs performed by groups who sing to such niche markets it wouldn’t be profitable to print CDs, and download it immediately. The technology is going to take some refining, but I won’t be surprised to see many more of these sorts of printers rising to supplement the large print runs of books coming out of the New York houses.

Happy Thanksgiving

Last weekend we celebrated Thanksgiving with a visit to Plymouth. The first thing we encountered was the Bronze Indian. One of the only other copies of Massasoit’s statue proudly breaks the Honor Code at BYU. This drove us all to speculate on why this hero of Pilgrim history also appeared in Provo. Here are three possible reasons, proposed by my brother Chris:

1. He was also known as Ousamequin, or “yellow feather,” and was a chief of the Wampanoag tribe. He was born in Pokanoket. All of those words are fun to say.
2. It was made by Cyrus E. Dallin, who also made the angel Moroni for the Salt Lake Temple.
3. The local Ute Indians are the mascots of the U of U, so we obviously couldn't have a sculpture of anyone from around here without compromising our rivalry.

Once we’d finished admiring the sculpture, we found a spot on the grass between an out-of-state couple whose camera bag kept rolling down the hill and a pirate who stood to salute every group of re-enactors who marched by. First opening ceremonies were performed by the USAF Tops in Blue, an extremely glitzy show choir sporting the most sequins I’ve ever seen. There performance was enthusiastic collection of jazzy show and patriotic tunes that reminded me somehow of a rodeo. But their tribute to all the veterans present (and there were a lot, from every division of the military) was truly touching, as was their rendition of “Proud to be an American.”

Then came the Plymouth Thanksgiving Parade, which starred Clydesdales and floats and an astonishing number of turkey hats. There were four or five full marching bands made up entirely of middle-aged adults. The absolute highlight of the parade, though, was the turkey floats. This first one, according to the announcer, is a replica of the wild turkey the Pilgrims would have hunted here in the wilds of New England. Not your typical fat, domestic turkey, these wild turkeys were lean, mean, and cunning. I’m sure the Pilgrim hat was part of this wily beast’s clever survival plan.

A few floats later, the domestic turkey came by to emphasize the contrast.

On our way out of town, we stopped for a snack at the combination gas station/Dunkin Donuts. Dunkin Donuts, which was founded in Massachusetts, is decidedly the most popular store in the state, and you can’t go more than a mile anywhere in Boston without finding one. The tourists visiting for the parade had cleaned out the entire stock, leaving only empty wire baskets with greasy pink paper liners. I guess the poor, domestic donut lacks the survival skills of the wild turkey.

Boston Libraries

Let’s talk about libraries in Boston.

First of firsts there’s the Boston Public Library, the world’s first public library. (Lots of libraries claim similar titles, but this was the first one that was truly free and public for everyone.) What’s it like? Inspiring. I have a bad habit of tearing up when I think too much about libraries, and this one had me nearly as choked up as the Library of Congress. The library’s founders created a building deliberately intended to evoke lofty thoughts about literacy and democracy and freedom using a stately combination of windows and marble and murals. The holdings are extensive, the rooms are grand, and the entire experience is spectacular. I recommend the architecture tour as a must-see of Boston. A few weeks ago I spent the day in the library reading about Magna Carta and feeling all-around inspired by liberty and the power of the word and such.

Then there are the university libraries. I’m particularly fond of Simmons’ library, which has a Bibliomystery section full of mysteries that take place in libraries. (Books I recommend about libraries include The Brixton Brothers, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians, Bats in the Library, and The Library Lion. And of course there are The Librarian movies.)

Then there’s the local library. Our Watertown library (part of the MinuteMan network) has a lovely modern and historic design with high windows and neat shelves of shiny plastic-jacketed books. There's even a bright local history room full of genealogies where my roommate has already found several books about her ancestors. And just up the road from the Watertown library is the Armenian Library and Museum of America.

