End of Book Production

OK I finally finished the production stage of the book.  I was able to send the copy edited book back before I left for the United Church of Christ General Synod in Tampa.

Then I had to wait for the galley proofs which came late as usual in pdf form.  I was en route to a Road Scholar trip to Tangelwood tin the Berkshires to hear a Boston Symphony concert when the proofs came so I had to take them with me on the trip.  I had two jobs to do, edit the galley proofs and write the index.  I left the editing job to my housemate since she majored in English in college.  I never said I was an English major.  The problem with the editing of the galley proof is that the book was paged and nothing could be changed that would change the paging.  But we found things that would work.

The hardest thing to change was the Time Line.  I had originally made the time line by making an excel spread sheet and I had submitted that to my editor.  She said it was too big so she inserted the information about the women into the time line dates.  Well there were some errors made , so my housemate took the book and fact checked the entire time line so that it was right.  She had to insert some missing information and correct the names of the women which was different after they were married.  She did a great job.  I don't know how anyone writes a book alone.  You always need personal editors to check your work.

My housemate also checked the entire book and I had to insert the corrections into the pdf copy.

Then  there was the index.  I had never written an index before.  My editor sent me the guidelines and also referred to the Chicago Manual of Style.  I looked at that and then proceeded on my own.  I went through the pdf copy of the book highlighting the words I thought should be indexed and put them onto an excel spread sheet.  I chose to do it that way because I knew I could alphabetize things automatically.  When I finish the spread sheet I alphabetized segments and cut and pasted them into word sheets that were alphabetized.  Then when I finished that I put the word sheets in order to make the index.  This was very labor intensive but it was the only way I knew. I had to finish this work on the train to Denver to go to the American Chemical Society meeting.  I had hoped to finish this before that trip.  But that didn't happen.  I was able to finish and proof the index on the trip and then submit when i got to Denver.

My editor said the index was too long!  So she was going to hire an index specialist to tighten it up at her expense!  I told her I hoped that the person was African American because I put in things that I thought an African American researcher would look for.

I have a list of all the major colleges and universities that the women either attended or worked for.  I also had another list of HBCU's that they either attended or worked for.

More about that later,  this blog is too long as it is.  So the production stage has ended and the promotion stage has begun.

Jeannette Brown

Sisterchemists LLC

The best laid plans of mice and men and editors.

OK. In my last post I gave you the production schedule for my book which was great for me because it fit into my schedule.  Well someone forgot to tell the copy editor because she did not send me the book yet and the printer is going to contact her.
I have been waiting for it by catching up on my blogs and finances.  The problem is the deadline was June 30, which is the date I leave for the church conference and I thought I could go work free.  Now I don't know what will happen.  Oh well.

This is another learning experience in writing a book.  Hurry up and wait.

Writing the book was another experience.  I had to get permission to publish from all the living women.  I sent them what I wrote and they rewrote it so most of the living women wrote their autobiographies in my book, which is great.  I also took some of the oral histories of the living women which will be archived in the Chemical Heritage Foundation.  They had to approve the transcript of the oral history before I could use it.  So even though I had the oral history on my computer I could not use the information from it until it was approved.  I got into trouble with one woman because of that.  I wrote her story from the publication which was available to me.  When I sent it to her she said that it was all wrong and the published book was wrong!  How was I to know that!  She had the transcript of her oral history but she did not take the time to read it.  So after three months of having this in her possession she decided not to be in the book because I was on deadline.  I was so mad because she is a Spelman professor and the cover of the book shows Spelman women.  I will not give her name because she apologized to me and we are still friends.  I have only one Spelman woman in the book.
Two other women dropped out at the last minute because they did not want to review what I wrote.  I was upset about that, but there was nothing I could do about it.

Another woman I had scheduled a telephone oral history.  I wanted to visit her in person but I had a hard time getting in touch with her to schedule the visit.  So I was ready to take the oral history and when I called she said she was busy and could she write something and send it to me.  Oh well.  What she wrote I already had from a published book so I just used it.

Those were the trials and tribulations of writing a book about living people.  The dead ones are easier unless I hear from their relatives.  I did speak to the widower of one of my women about his wife.  I got a lot of background information from him.

I intend to write another book, now that I know how to do it.  I have a list of women that I will have to find by genealogical studies, but that will be fun.

Jeannette Brown
Sisterchemists LLC

Good News about the Book Progress

Sorry I stopped posting.  I finished the book in March and submitted it after it was edited by my housemate (the English major).  Then I went on vacation and to attend the American Chemical Society meeting.  I just got tired of writing, but I will write about my experience as a new writer.

What I want to talk about now is the production schedule.  I got an e-mail from my production editor and the printer about the schedule.  Tomorrow June 16 I should receive the copy edited copy of the book.  I have until June 30 to accept or correct the book according to what the copy editor wants.  This will be the only time I can make major changes to the book.  I have alerted all the women who wrote their own stories that I might be calling upon them to accept or make changes.  We have to keep to the schedule as it is very tight.

Next the book will be typeset for printing and I will receive the galley proofs on or about July 23.  I can only look at the galleys for major spelling errors but I can't make major changes then.  I also will have to write the index of the book.  I could not do this before because I did not have the pages. I hope that part will go well since I have never done this before, but that is like a lot of things about book writing that are new to me.  I have until August 23 to get this done.

From then on the book gets printed by October 16 and publication date is December 15.  Which means you will have books to give out as Christmas gifts!  I will give books to all the women and or their relatives in the book.  If they want more I will sell them to them at my author's price.

I am very excited about this but I have a lot of work to do between now and the end of the summer, so  vacation is over.

