A Longer Leave, in Pursuit of New Endeavours

Dear readers,

I would like to ask you to accept my sincerest apology for not showing up in May as I promised. As some of you may know, I have been extremely busy with my graduation, and some research opportunities came up afterwards which have kept me occupied and will do so for quite some time into the future.

I am also happy to tell you that I have been admitted into the Master of Philosophy in General Linguistics & Comparative Philology programme at the University of Oxford. It has been my dream to become a linguist, and after careful consideration I have decided that I will be embarking on this new endeavour with much anticipation (but also anxiety) this September.

Sadly, this also means that I would not be able to update this website, at least for quite a while. This is not a permanent goodbye – my aspiration to become an academic publisher is still alive, but I hope you could understand that with the current (and future) workload of my study and research, it would be rather difficult for me to maintain this website while keeping up its quality. I did consider cutting down on the frequency of posting or looking for a writing partner, but the quality of content has always been my No.1 priority and I would not like to risk it.

Publishing Insights has been one of the most amazing experience of my life. It started out as a “personal” project, but quite unexpectedly I found myself in a global community of readers/writers/publishers, an active network that brought us together to have a heated debate and then become friends (not in the sense of “followers”). I could not be more grateful for having the chance to know many bloggers on WordPress and beyond, many of whom have contributed to very sophisticated discussion on my posts and have kept their dreams and goals alive in spite of the frequent (and cruel) struggle of balancing between business and art. You are the reason why Publishing Insights has been a rewarding experience for me.

Thank you, my dear readers, and I wish you every success in your own endeavours in the publishing world.

Best,

Sherry Chen

Recommended Blogs in the Publishing/ Writing/ Reading Community

After actively running this website for almost half a year, I would like to make a list of the blogs/blog sections (in alphabetic order) that I find insightful and informative for writers, readers, and publishers. Most of them are also very well designed, which means that you can enjoy a visual feast while savouring news feeds from the publishing world:

• Author Solution: Keith Ogorek shares tips on writing, self publishing, book marketing, and bookselling
• Book Venture: a website owned by a publishing company; long and informative posts about interesting publishing topics with very thorough analysis
• Confessions of a Published Author: Arran Bhansal on being a published author, and writing in general; occasional business tips
• Digital Publishing 2015: an online hub of graduate course in digital publishing, posts written by publishing students from Bath Spa University
• Let’s Get Digital: all about publishing business
• Let’s Read! from “chasingtheturtle”: creative illustrations about reading, a quite refreshing blog section on WordPress
• Myth Creates: another published writer sharing views on writing and self-editing
• News on Publishing and Marketing: Simona David, a book marketing professional, sharing her views on recent publishing events
• Penguin Blog’s News: company blog run by Penguin Random House
• Piles of Pages: Amy,  a Creative Writing Graduate from England, sharing what she has learned about writing and the publishing industry
• Publishing/Writing: Insights, News, Intrigue: as the name indicates
• Today’s Author: a writer-supportive website full of writing prompts and writer’s circle; viewpoints contributed by many writers
• The Stroppy Editor: Tom Freeman on editing from a practitioner’s perspective
• The Literary Game: publishing and book marketing advice; valuable insights into the many aspects of the life of a writer
• Books: Publishing, Reading, Writing: as the name indicates

Announcement: Publishing Insights will not be updated in April as I am currently preparing to graduate and my schedules look quite daunting. Thank you very much for your understanding in advance, and I look forward to resuming our discussion here in May.

Image Credit: Tea Break 

Appreciating Our Languages as Writers

World Language Day is an event held by some universities in the U.S. to popularize knowledge of world cultures and languages among general public, particularly high school students (e.g. MSU, UNCO, etc). Being linguistics student myself, I couldn not help but join this endeavour. So this post is, in a sense, not specifically for writers/publishers, but for language users — which is all of us!