Then there’s the convenience library: Somerville West Branch right next to my work. Just thinking of it makes me happy. It has a stone façade with pillars that makes it look like an old bank: very impressive. Walk inside and what do you find? Two tiny rooms with ancient wood floors and a few stands of romance novels and videotapes. After two visits I got up my courage to descend the rickety stairs by the entrance and at the bottom I found . . . the children’s dungeon. I mean children’s section.

What a place! Wrought iron frames the medieval murals painted on literally crumbling walls. I’m not sure if chunks of the wall were deliberately ripped off to give it an ancient feel, or if someone thought, Gee, our walls are falling apart. How can we make that look intentional? In either way it’s simultaneously the most homey and terrifying library I’ve ever visited.

Picture Books

After spending so much time basking in the brilliance of Rick Walton (and of course Will Terry, Kristyn Crow, Guy Francis, Nathan Hale, and Sharlee Glenn), I figured I had the system of creating a picture book down.

But last week I got invited to a number of picture book meetings at Candlewick, and found all sorts of new details. (Not to imply that there’s anything Rick & Co. don’t know—as far as I can tell they’ve solved most of the universe’s problems—I just missed some of what they said.)

In one meeting, I watched the editors discuss some of their favorite manuscripts they’d received. Several of them had received submissions they didn’t care for but wanted to offer to another editor if anyone at our press was the right person for it—and in several cases another editor took the manuscript. We also looked at several books previously published in other countries and considered buying the rights to the book (and all that would imply—translation, cover design, reworking, fees, etc.).

I also learned that Candlewick is unusual in how much input the authors get on their book’s illustrator. Generally, once a manuscript is accepted, the editor and designers hold a meeting to discuss illustrator options. They pull out sample art they have on file, offer suggestions, and debate possibilities. When they’ve chosen three possible illustrators, they’ll often consult with the author to see what the author thinks. This privilege for the author isn’t in the contract, but is offered as a courtesy (after all, you wouldn’t want the author to hate his or her published work). The author also gets to approve the sketches.

Oftentimes the publisher will work out the page turns and trims size before sending the manuscript to the illustrator, although some illustrators, especially the more experienced ones, work directly from the manuscript and choose the spreads themselves. Among many things a publishing house is looking for in an editor is the ability to maintain character consistency—to draw the same character doing a variety of things, over the course of an entire book. On average, the illustrator gets about six to eight months to go from the sketches to the final artwork.

Can't Judge a Book

This week I’ve faced the age-old conundrum: too much going on and therefore no time to write about it (it’s either that or lots of time to write and nothing to say). But I’ll stick to one topic per post, and start with the most exciting one first: the covers meeting!

Since, in defiance of the adage, the cover of a book is one of its most important selling points, the covers meeting is one of the company’s most important, and certainly the most exciting I’ve attended. For the meeting, the heads of marketing and design and editing and probably many more all gather around a table with book stands and shout out the names of the books they’re discussing. Then the editors and designers assigned to the book run over (literally run) and set up a printout of the book’s cover at whatever stage it is, from initial sketch to ready-for-press. Everyone scrutinizes the cover, offers suggestions and direction, and then, usually, sends it back for revision.

I was dazzled by the range of issues discussed. They talked about paper weight, about embossing, gloss, and foil. For one book they liked the color scheme but thought it might be too bright for the theme, for another they altered details of the border so it wouldn’t look too similar to another series from our press. They looked at books that had been previously published in other countries and recommended either slight adjustments or altogether new art to appeal to an American audience.

They debated for several of the titles whether we were trying to sell the name of the author, the illustrator, or the book. For some books they suggested subtitles and for others they removed them. In one case, they even passed around a blank, bound sample of a book that was to have nonstandard stitching, and everyone tried holding it to get a literal feel for the book.

The designers repeatedly accused covers of being too flat, and though flat seemed to refer to everything from static figures to matte ink, it often seemed an apt description.

