Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with publisher

This sounds really familiar...

amicamentis — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:56:56 -0800

How do authors ensure that they aren't copying older stories? Is there a process that authors go through when fleshing out (fictional) works? Is this the publisher's responsibility? Do they ask around?

I would imagine that an author would want to know as soon as possible whether or not the plot of his story resembled a film or book already published. And while he or she may know of many works, it's impossible to be familiar with all of them.

For example, if a writer says "I know! I'll write a book about a nerdy journalist who goes back to high school and gets a second chance at love!". Hopefully they have a friend that says, "Dude, that was Never Been Kissed. Try again". But what if they don't? Does this happen often? Is there some sort of "plot database" in existence?

I'm not referring to deliberate parody or spoofs on classic works, more of a general and unintentional similarity.

Public media business models

parmanparman — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 15:05:15 -0800

How does Gourmet: Diary of a Foodie get funded? Is it just like a non-commercial commercial for Gourmet magazine and its advertisers and then given away to public radio stations?

2 Sided PDF Conversion

dortmunder — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:57:04 -0800

Is there a way to take a brochure made in Microsoft Publisher 2007 and convert it to a 2 sided PDF that can be printed out and folded as a brochure? I have no problem converting the file, but I cannot, for the life of me find any sort of option for either creating a 2 sided PDF, or for printing a 2 sided document in Acrobat. What am I missing?

Is gmail just too good for Publisher?

lunasol — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 10:42:37 -0800

I made a not-awful email newsletter in Microsoft Publisher. Now I want to send it via Gmail. Help! The only publishing/image software I have on my work computer is Microsoft Publisher (2003). My work email is through Google Apps, so my work email is essentially gmail. Usually I love this, but I'm having trouble getting gmail to cooperate with Publisher.

I made a newsletter that I want to send in the body of an email. Simply copying and pasting the whole document doesn't work, as I lose all the formatting. I tried setting my computer's default email client as gmail so that I could choose to send the document as an email, but this doesn't seem to work.

Becoming a writer during my gap "year"

jeatsy — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:38:38 -0800

I have savings and, soon, no work. I want to do something interesting, write about it, and publish - ideally to kick-start a writing career. How should I go about these 3 things? I am a talented writer but have let my skills lie pretty much dormant since high school. Recently I took a fortnight's holiday and, having forgotten to take a camera with me, decided once home to write an account of my travels. It ended up many times longer than I had expected, I adored writing it, and all those who've read it seemed to really enjoy it. Hive mind: I'm hooked. I think I want to be a writer.

This desire coincides with the last few months of a research degree in computer science, about which I have become completely ambivalent and after which I have no plans other than to avoid programming for a living. (To the programmers out there: A great way to make a living. But not for me.) I have a lot of pent-up wanderlust, a desire to do something interesting in some interesting corner/s of the world, and a reasonable stash of savings with which to fund myself. I guess what I want is a worthwhile gap year, plus or minus a few months. And I want to be a writer.

So my logic is, let's go somewhere interesting, do something interesting, and write about it - ideally in order to kick-start a fruitful and enjoyable writing career, but in the worst case to have fun and to develop as a person and as a writer. That's about as specific as I get at the moment...

My question to the hive mind is: how should I go about (a) choosing what I'll do, and (b) writing about it, both with a view to getting published? Should I get talking to publishers right away? Do I approach them with an idea, or do they have ideas that they want people like (hopefully) me to work on - or a mixture of both? What kind of publishing format should I be targeting? Am I mad to even want to write for a living, in the age of blogs and tweets ten a penny?

I should add that the other genre of writing that particularly appeals to me, once I have satisfied my biting wanderlust, is popular science; and I'm 25 and based in the UK.

Good publisher of Italian classics?

vespr1610 — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:37:51 -0800

Good publisher of Italian classics? I ask only this: the text is as it was first written, the book is free from the pollution of study notes. I suppose I'm looking for the Italian equivalent of England's 'Oxford University Press', or Germany's 'Reclam'.