We all speak at least one language — in fact, more than half of the world’s population speak two or more languages (Tucker, 1999). Language is so ubiquitous that we can easily take it for granted, but it is also said to be one of the most central characteristics that set us off from other species on this planet. What is so special about human language? Why does it differ greatly from animal “languages”? Three properties make our language distinct from any other animal communication system: productivity, displacement, and arbitrariness.

If you have ever seen a parrot talk, you may have an intuitive objection toward what I have said: parrots can speak our language, and they can pick up new words like children always do; you can even find videos of parrots who have mastered cursing words on YouTube. However, as human beings, we are able to use language in a productive way that animals can not. Take the famous and well-trained parrot Einstein as an example; Einstein was able articulate some English words, but only the ones that he had been taught, and they would always be in the exact same order. Despite the fact that he could say “I love you”, he would never be able to produce “you love me” spontaneously — not even “you love I” which ignores the rule of accusative case in English. What three-year-old children can do with human language is far beyond a parrot’s capacity. Not only can they learn new words, but they can also order words into sentences that they have never articulated before, unveiling the infinite linguistic creativity of human language.

In addition to being productive, human language has another distinctive feature termed “displacement” — the ability to “time-travel” using our language. As a matter of fact, we can even talk about “back to future” scenarios and create new tenses accordingly, as has been done in a recent episode of The Big Bang Theory, which demonstrates both productivity and displacement features of human language. We can also talk about the likelihood of an event: the probability of winning that type of lottery is one in six thousand; John may be able to catch the train if he runs faster. In contrast, animal communication is always about “here” and “now”, about the concrete and immediate environment that animals find themselves in. Even the most well-trained apes are not capable of having a conversation about the life of an emperor from ancient China, or discussing the imaginary human colonization on Mars in the future.

Last but not least, the relationship between word and meaning in human language is fundamentally arbitrary, whereas the nature of animal communication is mostly iconic. For example, in the bird community, many calls are highly suited for their own purposes: danger calls that warn of predators express aggression but are difficult to locate so as not to reveal the birds’ location; a flight call, on the other hand, is crisp and easy to locate by other group members, enabling the bird flock to stay together (Dobrovolsky, 2009). In this sense, animal communication is not arbitrary. However, human language is almost never directly related to its meaning, with only a few exceptions of onomatopoeic words. In no way does the sound or form of the word “cat” resemble the furry and adorable mammal with a short snout and retractile claws. If our language lacks arbitrariness, we would probably have referred to that animal as “meow” instead of “cat”. Similarly, the English suffix “-ed” carries no intrinsic meaning of past tense, but it has come to be used in such a way that all competent English speakers can identify its meaning in spite of the arbitrary nature.

Human language differs from other animal communication systems in terms of productivity, displacement, arbitrariness, and it consequently surpasses animal communication in terms of communicative versatility. Our language is what enables us to develop the complex and sophisticated social structure that we have today, and it is what eventually created literature, civilization, and humanity.

References:

Tucker, G. Richard. (1999). A Global Perspective on Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. Carnegie Mellon University

Dobrovolsky, M. (2009). Chapter 16: Animal Communication. In Archibald, J., & O’Grady, W. (eds.). Contemporary Linguistic Analysis: An Introduction (sixth edition). Pearson Education Canada.

Image Credit: Tom Design & Communications

Amazon, Ebooks, and Advertising

There has been a lot of mixed reactions toward Amazon putting advertisements on Kindle, especially when it was first launched in 2011. Today I wish to bring this issue back into the spotlight and invite you to re-examine it together.

In the article Why Advertising Could Become Amazon’s Knockout Punch, Joe Wikert attributes Kindle’s popularity partially to Amazon’s Special Offer, as it “lowered the price of the device” and presumably would not interfere your reading experience (which the advertisers find very reasonable and worthy of their money, of course).  Wikert then predicts that Amazon’s next step might be making money on in-book ads. He explains his theory by explaining Amazon’s wholesale model of publishing, and even goes on predicting that Amazon “would love to see ebook pricing approach zero” — which can be realised with in-book advertising strategy. All of this will eventually help Amazon “eliminate competitors” and obtain to market dominance”, as it has been doing in the past four years.