It was clear that some of the designers worked on a very detailed scale. These designers worked within a specific framework and asked about tiny variations such as various croppings of the art, showing it larger or smaller in relationship to the type. Or they brought in different versions of the art with slightly different shadows.

Others worked more flexibly. One designer brought five different cover possibilities, each with a different image, color scheme, and typeface, and asked for general reactions and critiques. Another brought in a variety of photos of the subject of the book and requested suggestions.

For a number of books people cited precedents from similar genres or companies—things that had worked before and things that hadn’t. But what was most important for each discussion was whether the cover matched the book. Would a child know, from the cover, what sort of story was inside? Although I had thought this would be a fairly simple task, I was surprised by how challenging it could be. Editor/designers teams who were stuck would describe a manuscript to us and ask what to emphasize. How do you capture the complexities of a novel, which is funny and dramatic, romantic and scary, quirky and profound, all in a single image? It’s easier to critique existing ones than to invent them from scratch. And as long as we’re critiquing, a classic example of a cover that does not capture its contents is the latest edition of Ender’s Game (not a Candlewick title).

After the meeting, an editor mentioned in passing that she’d been told you know you’ve found the manuscript for you when you can picture the cover.

To Market, To Market

Yesterday at my internship I got to visit marketing. Very exciting.

When I asked one of the editors what the people in marketing do she said, “They seem to send a lot of mail.” Mysterious. I pictured a clandestine organization, scurrying through corridors, loaded down by large piles of misshapen brown packages being sent to unpronounceable destinations like Ulaanbaatar and Putrajaya. No one knows what goes in or out.

This image was more appealing than my secret fear that those in marketing might actually be retired shoe salesmen. I like shoes as much as the next person, but there’s a reason I own only one pair of tennis shoes and three pairs of the same shoes in different colors. Pinstriped suits, oiled hair, too-friendly smiles: the sales approach isn’t really my thing.

So I was relieved that when I arrived yesterday morning that the people in marketing weren’t visibly much different from those in editing three rows over. No trench coats. No bow ties.

They did have real-friendly smiles, and they answered all my questions. They were in the middle of getting ready for the next big book conference: NCTE in the middle of this month. In the morning I got to write a cover letter for advance copies of a novel being sent to a select group of reviewers. It was fun! I didn’t have to put on the wheedling selling voice and drip with dishonesty. Instead, I just wrote about a new book we had and why we liked it, which was easy to do. I also got to read through a number of marketing plans and promotional materials, write an excited introduction for an book review site, and pull together cover letters and copies of some of our picture books to be sent to the Caldecott committee. I knew my experience was complete when I got to take it all to the mailroom and pack the books up myself, sending them off to all sorts of places . . . like Provo, Utah.

Some general observations about what it might be like to work in marketing:

• Money pressures: Not only are those in marketing constantly looking for ways to get the book to sell, but they are also doing so in a tight budget. You’d be always looking to place ads that would enable you to reach the right people, but you’d have to do so for as cost as possible so you could also advertise your other books.
• Human dimension: While, from my observations, the bulk of the editors’ work is focused on manuscripts, the people in marketing seem to spend a lot of time making phone calls, organizing events, etc. They do some writing, but much more talking.
• Fleeting approach: I was surprised by the dramatic temporal shift I felt from editorial marketing. The sense of time and the books we talk about in both places was really different. While the editors are looking at manuscripts that may appear on shelves in two years, and are also celebrating recently released titles, the focus in marketing was concentrated on the more immediate: how are the new releases being received right now, and what are we doing for the books coming out in the next six months.
• Glowing view: While I personally have felt, reading through the submissions stack, that I’m on the look out for any serious problems with manuscripts that would prevent us from accepting them, the people in marketing are looking at nearly finished books and have to look for what they like about them so they can talk about it. Yesterday I read one of our new titles that I had previously skimmed while in editorial, and was surprised by how different my reading experience was both times. During the editing read, I was on the lookout for elements that worked and didn’t, and I found both; during the marketing read, I discovered more and more things about it that I loved.

