The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion
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I recognized the name immediately & thought I'd have several, but I only see Seeds Of Change on my shelves any more. I'm not sure what happened to the others. It's possible the binding failed or I gave them away to one of the kids. I have both of Pournelle's books, but the Pocket editions.The Wiki article doesn't paint a glowing picture of their editorial practices, but that's an issue many have faced. IIRC, Ace went through a period in the 1990s where they had drunken monkeys retyping works they reissued immediately without any editing. The number of errors in an edition of This Immortal was absolutely astonishing &, like others, they left out a very important paragraph early on.
In a later edition of Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury explains that fire isn't the only way that books get burned, every minority is a fireman when they remove words or content that offends them & he'll have none of it. This edition of "Fahrenheit 451" is supposed to be the original, complete & uncut. He said that he had been shocked to find that previous editions had been edited down until 75 sections had been missing. He received letters in the same week complaining that he was prejudiced for/against the same group in this book.
I agree the editorial practices showed a distinct disrespect of science fiction as art. I mean, would you abridge Dickens, Hardy, Faulkner, or even Stephen King that way?
On the other hand, they did give the rights of the work back to the writer immediately so they could reissue the "director's cut" and make even more money off the same work. That makes it interesting for us readers because we then have more than one version of a favorite story to appreciate, compare, and contrast. Besides that, they put 58 books into print, many of which might not have seen print at all if not for them.
I have a vague recollection of seeing books from this series in drugstores, corner mom and pop shops back in the day, in something like the racks of a General Dollar store today. Anyhow, these books are not heavily rated or reviewed here at Good Reads although used copies appear easy enough to come by. I wonder how many hidden golden nuggets there might be in this set.
The reason I originally raised this topic at all, what brought it to my attention, is that our month's short story veterinarian wrote #18, #37, and #56 (Wikipedia list numbering). He wasn't getting his novels published much before they picked him up. No one except no one has even read #56: Gift Of The Manti (1977). Bone's co-writer for this novel was Roy Lethbridge Meyers who died in early 1974. Who knows how long Bone had been waiting for a publisher to come along for these books?
On the other hand, they did give the rights of the work back to the writer immediately so they could reissue the "director's cut" and make even more money off the same work. That makes it interesting for us readers because we then have more than one version of a favorite story to appreciate, compare, and contrast. Besides that, they put 58 books into print, many of which might not have seen print at all if not for them.
I have a vague recollection of seeing books from this series in drugstores, corner mom and pop shops back in the day, in something like the racks of a General Dollar store today. Anyhow, these books are not heavily rated or reviewed here at Good Reads although used copies appear easy enough to come by. I wonder how many hidden golden nuggets there might be in this set.
The reason I originally raised this topic at all, what brought it to my attention, is that our month's short story veterinarian wrote #18, #37, and #56 (Wikipedia list numbering). He wasn't getting his novels published much before they picked him up. No one except no one has even read #56: Gift Of The Manti (1977). Bone's co-writer for this novel was Roy Lethbridge Meyers who died in early 1974. Who knows how long Bone had been waiting for a publisher to come along for these books?
Good points & a great find. I agree that I'd rather see some version than none at all.
Jim wrote: "....He said that he had been shocked to find that previous editions had been edited down until 75 sections had been missing...."I know nothing of the publishing business, but I would expect editing happens consulting with the author, or at least author is supposed to agree with the editing. So I guess that is not true? You lose the rights to your own work once you hand it over to a publisher?
Kyk wrote: "I agree the editorial practices showed a distinct disrespect of science fiction as art. I mean, would you abridge Dickens, Hardy, Faulkner, or even Stephen King that way?..."Well, right now I'm reading the "Complete and Uncut Edition" of The Stand. I guess it also happens to the best, then.
Leo wrote: "I know nothing of the publishing business, but I would e..."I don't know much, either. I've read a bit about it in introductions & have heard more from author friends. It's clear that it's varied a lot over the years & by the type. For instance, some pulp editors discussed changes they wanted before they published a story, others just bought it & made what changes they wanted, sometimes to fit into the space they had. Book editors sometimes change so many things the author just gets tired or there is error creep, as described below.
Rights vary. Many publishers insisted on specific rights, such as reprint & foreign publishing rights or the dreaded 'all other rights' (which came to include ebook rights) else they wouldn't print them in the first place. Apparently most books lose money on the first hardback print, so the publisher makes it up on the paperback & other reprint rights. Of course, the editor wasn't always the publisher & their ideas about profit are strange. One author I know told me the constant reprints of one of her early books was never taken into account because her current publisher didn't publish it first. I found it mind boggling.
Reprints were often subjected to being manually copied from previous editions in a hurry without proper proofing or slight changes made each time, thus error creep & probably what happened to Bradbury. This seemed to happen most often before computers were standard & publishers were bought out. Publishers also seemed to come late to computers & not understand them well. I remember them arguing that an ebook cost so much because they were expensive to store as late as about 2010. Seriously. Wow.