Jamie Lending takes a quite strong stance and describes Amazon Kindle Special Offers as a disgrace. “Unobtrusive” and “never in your reading experience”, says an Amazon spokesman in response to Lending’s complaint, but many readers still find the ad-free version irresistible despite the fact that they have to pay extra 30USD. While Amazon frames it as a Kindle user’s choice, Lending argues that the company takes away the “ultimate control” over ad exposure.

Kevin C. Tofel, in his article Ads on Kindle Fire HD tablets: Bad news or just business?, presents argument from both sides and comments that the subsidy of being able to control “is financial in nature”. Tofel’s opinion differs from Lending in the sense that he believes readers still retain some choice.

Is this really a question of whether consumers are willing to pay or whether they can afford it? And what exactly does it mean to publishers and authors?

Image Credit: Yahoo

Internship Experience: Working for an Academic Publisher

I have just started my student internship at Hong Kong University Press, and my duties rotates between the marketing division and a central database project.

Having met the Marketing Manager Ms. Chau on my first day, I eventually learned a lot more about the company’s publishing procedures, and obtained an overview of  academic book publishing in Hong Kong. HKU Press was established in 1956, and every since then it has been a bilingual publisher of works both in English and Chinese. The company publishes the majority of their books in English and strives to achieve for them the widest international distribution, so intra-regional conversation as well as exchanges with North America and Europe are highly valued. The scope of their publications focuses on cultural studies, film and media studies, Chinese history and culture.

In the marketing division, I am working closely with the Publicity Manager Ms. Lim, who assigns various types of tasks to me, including flyer design, copywriting, event curating, and general PR communications.

I was also lucky to be invovled in the desing of 2015 annual catalog.

To be honest, I was quite surprised to learn that more than 70% of HKU Press titles have an e-book version, and they are working to build up a brand new central database, where information of approximately 2,000 published titles is digitalised and made easily accessible by authors and publishers from around the globe. The fact that academic publishers and even the entire academia are embracing digitalisation is going to shape the way we develop and store our knowledge in the future.

As an academic publisher affiliated with Hong Kong University, the company does not have too much concern over book sales, but instead focuses on publishing titles that represent  high-quality scholarship in Hong Kong and worldwide. Being interested in both research and publishing, I find working for HKU Press extremely desirable for me, as I now have some in-house work experience with an academic publisher, and will get the opportunity to communicate with international readers and reviewers.

This is the very first time that I have been working for an academic publisher, and I feel very fortunate to be selected as their first intern in the past three years. For now, I truly enjoy working in this environment, with like-minded people who are equally passionate about academic publishing and dedicated with their work. I hope to share more of my experience at HKU Press as I proceed with my internship, and who knows what I will discover down the road?

Image Credit: Publishing Insights / Hong Kong University Press

Why I Heart the Bookternet

“At your average book publisher, 10 years ago was a time before the internet.” Rachel Fershleiser, who now works on Tumblr’s outreach team, helps authors and publishers reach new audiences. Rachel takes us through an evolution from reading and writing as entirely “solitary pursuits” to the development of online tools that enable collaboration and community. She shares great stories and innovations that connect readers and writers like never before, in a publishing industry that is becoming more democratized and accessible.

What has actually happened in the past ten years of publishing, with the emergence of digital community? Are books and the Internet really in opposition to each other? And what will the next ten years of publishing be like, with the technologies that are here to stay and more business models on the rise?

Video Credit: TEDxGowanus

The Visual Factor: Judging a Book by Its Cover?

In the article Book Covers: Do They Matter?, Melanie Figueroa from The Poetics Project discusses the importance of book cover design at marketing level, after having stumbled upon some statistics about booksellers’ view on the visual factor. She wittingly quotes Terri Giuliano Long’s article to argue that many readers do factor cover design into consideration when purchasing books online or in a bookshop, and while I agree with her that authors may not always be responsible for the quality of cover design, they certainly should take this aspect more seriously. True, the book writing itself is a piece of artwork and it is a shame that readers would not purchase your book because of the bad cover design, but wouldn’t a good design help you get across your message even more directly and add to the book’s artistic value?