Last night I wrote Alicia, my missionary sister, about my day in marketing and she replied: “go be a sales man who cna spell.” I just might.

Where the Wild Things Are

I went this past weekend to see Where the Wild Things Are with our movie book club (read a book, then watch the film adaptation). I thought the film was beautiful but not at all satisfying.

The film tapped into the psychological drama that’s such a powerful part of Max’s story. At one point a wild thing asked Max if he were a bad person and Max could only answer: “I don’t know.” That universal fear, that perhaps the emotional beast inside is our true self, that we really are untameable wild things, was a major theme of the movie.

Unfortunately, the film didn’t leave Max’s emotional worries in the realm of metaphor and implication. Instead, the wild things weren't really wild: they were just a bunch of monsters dealing with lots of personal issues. They were overwhelmed by smothering, frustrating emotions that so consumed them they were incapable of finding or offering comfort.

That’s what made the film so dissatisfying. I was left feeling that neither Max nor his mother nor any of the wild things had any hope of handling their emotional burdens.

In a 1964 letter describing the “revolutionary” qualities of Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak’s editor, Ursula Nordstrom, wrote: “I think Maurice’s book is the first picture book to recognize the fact that children have powerful emotions, anger and love and hate and only after all that passion, the wanting to be ‘where someone loved him best of all’” (Dear Genius, ed. Leonard S. Marcus, p. 184). While the film portrayed the strong emotions—anger and hate, loneliness and envy—I felt it ultimately offered no passion or love, no hope that could take Max from powerless to victorious.

Boston the City

After spending the weekend in DC suburbs, I’ve been reminded of how very unusual Boston is. I know my view of Boston is still decidedly romantic, but nonetheless, it’s unlike any city I’ve ever lived in. More than anything it reminds me of London, a younger sister city that escaped the WWII bombings and also the modernization of rebuilding.

To begin with, Boston doesn’t feel like a traditional American city, with industrial complex, downtown, inner city and suburbs. And unlike most places, where dozens of little towns have been gradually engulfed by sprawling city, here the towns have instead spread their influence onto the city so that the entire metro area feels very much like a small town.

What makes it feel that way? It may be that the roads are winding little paths with at most two “lanes” each direction and no painted lines at all. It may be that the perpetually jay-walking pedestrians hold a sovereign right of way so that the drivers keep slow and on the lookout, ready to stop for anyone even thinking of wandering into the street. It may be that the houses are all tall old buildings of wood siding or brick, fronted with creaking porches and towering trees. It may be that there are hardly any of those standard American shopping centers with their wide aisles and vast parking lots. Instead the roads are lined with tiny shops that cluster among residential areas.

Yesterday, for example, I walked two blocks to reach the little Armenian markets along our “main” road. The shopkeeper was shouting in Armenian at the boy putting pomelos and red peppers and quinces into the cardboard boxes that serve as display baskets. There was hardly room to move, between the racks of pita and Turkish delight, the fridges of Greek yogurt and the buffet table with eight varieties of olives. (MIT's Lebanese clubs posted these photos; they'll give you a sense of the shops in the area.) When I was ready to go, the shopkeeper and I conversed in English and then I listened to him practice his Spanish on the El Salvadoran customer behind me. This store captured for me the feeling of Boston: both small town and big city.

I got home with the onions and potatoes I’d gone for. And also with rosehip marmalade, which I ate on scones that made me feel like a Boston Londoner.

Which president? THE President?

During a quick trip to DC this weekend, my friend Michelle and I broke wildly with our typical habits and took the National Treasure 2 Tour of Mount Vernon.