Does a written agreement entitle me to a kill fee?

blueshammer — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:38:17 -0800

I'm trying to build the best argument for why a company that committed in writing to licensing some IP of mine but are two years tardy in furnishing a contract owes me something. In summer '06 my colleagues and I presented this company with a potential license that well fit their product line. We made a few changes over the course of '06 at their request and in Jan '07 received this message:

"We are delighted to let you know that [the publisher] would like to license and publish [the property] from you. The details of our proposal will be sent over to you next week and then I'd like to schedule a phone meeting to discuss this project further."

We had a totally amenable in-person meeting a month later to discuss details ... but no contract ever arrive. We have seen them in person four times since, but always with some excuse as to why they have never furnished a contract. In person, they are pleasant in a way that totally fails to trip my "insincere" detectors, and so we have allowed ourselves to hope against hope that their excuses represent legitimate difficulties. But we're now almost a year from our last person-to-person meeting and nine months from the last e-mail or voicemail that they actually returned.

Now, the publisher is, from all I know apart from our dealings with them, totally reputable and in business with "name" talent. We're going to be seeing them in two months at an event. In our industry, delays and sluggishness is expected, but waiting more than two years for a contract is not. We approached this publisher because their product line was best for our product, and they still are, but we all feel the situation has become ridiculous.

My concern is that if we say, "Fine, never mind," they will willingly relinquish their interest but also what seems to me to be their obligation to pay an industry-standard advance commensurate with their written agreement to publish. They said yes, and in the interim we have in good faith withheld that property from other prospective publishers. I think that's worth something, and by something I mean dollars, and I would ask the Hive Mind to either talk me out of this position or help me craft the most convincing argument.

Print to fit in Microsoft Publisher

Horace Rumpole — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 11:01:05 -0800

How do I make an extremely large (100 inches wide) Publisher document print to fit on a single page? I am curating an exhibition, and a colleague of mine used Microsoft Publisher (a program I have zero experience with) to make diagrams of where my items should be laid out within each of the 10 display cases. In order to make the layouts as accurate as possible, she did everything at full scale, which works great, but Publisher wants to print it out at the size of the physical display case (like Stephen Wright's joke about the 1:1 scale map of the world).

There doesn't seem to be an obvious "print to fit" kind of button anywhere that I can find. I've tried saving it as a tif or jpeg, but it says the file size is too large. I converted it to a PDF, but it came up as a totally fragmented 70-page document. Any suggestions better than the kludge we've come up with so far, taking a screenshot and printing that?

How would one get a travel guide published?

arniec — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 10:11:27 -0800

My wife and I are looking at writing a US based (lower 48) travel guide and would like any tips possible regarding getting one published, and how to make it actually happen. Having recently taken a road trip we looked at all the travel guides on Barnes and Noble's shelves, Border's shelves, and on Amazon and none covered what we wanted. So we thought "If we want it and it's not available, why not write one ourselves!

However this has brought up some issues. We both have full time day jobs, and we don't think by any means this will bring in "quit your day job" money. But to do a full 48 state travel guide we have really only two options: 1) Do it all from research, and hope the info we research is correct. 2) Travel. A LOT. Incurring a lot of expenses.

Our hope would be that we might be able to do some areas local to us (we live in IL so all of IL would work, and perhaps IN, MO, IA, and KY without too much expense or missed time from work with careful planning).

After that, is it at all reasonable to hope that first-time authors could take sample pages to an agent, have the agent get an advance against the book, and then use those funds to actually pay for some of the expenses of writing the book?

If that is entirely unrealistic, what other options do we have?

To add--we have considered writing perhaps an IL specific version of the overall book we hope to write. While far narrower in scope, we hope the material to support a book would still be there. Would that be a better way to go and then hope that based on that book we could get an agent and publisher to go for the full 48 states?

We are loathe to self-publish, even in this day and age, but does someone think that might be the way to do it?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

How to print double side postcards, multiple pages per sheet, while mail merging?

peripatew — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:02:23 -0800

When mail merging with a postcard template in Publisher 2007, and printing multiple postcards per page (4), how do I get four different records on one page, rather than a page full of the same record? I created a post card using one of the blank postcard templates. I use the mail merge option and insert an address block. When I go to print I have the option for multiple copies per page. But, this just makes multiple copies of one record per sheet. I'd like to print off a large number of postcards, doing four per 8.5"x11" sheet.