In this interview with Jane Friedman, the bloggers of Book Venture share their view on why authors should pay attention to book design and hire professional designers, common mistakes that indie authors make during their book publishing process, how much a typical trade print paperback novel is expected to cost, and whether a print book and its electronic version should have different cover designs.

If you wish to go for a short read about visual design in book production, I recommend you check out Layout & Design: Good Looks Sell Books, in which Ahmad Meradji outlines the factors that you need to consider for layout & formatting and cover design, as well as introducing the roles of graphic designer and illustrator in publishing services.

Image Credit: Writely Designed

Self-Publishing Reaches the Summit

Tom Chalmers talks about his experience of participating in the 2014 New Generation Publishing’s annual Self-Publishing Summit in London, and in the article “Self-Publishing Reaches the Summit“, he features several themes of the new trends in self-publishing, which include “starting to self-regulate” and “emphasising on quality”.

Going beyond the dichotomous argument of “traditional publishing vs. self-publishing”, the 2014 conference shifted its focus to seeking possible routes to a successful writing career. Writers seemed to start reflecting on their self-publishing experiences (and each other’s sharing) with a critical eye, “acknowledging the huge potential challenges” and hopefully preparing themselves for the tough road ahead. When commenting on the quality of self-published books, Chalmers states,

It is ultimately that and nothing else that will provide self-published writers with long and successful careers.

Finally, authors at the conference generally expressed their concerns (and possibly anxiety) about marketing, to whom Chalmers suggested that they should not be too “hung up on social media” but should turn to physical copies and try to sell them through local bookshops instead. Sensing an increased degree of self-regulation and professionalism, Chalmers will not be the only one who feels positive about the future of self-publishing in the industry.

Image Credit: She Writes Press

More on Author Branding

Emily Craven describes author branding as an experience of Being Judged by Your Cover, and claims that “branding yourself as an author” is the key to success. She points out that readers do consider cover design as a factor when purchasing books, and book cover can influence your sales at different stage. Craven further introduces the concept of branding and how to take advantage of some “branding parameters”. Another article posted on The Huffington Post goes with the title “Why Every Writer Needs An Author Brand“, and it is written by a staff from Writer’s Relief. The article emphazises on the importance of having a clear idea of how to market yourself and your work, essentially through “maintaining continuity in your voice as a writer”. Other factors including book cover design (once again…), author website, and social media, but whichever platform you use, it is consistency that helps set your professionalism off an amature. In addition, Nancy Blanton has published a series on author  branding, including Part 1: A royal undertaking, Part 2: A royal legacy, Part 3: Author branding and Henry VIII: Royal persona, Author branding: Like Good Queen Bess, Author brandin fog à la française: The Sun King, Author branding: 3 lessons from Napoleon. She takes historical figures as examplars of author branding, and offers many insights on what we can take home from these stories.

Image Credit: Raul Taciu for The Art Times

Author Branding: Writing Partnership & Blogging

A blog named Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors is dedicated to introducing tips and advice on writing, publishing, and book promotion. I would like to briefly showcase three of their pieces on author branding: writing partnership, developing websites, and writing reviews.

Guidelines to Making a Writing Partnership Work: Some issues to note when you are co-authoring a publication, including picking the right partner, drafting a contract, assigning work, and sorting out arguments. An example contract is provided at the end of this article.

Developing Effective Websites: For author websites, it is important to define your site/blog clearly, and keep it consistent. Pay attention to not only the details of content but also the visual design, with a particular focus on readability and accessibility.

Writing Reviews: Tips on writing reviews which can work “in your favor as an author”, including commitment to honesty, structure of the review, development of a clear rating system, and frequency of review posts on your author website.

Image Credit: The Creative Penn