Now, you may be expecting, as I was, that this would be simply a quick trip down the stairs to the legendary basement of Mount Vernon, perhaps with a few myth-debunking quips delivered by a smug brown-frocked tour guide. Not so. This was a full hour tour, beginning with the lawn where the movie crew pulled up and ending with the Potomac River where the water cameras were stationed. We were led along the way by a rather scattered guide, perhaps in her seventies, who distractedly shuffled laminated photos while gushing about the genuine Bruce Greenwood and the dashing Nicholas Cage (literally "dashing": his sprint from the riverbanks to the mansion were what seemed to impress her most).

Unlike the merely ordinary guests, we got to see the basement of Mount Vernon, complete with original bricks (of course! who re-bricks their basement on a whim?) and the very arched entrance to the supposed tunnel. We saw the cornerstone that inspired the secret door to the tunnel. But here's where it gets truly exciting. According to our tour guide, the tunnel wasn't going to be part of the movie until they got to Mount Vernon. What, exactly, it was going to be about I'm not certain, as our guide waved her hand airily and said it would involve the difficulties of throwing a birthday party for the President. Right. Anyhow, when Nicholas Cage saw the locked up door to the iceroom he had to see inside, and when he discovered a real, live spiderweb-filled room, complete with a tunnel, he said they had to work it into the movie. So they devised a secret tunnel and then used the iceroom as its exit.

The tour was fantastic and absolutely worth the little extra time, money, and time outside in the freezing rain. What was my favorite part? When our guide said, "Now, it rained all four weeks they were here filming, and it was freezing! All those women in the film, wearing their little cocktail dresses, they look like their having fun, but they're just acting!" Actresses acting: who would have guessed?

What do I do, anyway?

The universal response to “I’m an English major” is, “So what are you going to do with that—teach?” As a student I tried to sidestep this inevitable reply with more elaborate explanations like, “I’m majoring in English and minoring in editing and plan to work as an editor for a living.” But then when people still said, “So . . . English major . . . what are you going to do with that—teach?” I gave up.

Now when I tell people I work for a publishing house as an editor of children’s books the response I get it, “Oh? Do children’s books need to be edited?”

So . . . if I’m an English major who doesn’t teach and who edits things that don’t need it, what on earth do I do all day?

Most of my time at the internship is devoted to reading new manuscripts. Candlewick doesn’t accept unsolicited submissions, so these are books recommended by agents or sent in by authors who have previously met with our editors. I read the entire manuscript and write a critique (about two a day), which I pass on to the editors. Most of the books I’ve read have been just fine—neither amazing nor terrible. I’ve only gone through two truly dreadful manuscript, both written by authors who had previously self published.

I’ve also gotten to write a little jacket copy (the blurbs on the covers of books), transcribe the notes of other editors, sort through old drafts of now-published books, and fact check an anatomy picture book. My most baffling experiences involve sitting through the weekly coordination meetings, where we check on the progress of about 130 books scheduled for release up through the fall of 2012. It takes more than 40 major steps involving half a dozen departments and parties to get the book from manuscript to bookstore, and this is all after editing.

So is there work to be done, even by English majors? Plenty!

Concision?

The trouble with books is that they’re full of words.

I know, I know, a book is made of words, right? But when I can get through an entire book reading only the first sentence of every paragraph and not even feel I’ve missed anything, it seems time to suggest economizing. And I don’t just mean those loose baggy 19^th century monsters, either. Somehow even a contemporary 80-page novel for third graders can just be crammed full of too many words.

Apparently the world’s authors are widely suffering from an unmanageable logorrhea too often untempered by their shepherding editors.

Allow me to quote a particularly troubling passage I read last night in a published work: “he took his other hand and lifted her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. His lovely, sad, warm, dark, impossibly deep eyes. Their color seemed to swirl and change; she couldn’t tell if they were brown or hazel or black or some new shade of dark that had no name and existed only there—here.” It’s not just the romance that’s gagging me here: it’s all those words, stuffing themselves down into my ears.