When printing I have two different options, print multiple copies and multiple pages. Printing multiple pages would work, except that I'm working with a two sided postcard. Doing 4 pages per sheet puts two front side and two back sides on the front of one sheet.

I could have two separate publisher files, one printing the front side w/ the mail merge, and one with the back side. But I'd rather not if there is a way around this.

Any help is appreciated.

Converting .pub to .tif

etc. — Thu, 15 May 2008 04:41:27 -0800

I need to send files to a print shop in tiff format. I know I've done it before, but can't seem to figure it out now: How do you convert a MS Publisher file to tiff format? Online resources suggest a "save as," but there is no tiff choice on the "save as" menu. Following the instructions in the Publisher "help" files only gets me a black-and-white tiff. The print shop people keep giving me suggestions via email, but they are clearly guessing, and their guesses aren't working.

Ghostwriter! Word.

Ambrosia Voyeur — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:49:44 -0800

I've been offered a ghostwriting gig. Help me with my expectations, please. So, I mentioned to several people in my life that, rather than continue in print production or bookkeeping (between now and the time I begin work on a Masters degree in Film in September), I wanted to get some experience with freelance writing and/or copyediting. I got a hit right away from my friend who works for a small publisher. Very small - nearly just a vanity project for the owner of the company, who is himself "not educated or experienced, but very smart" according to my friend. I actually designed the company logo a while back, too. Anyway, the owner wants to publish a novel based in truth about some conspiratorial figure I've never heard of, and that's about all I know so far. (Uh-oh... my Turner Diaries senses are tingling...) Sounds fun enough to me! We haven't met yet, but from my friend who runs his business, I have the impression that the job will be mine if I want it, in any case.

What kind of rate should I request, as someone with very little professional writing experience, writing a book that is not expected to profit enormously?

How much time should I expect to spend on a short reseach-based novel?

What complexities or stumbling blocks should I look out for in this arrangement and the adjunct relationships?

Resources for, um, how to write my first novel without personal inspiration, and on the fly?

I believe I can muddle through the copyediting and the research parts, but making the content interesting, authentic and well-structured are all problems I have no experience solving.

Any other advice, freelancers?

Thanks very much in advance!

Limited run do run run?

typewriter — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 19:10:21 -0800

What connotations does 'limited run' regarding a book have? I have a question for a publisher character I am writing. I want her to describe a book that will be published in North America only for the time being. As in, it will likely have a longer, global life in the future. Would it be accurate to use the term 'limited run' here, or does that always refer to numbers and not geography? Would term would be appropriate?

So... may I do stuff with your mom's poems?

allterrainbrain — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 04:43:36 -0800

I'm writing a letter to the adult children of a poet who died in the 90s, asking them for permission to use their mother's writing as part of a creative project I'm doing (experimental audio/video). Her children run her estate and I was referred to them after asking her publisher for text permission.

I know this is ultra-hypothetical, but can you imagine what you'd be interested in hearing if you were those children?

(Forget the practical considerations like licensing and money; those will be negotiated between me and the publisher later, if the children give permission. Obviously the mother would be credited in all versions of the work, and her texts would be used in full and not altered.)

The only instruction the children's representative gave me was to enclose examples of previous work I've done that included other people's poems.

I have a lot to say about their mother and the effect of her work on me (I could write many pages about that), so I have to decide how much of that her kids will want to hear. I'm asking about using three poems, and one of the poems is about the experience of being pregnant with one of the children I'm writing to. I don't know exactly how or whether to address that directly.

I really, really care about being able to use these poems, so I want to make this letter as appealing as possible. I can only find one other example of this poet's work being used as part of another creative work, and that was done within her lifetime, so that suggests maybe her children have never given such permission before (or have never been asked, which I guess is possible; she's not hugely famous). This is my first experience asking text permission from living people rather than just negotiating with a publisher.