I'd always thought ebooks would be simple to make, just turn the novel from a word processor document into a ebook format, but apparently they spend a LOT of time making the text justify to both sides of the page & other formatting changes. Seems like a waste of time to me. I've never minded a page that was ragged on the right edge. Actually, I prefer it to lines that have words spaced out to make the sentence fit.
Anyway, my original belief that editors & publishers were wonderful gatekeepers has been shattered. The days of one editor overseeing an author's work are gone as the bean counters & corporate shake ups have changed editors several times for one book of a friend's. It's one of the reasons some authors decided to self-publish besides the minuscule percentage that's left to them after the big, corporate process is done. A tithe or less was quite common for an author publishing through one of the big Six & what did they get for it? Only a handful of authors got much marketing support. They basically pushed Martin's 'Game of Thrones' hard & ignored every other book/author in their stable. That doesn't sit well with most.
Well, I'm way off course, but it's a terrible mess from the little I've heard & read.
I have never heard of authors not getting to approve the final draft before a book goes to publication.
Typically, the process goes like this. Author writes a manuscript. The manuscript gets approved by the publisher and sent to an in-house editor. The manuscript is almost invariably chock full of grammar errors. The ability to write grammatically correct and the ability to write great fiction must come from two very different parts of the brain because writers seldom seem to know much about grammar. If they do, then they seldom know about such things as using active voice, where to break paragraphs or chapters, how to avoid cliches, etc. The first editor, if he or she is good, catches all this and makes corrections, sending it back to the author for approval, changes clearly marked. This editor seldom makes any substantial changes (certainly not additions, and usually not section or chapter cuts) to the text. The text is just made more reader-friendly, grammatically correct, and is written to a certain set of standards, such as Chicago Manual of Style (most common in the U.S. for fiction works). This editor can suggest changes to the author. Stuff like, "Hey, I don't think killing off your protagonist is such a good idea; would you consider a different ending?" or, "How about we cut this section? It's really not adding anything to the story, and we're already about 10,000 words over the target. Also, such and such subplot never got resolved. Did you leave things dangling intentionally, or did you mean to say more about it?" But unless it's very clear the suggestion would improve the book, the editor almost never suggests substantial text or plot changes. It's the author's name that is going on the cover, after all, never the editor's.
After this first editor combs through the book like this, makes clarity changes, and suggests plot enhancements (if any) to the author, the author makes changes and approves (or rarely, disapproves) edits as he or she sees fit. The first editor cleans up the new text changes the author makes, sends it back to the author for what is usually cursory approval, and then sends the entire, final, author-approved text (in olden days called the proofs) to the senior editor.
Typically, that's pretty much it. Most senior editors don't do very much to the manuscript text then at all. Making text line up on a page has been done automatically by word processors since about 1978, maybe earlier. Any Word document, for example, does it automatically now. The senior editor cleans up anything the first editor missed, which shouldn't be much. If it is a lot, that first editor will probably soon be looking for work elsewhere because the senior editor won't want to use him or her. The senior editor then gets the book together, makes sure the cover design is good, lines up blurbs, writes the front and back matter about the book, and the author, etc., and out the book goes.
As for a book like The Stand getting chopped in its first edition. You have to remember, The Stand was only the fourth book Stephen King got published. He turned in a text that had to have been more than twice as long as what Doubleday wanted to publish. The first 600 pages gets you a book that might have sold for $14 in that day, but a 1400 page book wasn't going to sell for more than $20, but it might cost twice as much, and doing that would really cut into profit margins. It's all economics to a publisher. Stephen King was already big by 1978, but he wasn't bigger than Doubleday. Doubleday could still at that time make its wishes take precedence. They no doubt came back to him and said, "We can't publish this text as it is. Some cuts have to be made if you would like to see it come out this year in book form. Our editor has some ideas where cuts can be made without substantially changing the plot. We'd love to pay you the four million dollars we agree to next month, but first we need you to agree to these changes. Okay?" (I'm ballparking these figures. I have no idea what they actually were.) King by all accounts likes to be paid, well paid at that. I'm sure he readily agreed even if he felt the shortened version was not as strong as his unedited version. I'm just glad he was big enough to publish his longer director's cut version at a later date. Most authors either don't get this opportunity, or they come around to the realization that their work was better with the cuts after all.
That all said, some publishing houses no doubt expect their editors to do more than is typical to a text. Since Laser Books was an offshoot of Harlequin Romance, editors, it looks like, were told to make some fairly substantial changes in order to ensure a text "conformed" to Harlequin's standards before it saw print. I don't see much evidence of a heavy editorial hand in Gift Of The Manti because there are a number of authorial idiosyncrasies left in the text that would have been edited out in that case. But I could see earlier books in the series getting heavier handed treatment in order to get them to "standard."