Jeannette Brown
Sisterchemists LLC

Copyright permissions

Ok. I am on a steep learning curve for this book and frankly I am worn out.  Because I don't have an assistant (that's going to change) I have to do everything.
I just spent two days trying to chase down the publisher of a book that I cited for permission.  The author holds the copyright but the publisher gives the permission.  Well the publisher has changed since 1994, it was bought out by another publisher.  Actually the book was published by a small publisher in Boston who I guess sold it to a bigger publisher for distribution.  I contacted the author's assistant and found out that she was ill and I should go to the editor of the small publisher which I did.
Her's where the fun begins.  I went to the publisher and they use a service called RightsLink or Copyright.com.  I just spent three or more hours fighting with their website trying to get the information to the publisher to aceept or reject.  I created an account with Copyright.Com only to find that when I wanted to submit my information it was =gone!  It had been deleted from the server.  Well I did this three times and then I picked up the phone and called them.  The man who answered submitted the information on my behalf and had the same problem.
So now it is up to the IT people to figure out what went wrong!  When I signed up for the account on Copyright.com it kept giving me the wrong city when I put in my correct zip code.  It gave me a town in Massachusettes and not New Jersey!  I worked my way around that one.

So here I sit with more stuff to edit and I am exhausted!

The good news is that I did get written permission from the author of Black Women Scientists in American to use information that I cited from her book!  She has been supportive of my work all along so I am excited about that.  She want's a copy of the book.  I will drive to her house and present it in person.  She is now disabled since she had a stroke about two years ago.

In spite of the fact I have no money I want to hire a student to do some of the typing and follow up for permissions that my former assistant did.  I have to get this book out!

OK.  Back to the real world.

Jeannette
PS I am glad the weather is bad as I go nowhere anyhow.  My life revolves around book, music, knitting and dinner.

MLK' s I Have a Dream Speech done by 4th grade students

The PBS News Hour broadcast a 4th grade class reciting Martin Luther King Jr's "I have a Dream" speech on Monday.
I thought it was so cute that I put it here in this blog.  Here is the YouTube link; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8_1NYYKixM

Here is the PBS News Hour link: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/social_issues/jan-june11/dream_01-17.html

I like the News Hour version best.
Enjoy.
I posted this on my church blog, it is fitting on this blog as well.
Jeannette Brown

Book Progress to Date

Without assistance it is a slow progress for the book.  I am editing the women one by one using the edits of my friends.  Then I send them off three at a time to my final personal editor.
I am e-mailing and snailmailing the stories of the living women to them for permission to publish and also for their editing if they want.  Then I will compile all the stories in the book.
Then the work begins because I can already see the word count will be too high.  I may just send it off to my editor for him to make the cuts.  The longer version will be posted on the website I have been told.
I have finally received my royalty advance and I have been asked to supply art for the book cover so this is going to happen!
I have taking some similar books out of the library and purchased one to see what format for the book should be.  I am learning a lot about book publishing and editing on the fly.  My next book, if any will be better.
I am looking forward to a vacation for a while after this and then launch into the next project.
In order to releive my stress, I will go back to having a massage and I go to Yoga practice at the Y every Friday.  It is a Yoga class at 6:15 Am  on Friday, but noone shows up but me.  So I have free private lesson.  The instructor does not mind.  Sometimes she needs it as well.

That's all for now.
Jeannette

Book Progress to Date and Happy New Year

OK.  You know you never publish the first draft of any book.  I found that out the hard way last month.  My former assistant edited my work and pulled it to pieces.  Another person had already edited it and I was working on it but my assistant did not pull any punches.  She is my former assistant by her choice as she is writing her PhD thesis and my work took too much of her time.  That is unfortunate for me because even though she was rough and made me cry I respected her edits as I did those of my other editor.  She also got started on all the other stuff that one must do to produce a book.  Since nothing that I write is new, I have to get permissions for everything!  Therefore, I have asked my editor for a one-month extension. He agreed that I must give him a good book.

I have been doing stream of conscience writing so I just plugged in the citations but not in Chicago Manual of Style.  I finally downloaded the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style and I am following it.  I am also paraphrasing more material rather than direct citations.  I will have a reference section in the appendix.  I wish I had someone to follow up on the permissions because having to do rewrite and also follow up on permissions is time consuming.  It is hard to get some of the women in the book to send me back permissions in a
timely manner.

I still have one woman whose oral history that I must take by phone.  I have tried for two years to get to her but she never responds to my phone calls or when she does, she does not have time to talk.  I will have to push harder because she is one of the original Double Bind women and the only information I have about her is in another book.  I would like more information.

I always wondered how celebrities turned out books so rapidly.  I now know.  They hire people to help them write.  I e-mailed one woman who is too busy but when
she does have time, her fee is $100.00 per hour.  I do not have money like that.  Academics can write grants to support their publications and have graduate students who may work for them for nothing or very little.  Independent scholars have a problem.  I did note that the National Academy of Science send out proposals for independent scholars to write a book.  That is how Margaret Rossiter got her money for her books about women in science.  However, if they are doing this now, I do not have the time to write the proposal and wait for funding.  I suppose I should have been writing when I was at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, but I was still doing research then.  In fact, I love research, I hate writing.  I guess
that is the problem!  I write like a chemist is trained to write in the passive voice.  It is so hard to change that.

Having said that I am pushing on.  I cannot stop now.  So the publication date of the book will be later than August, but it will be published. That is my goal for 2011.

Oh, here is a comic that I saw today.  It refers to me.  http://www.gocomics.com/ziggy/2011/01/01/  I need a book writing for dummies.

Jeannette Brown