I’m not a huge fan of dieting (no puns intended), but most of the books I’ve met recently could stand to lose a few pounds of words.

Longfellow House

This week I went with friends to the Longfellow House http://www.longfellowfriends.org/index.php. I’ve been in a lot of historic houses, and this is definitely one of the best. (One not-best example: the Handel House. The place had been home to many exuberant remodelers after Handel so when the historic societies got hold of the place they stripped it back to the Handel-era interior and stocked it with various furniture and draperies from the time . . . but not a single thing in the house had belonged to Handel.)

This house, however, was great. It wasn’t just a literary site; it was a patriotic one. The eighteenth-century mansion was made famous by George Washington’s 1775­­-76 stay during which he mustered troops to face the British force occupying Boston. Sixty years later Longfellow rented a few rooms in the house and then got the whole thing as a wedding present from his father-in-law.

And it wasn’t just the site that was significant; the artifacts were there too. The people who lived there cared about the history, and they kept everything.

And seeing all of it wasn’t just an interesting historical experience but a poetic one since so many things we saw had been elevated by poems I’m attached to: “The Children’s Hour,” “The Cross of Snow,” “The Village Blacksmith,” etc.

And our visit wasn’t just touristy; it was behind-the-scenes. The girls I went with study library science, so they asked about the house’s archives and next thing we knew we were in the basement looking at refrigerated books and furniture and learning about the cataloging system.

And to top of the whole experience, it wasn’t just historical or literary or poetic; it was rhetorical. On our way out, I passed Gary Hatch going in.

The space

The Candlewick offices are not the sterile glass-and-chrome office maze I imagined: they’re much better! The outside stucco is a cheery yellow and the front office has bright walls, books on display, and big stuffed versions of some of Candlewick’s most beloved characters.

The inside of the building is all open. Nearly everyone sits at a cubicle with low walls and a sturdy desk. Low walls so you can see your neighbors; a sturdy desk so you can support mounds of paper. My desk, for example, is currently piled with towering stacks of old “foul matter”—the various marked drafts a manuscript has gone through before publication.

Whereas some of the presses I’ve visited have each department sequestered away behind muffling office doors, giving you the impression that Great Work is happening inside, the openness of Candlewick’s building makes the whole place feel bustling with creativity. It’s collaborative and busy, much like our grad school carrels (but without all the gossip and nervous freshmen).

And, of all peculiar coincidences, the other half of the building is being used by the local Spanish and Portugese branches. I can tell you it was quite a shock this summer when I looked up the address on Google Maps (see image) and the first thing I saw was the classic bronze plaque: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In Boston at last

Whenever I fly I’m surprised at how very unsurprising it feels to be above the clouds. Since all of America, it seems, was overcast the day I flew out to Boston, I found myself staring steadfastly at blanket above blanket of white.

Shortly after we took off, the pilot announced we would be roughly following the old Santa Fe Trail. Because of the clouds there was little chance of seeing the terrain the old traders crossed, but I nonetheless found myself feeling I was similarly on one of the adventure roads: the Silk Road, the Oregon Trail, the overseas Spice Route, or any of a dozen others. Whatever was on the way, there was bound to be treasure* at the end in the Land Where Books are Made.

Although I instantly liked the title “Land Where Books are Made” when it popped into my head, I was afraid it would be more poetic than accurate. Not only is most American publishing coming out of New York, but I knew that most of the physical books were coming over by slow boat from printing presses in Asia. But in the past weeks I’ve learned that much of my press’s black and white printing is actually done in America, so I’m keeping the epithet.

All is going very well in Boston, the Land Where Books are Made, and the books themselves, like the treasures at the end of the Santa Fe trail, are both as dully magical and as delightfully mundane as you’d expect.

*treasure. Fortunately for me—or perhaps not—“not all treasure is silver and gold, Mate,” (Jack Sparrow) since my Bostonian fortune will be largely of the figurative variety.