Open Source version of MS Publisher?

worker_bee — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 05:26:06 -0800

Is there an open-source equivalent to MS Publisher? My son needs to do a project for his English class that has to look like a newsletter and Publisher would seem to be the easiest way to achieve the required look. Before I download the free trial I wondered if there was an Open Office type equivalent. Thanks.

Problem with editor

Anonymous — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 17:29:54 -0800

Unprofessional behavior and bad PR in the book world... am I better off taking my book back from this publisher or sucking up their bad behavior and just being done with it? I've written several books in a particular nonfiction genre and have a good reputation overall. The books have sold well, gotten great reviews, and even won some awards. I have worked with more than one publisher. The publisher in question here has played some serious musical chairs, editor-wise since we signed the contract -- I've had more than one and less than 5 since last summer!

The book has been running late because current editor refused to do her job and actually edit. I practically had to BEG her to edit/give feedback, and have a long and sordid trail of emails to prove it. After she finally edited the manuscript, we agreed that my revisions and new illustrations, etc would be to her by a certain date. I told them I would not provide new illustrations until they signed off on the list, because I didn't want to redo things 5 more times and delay things further.

Of course, she didn't stick to her side of the agreement. Of note -- when at a related trade conference, I heard some pretty nasty things from one of the publisher's national sales accounts which sound as if editor has been lying about me to cover her own you-know-what.

Another author (with different editor) bought her book back from the publisher recently after encountering similar difficulties.

My question boils down to this: will my reputation suffer more if I let them publish the book and then ignore it, PR- and promotion-wise, or if I buy the book back and take it elsewhere / self-publish it? I've really bent over backwards until now, trying to be professional and accommodating, but I've reached my breaking point.

Also of note: the publications that would be reviewing this book are stacked full of personal friends of mine... so I don't have to worry about explaining the publisher change if it happens.

The stress alone is worth billions.

changeling — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 22:45:07 -0800

Will I win my small claims lawsuit against this deadbeat publisher? I wrote a total of five feature articles for a new business magazine, which apparently went under before its launch. My contract said I would be paid 45 days after my final invoice (I believe that was May 2nd). 90% of my emails have been ignored, and I have never received a real explanation (although I'm pretty certain funding was withdrawn, something like that). The magazine never came out, and because it was a summer launch, the topics of the articles were timely and have now expired.

After weeks and weeks of being brushed aside, I send the publisher a version of this letter. Then he tried to put me on a guilt trip for threatening his "tiny little publishing company".

He's also said "We have not published your work or benefited from it in anyway and you have retained your IPR's to the fullest extent." Even if that were so, the summer's long over, and my articles are worthless. The letter I sent gave him ten days to pay or I would have to take legal action. Well, it's been two months. I've printed out the small claims documents and am ready to mail. The reason I hesitated: he sent me an email about three weeks ago claiming he put together a packet for all outstanding vendors, and I should receive it swiftly. Well, it never came. And what could it possibly say, anyway?

My questions for you: Will I win this case, even though it's true, he didn't benefit from my articles? The contract doesn't say payment upon publication--it says payment upon final invoice. Has anyone else had experience suing a deadbeat publisher/employer? I know that even if I win, I might not get paid for ages. But this is a lot of money to me (we're talking several thousand), and I also want to do win this on principle alone. He's been terrible to deal with. I have immaculate copies (hooray gmail!) of all our correspondence--though most of it during the happy writing days in April was through a middleman, the editor (also a bastard), who had severed himself from the company.

I hate this.

MS Publisher to Mac?

j.p. Hung — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 07:37:39 -0800

Client sent me a bunch of MS Publisher files...I'm on a mac. A client has sent me a bunch of MS Publisher files that I need to import into InDesign (and/or Quark). I'm not familiar with Publisher but know there is no mac client compatable - at least not that I've heard of. So, couple questions:

1. Would changing the codec on the publisher files work at all?
2. Is there a save option on MS Publisher that will allow me to open it here?
3. Is there software that could do some conversion to open it on a mac? I don't even care about flow, layout or anything; just want to get to the content.

