A Look at an Editorial Board Meeting

I talk with authors a lot about what we at F.A. Davis call the Editorial Board, or Ed Board for short. All healthcare textbook publishers have a similar group of individuals responsible for approving, tabling for further adjustments, or rejecting product proposals.

I thought I'd take this opportunity, snowbound at home as I am, to provide a bit of insight into what goes on at a typical Ed Board meeting. Because that's where your project will first gain its wings.

Let's take a look.

About the Board

Our Ed Board, like others, generally meets once a month. We acquisitions editors (or sponsoring editors, publishers, or whatever) present new projects for discussion. We also present updates of projects passing through the editorial/development/production pipeline. Other business takes place there too, but let's focus on the presentation of new projects, whether they're new or being revised.

We present projects to a selected group of people, including members of the Sales, Marketing, Finance, Production, and Administrative departments, as well as assorted other individuals. At F.A. Davis our president, Rob Craven, attends. That's important because it allows us to have the final decision-maker present, giving us flexibility to move quickly on "hot" projects.

Everyone sits around a large table, and when everyone is seated, the meeting begins. Let's say I'm the first one on the agenda and I'm presenting a new book called, oh, I don't know, Essentials of Snow Shoveling for Health Professionals. Quite a good title, don't you think?

What happens

In presenting this sure-to-be bestselling book, I may discuss these or other topics:

• Overall vision of the book


• Overview of author or author team


• Reviewer comments about proposal


• Specific markets book will target


• Approximate size of intended markets


• Specific courses or curricular content book will fit


• Estimate of sales for each year of product's life of title (number of years until new edition is published, often 4 or 5 years)


• Other pertinent financials

People around the table may ask questions, add market information, comment about the book's sales potential or feature set, explore the plan for electronic assets, or anything else about the project to help the decision-makers, and ultimately Rob, better understand the product and whether we should publish it.

I may field questions about specific slices of a particular market, such as, "What percentage, do you think, of snow shovelers are health professionals?" or "Are there regional differences in how health professionals shovel snow?" or "Will all snow shovelers be interested or only those with bad backs?"

I then answer each question in turn: "About 15 percent," "There are many more snow shovelers in the Northeast, Midwest, and Pacific Northwest than other areas," and "Of course everyone will be interested, but bad backers probably represent about ¾ of the market."

Pretty good answers, huh?

Possible outcomes

After all the preparations, discussions, comments, and questions there are basically three possible outcomes. The project may be:

1. Approved (or approved to go to a higher decision-maker, depending on the company).


2. Tabled until more information is gathered or the proposal is otherwise adjusted and then brought back before the Board.


3. Rejected.

Best-case scenario, and what we all work hard for, is outcome #1, an approval. We certainly accept tabling a proposal because at least the project isn't dead. We just have to rework this or that, and then eventually — probably — we'll get an approval.

We generally hate rejections, but we know that hey, it's a business, sometimes that's just the way it goes.

After the meeting I'll call the author and explain what happened and what the next steps are. If it's an approval, it's away we go!

So when your acquisitions person is preparing for Ed Board, or whatever the decision-making body at that publisher is called, be kind. He (or, you know, she) is working hard on your behalf. We put ourselves and our reputation on the line for every book we bring before the Board. We want to succeed, just as we want your book to succeed.

So let us go forth from this day forward, within an Ed Board and without, to shovel the bejeebers out of this snow!

The Four Types of Content and Who Owns What

In publishing there are four main types of content—clinical, editorial, graphical, and administrative. If you're thinking about writing or authoring, you should make yourself familiar with them, because they all need to work together to make the finished product successful. Let's take them one at a time.

Clinical

I call this content clinical because I work in healthcare publishing, but it exists in all areas of publishing. Clinical content is the meaning you want the reader to take away from a word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph. In a pharmacology textbook, for instance, you might want the reader to understand that nausea and vomiting are typical side effects of a particular drug. In a how-to manual about kitchen remodeling you might want the reader to understand the importance of a proper foundation for obtaining a perfect seal between slabs of granite. In a magazine article about avoiding the January doldrums you might want the reader to understand the role of sunlight in sleep disturbances. Clinical content (or technical content or whatever else you'd like to call it) is the meat and meaning of what is written.

The author is the sole arbiter of clinical content. If you're a cardiologist writing about coronary artery disease (CAD), you're held responsible for making sure your description of CAD is fully accurate. Your editors certainly aren't going to know whether it's accurate, and even if they do, they're not going to take responsibility for the final description. That's your job.

Editorial

Editorial content is largely embedded within clinical content. It's punctuation, grammar, and spelling. It's consistency in the treatment of numbers, dates, names, and places. It's the making sure that clinical content is prepared for the reader in the clearest and most meaningful way.

It is here in editorial content that differences arise among publishers. Does a book follow the Chicago Manual of Style or the AMA Style Guide? Are numbers over ten spelled out (eleven) or written as numerals (11)? Is the first letter of a bulleted list uppercased or lowercased? These and other specifics vary widely from publisher to publisher, and in most cases, authors have little or no say in their execution, and rightly so. Those kinds of decisions are best made by the experts in that field: the editors, a term I use here in the widest possible meaning and including publishers, acquisition editors, content editors, copyeditors, proofreaders, and the like.

Graphical

Graphical content refers to everything involved in presenting the content on the page to the reader. It's photographs, icons, and illustrations. It's the choice of font, font size, leading (basically the vertical space between lines), and kerning (horizontal spacing between letters and words on a line). It's the color of headings, the width of a rule around the box, the size of a bullet in a list. These and other elements can vary widely from book to book or article to article, depending on the intent of the work, and in most cases, authors have little or no say here either.

Now, I don't mean to suggest that the cardiologist author doesn't have any say in how the heart illustrations in her book look. Not at all. But she will "own" only the clinical aspect of an illustration, not the editorial or design elements. For instance, the author must determine whether the leaflets of the mitral valve are shaped properly in a drawing. She does not, however, have a say over what shade of beige, say, is used, unless that particular color is clinically important.

A clearer example: An author prepares a graph of data. An illustrator draws the graph using colors that fit the overall design of the book. The author has control and decision-making authority, certainly, over any data point or label on the graph, but none whatsoever on which color, say, is used for which column. The designers know best about colors, shapes, and how graphical items work visually together. We authors and editors ought to stay out of it as much as possible.

Administrative

Administrative content refers to all the other non-clinical, non-editorial, and non-graphical content necessary for to make book (or blog, article, or newsletter). It's the folio, running heads, and sequence of elements in the front of the book (front matter). It's the copyright page, the table of contents, the indices. Easy, peasy.


The most successful books, I believe, are published by houses that grant wide latitude to authors in developing clinical content, editors in helping authors prepare effective manuscripts, and designers in presenting visually appealing manuscript to the reader. Publishing should be, and usually is, a team effort in which no single person holds decision-making power over all four types of content. Rather, each member of the team manages their own type of content and works with other team members to create the final product.