Typically, the process goes like this. Author writes a manuscript. The manuscript gets approved by the publisher and sent to an in-house editor. The manuscript is almost invariably chock full of grammar errors. The ability to write grammatically correct and the ability to write great fiction must come from two very different parts of the brain because writers seldom seem to know much about grammar. If they do, then they seldom know about such things as using active voice, where to break paragraphs or chapters, how to avoid cliches, etc. The first editor, if he or she is good, catches all this and makes corrections, sending it back to the author for approval, changes clearly marked. This editor seldom makes any substantial changes (certainly not additions, and usually not section or chapter cuts) to the text. The text is just made more reader-friendly, grammatically correct, and is written to a certain set of standards, such as Chicago Manual of Style (most common in the U.S. for fiction works). This editor can suggest changes to the author. Stuff like, "Hey, I don't think killing off your protagonist is such a good idea; would you consider a different ending?" or, "How about we cut this section? It's really not adding anything to the story, and we're already about 10,000 words over the target. Also, such and such subplot never got resolved. Did you leave things dangling intentionally, or did you mean to say more about it?" But unless it's very clear the suggestion would improve the book, the editor almost never suggests substantial text or plot changes. It's the author's name that is going on the cover, after all, never the editor's.
After this first editor combs through the book like this, makes clarity changes, and suggests plot enhancements (if any) to the author, the author makes changes and approves (or rarely, disapproves) edits as he or she sees fit. The first editor cleans up the new text changes the author makes, sends it back to the author for what is usually cursory approval, and then sends the entire, final, author-approved text (in olden days called the proofs) to the senior editor.
Typically, that's pretty much it. Most senior editors don't do very much to the manuscript text then at all. Making text line up on a page has been done automatically by word processors since about 1978, maybe earlier. Any Word document, for example, does it automatically now. The senior editor cleans up anything the first editor missed, which shouldn't be much. If it is a lot, that first editor will probably soon be looking for work elsewhere because the senior editor won't want to use him or her. The senior editor then gets the book together, makes sure the cover design is good, lines up blurbs, writes the front and back matter about the book, and the author, etc., and out the book goes.
As for a book like The Stand getting chopped in its first edition. You have to remember, The Stand was only the fourth book Stephen King got published. He turned in a text that had to have been more than twice as long as what Doubleday wanted to publish. The first 600 pages gets you a book that might have sold for $14 in that day, but a 1400 page book wasn't going to sell for more than $20, but it might cost twice as much, and doing that would really cut into profit margins. It's all economics to a publisher. Stephen King was already big by 1978, but he wasn't bigger than Doubleday. Doubleday could still at that time make its wishes take precedence. They no doubt came back to him and said, "We can't publish this text as it is. Some cuts have to be made if you would like to see it come out this year in book form. Our editor has some ideas where cuts can be made without substantially changing the plot. We'd love to pay you the four million dollars we agree to next month, but first we need you to agree to these changes. Okay?" (I'm ballparking these figures. I have no idea what they actually were.) King by all accounts likes to be paid, well paid at that. I'm sure he readily agreed even if he felt the shortened version was not as strong as his unedited version. I'm just glad he was big enough to publish his longer director's cut version at a later date. Most authors either don't get this opportunity, or they come around to the realization that their work was better with the cuts after all.
That all said, some publishing houses no doubt expect their editors to do more than is typical to a text. Since Laser Books was an offshoot of Harlequin Romance, editors, it looks like, were told to make some fairly substantial changes in order to ensure a text "conformed" to Harlequin's standards before it saw print. I don't see much evidence of a heavy editorial hand in Gift Of The Manti because there are a number of authorial idiosyncrasies left in the text that would have been edited out in that case. But I could see earlier books in the series getting heavier handed treatment in order to get them to "standard."
I finished Gift Of The Manti and wrote a review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... It's a more detailed review of a book than I normally write, but since I'm its only GR reader I thought it for the best.
Kyk wrote: "I finished Gift Of The Manti and wrote a review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... It's a more detailed review of a book than I normally write, but since I'm its only..."Thanks. I vaguely remember Lase Books, and likely even read some of them. Not this one though! Maybe??
Interesting thread on a little-known publisher, and a well-known problem: editing and publishing! Which has persisted (sfaict) since the earliest days of commercial publishing, I think. At least authors have some copyright protections now. You've likely heard of Charles Dickens' bitter complaints about his works being pirated in America -- which didn't honor British copyrights in those days. He also hated the American custom of chewing tobacco and spitting the juice out of railway-carriage windows!
The Evolution of Science Fiction
Books mentioned in this topic
Gift Of The Manti (other topics)Gift Of The Manti (other topics)
Gift Of The Manti (other topics)
The Stand (other topics)
Gift Of The Manti (other topics)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_B...
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Those Kelly Freas covers are seriously cool.