Searched Mefi but didn't find anything about this. Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

Help on finding an obscure book

543DoublePlay — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 10:23:13 -0800

I'm looking for help in finding out who the author/publisher of a book called "The Camp" are I read this book many (many) years ago while I was living in the UK. Called "The Camp" (I'm pretty sure) it is a fictional work that tells the story of a group of British National Servicemen serving on a Royal Air Force base in 1950's Germany. For reasons too lengthy to explain here I would really like to get hold of a copy of it, but searches on the usual places (Amazon, Amzon UK, and EBay) turned up nothing. Googling 'The Camp' gives me way too many options to go through.

Can any Me-Fi'ers out there assist with an author's name or the name of the publisher?

Should I donate it or should I sell it?

mule — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 21:41:34 -0800

A book author/publisher has found an image of mine on the net, and asked for permission to use it in their book. I would like to know if I should allow them to use it gratis, or ask for a fee? The author writes for a quite well known tech site/blog, and the book is being published by a reputable publisher, and will retail for $US 30-40 and I assume will sell quite well.

Should I give permission for the image to be used provided I have some form of written credit, and feel all warm and gooey about the fact that my image has been published.

Or should I give permission for the image to be used provided that they purchase a licence (I'm not sure how to go about this) and pay me to use it?

Also what are the copywrite implications in the US?

Your advice on how to go about getting the best out of this process would be much appreciated.

Need full text of Double Day statement defending James Frey

studentguru — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 08:30:18 -0800

How to find the full text of the public statement issued by DoubleDay defending James Frey? Here are extracts of the text from New York Times:
"Memoir is a personal history whose aim is to illuminate, by way of example, events and issues of broader social consequence......Recent accusations against him notwithstanding, the power of the overall reading experience is such that the book remains a deeply inspiring and redemptive story for millions of readers."

I have searched everywhere and two librarians suggest I called up the publisher but the pubisher will only entertain people from the media and I am only a student of the media ---- too small fry for them to bother with. Yes, this is what Mr Russell Perreault of DoubleDay/Random House more or less said to me on the phone.

If somebody can email the following guy for the full text I will really appreciate it. He has the copy and he will only deal with the media. Thanks a million.
Mr Russell Perreault
rperreault@randomhouse.com
(212)572 2080

Is Vint Cerf related to Bennet Cerf?

cali — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 15:24:56 -0800

Is Vint Cerf related to Bennett Cerf, the publisher? When I worked in the book trade Random House had gotten so big we often joked that "the Cerfs own your brain." Maybe it's more true than we suspected. I know that Vint has a son named Bennett, but I can't find any other evidence to connect the two. Does anyone here know?

How to find an agent for nonfiction?

By The Grace of God — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 14:21:50 -0800

What is the best way to obtain an agent for a non-fiction book (a collection of unorthodox and engrossing interviews with innovators on the political Left, with many a-listers)? What criteria are foremost in my choice? Is geographic proximity to me important in an agent? How do I find an agent that takes book-writing newbies but is effective and nonexploitative? I have looked at writers dot net and eagerly await the local Writers' Organization's class catalog.

I'm doing the interviews and have sample chapters ready as well as a boiler plate coverletter for agents.

How to get multiple Office docs into one unified document

FloryTric — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 10:16:46 -0800

My workplace has developed a training curriculum using various Office documents. I need to figure out a way to 'bind' them into one large document... Using Word seems like a nightmare, and we also don't have any luck using Publisher. Is there something obvious that I'm missing? What we need is to put multiple documents into one large file, give them a consistent look, and repaginate the documents so the pagination makes sense relative to this larger document.

Word frequently crashes, or has odd formatting errors, and Publisher doesn't handle the PowerPoint 'notes' view.

I've tried googling, but I'm not having good luck, because I can't reduce what I'm looking for in just a few words. Am I looking for a professional desktop publishing software?

Please be gentle..this is my first attempt at AskMetafilter.

Looking for a fast way to get old issues of magazines

Lizc — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 14:08:53 -0800

Magazine Filter: How does one get past issues of magazines without going through the publisher? I'm looking for the April 2004 issue of Esquire Magazine. The publisher takes 2-3 weeks to ship past issues... is there a better/faster way I'm missing?