I’ll Probably Delete This

Editing is a service job,
and
publishing is the business of conveying your enthusiasm for a book to the rest of the world.

Hello, listeners.

This is I'll Probably Delete This, where today we learn about the book business

by exploring stories from a notable person from the publishing industry.

And today, that is one of the preeminent editors from the last 70 years.

My name is Will Jauquet, and welcome to Episode 5.

This episode, I hope, will be relatively short.

And instead of a story, we are going to pull insights from

long-time editor Robert Gottlieb, based on his memoir.

Join me now as we learn from that long-time editor.

Robert Gottlieb started his career in publishing in 1955,

and just 10 years later became editor-in-chief at publishing house Simon & Schuster.

Following that, he went to Alfred A. Knopf, where he was again editor-in-chief.

He also spent five years as managing editor of The New Yorker magazine.

When he left The New Yorker, he returned to Knopf as a senior book editor,

where he would stay for the rest of his career.

Gottlieb, over that career, edited hundreds of books,

and by his estimate, he edited more than 700 different books.

He edited many important books and notable authors.

Among those authors are Toni Morrison,

Bill Clinton, and Robert Caro.

Robert Caro is famous for his biography first of Robert Moses,

and then his multi-part biography that he's doing of Lyndon Johnson.

Caro is really exploring the nature of power,

and particularly political power in America.

The reason why I spent time on Caro is that you can get a view into Gottlieb's role as editor,

and his relationship to Caro in the movie Turn Every Page.

It is a surprisingly compelling documentary about two very successful men,

bookish old men talking about research, editing, and books.

Sadly, Bob died in 2023 at the age of 92.

So he isn't going to be around to edit Caro's last volume of his studies.

But he's going to be a part of the study of Johnson.

We should all pray, however, that Caro is able to finish it.

What follows, then, is advice and observations taken directly from Gottlieb's book.

That book is Avid Reader: A Life. And it was published by Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux.

We'll have four sections, first covering advice or admonitions for editors,

followed by his comments on book design,

and then his comments on book design.

And then his comments on book design, and then his comments on book design,

and then a short discussion of marketing and promotion.

And we'll close with a few comments from Gottlieb on the nature of publishing.

First up is five pieces of advice or admonitions that Gottlieb offers to editors.

And the first is, "Get back to your writers right away."

Bob was famous for being a quick reader and being very quick in turning around comments on a manuscript.

In episode four (https://probably-delete.transistor.fm/s1/4) of this podcast, we heard about how it took three months

before Laura Ingalls Wilder heard back from Marion Fiery,

even though Fiery had requested the manuscript.

Despite all the good that Fiery did for Wilder,

this is one aspect about which Bob Gottlieb would not approve.

The next three pieces of advice all hit on the same theme.

So, number two, "It's the writer's book, not yours."

Number three, "Try to help make the book a better version of what it is

and not into something that it isn't."

And number four,

"Spend your strength and your ego in service of the writer,

not for your own sake."

So Gottlieb is telling us that an editor really needs to work with the material

that she or he has been given and to try to improve it.

The editor should make the book better,

but shouldn't turn it into or try to turn it into the editor's own book.

And then number five is going to mirror his prior advice

and say it even more succinctly.

And you can hear him say this over and over again in interviews.

And that is, "It's a service job."

I've now listened to more than a half dozen interviews of Gottlieb.

And in all of those interviews, when he talks about publishing or editing,

he repeats this mantra,

that editing is a service job.

Next up is Gottlieb's thoughts on book production and design.

And his comments are really about what happens inside the cover.

He's not talking about cover design.

When designing a book, really when designing and laying out the pages of a book,

his overarching philosophy is to give the reader a break.

This succinct philosophy leads to a number of conclusions.

So we're going to go through a number of them now.

First, "Keep the price of a book as low as possible."

For as much as the book industry hates it,

this is one part that Amazon tends to get right.

Then, remember to make sure that the type is legible and as legible as possible, gnerous in size. Readability is everything.

Next, don't talk about an important photograph or portrait or picture and then not show it.

Also, in terms of designing the page,

deploy useful running headings.

He wants the name of the particular story or essay

rather than the name of the author.

The reader knows the name of the author.

And don't deploy fancy ornaments or folios on the page that may distract from the text.

In other words, don't over-design it.

And the last piece of advice he has on this topic is just remember the things that irritate you

in books that you are reading.

So, do unto others.

Think about the reader.

Put yourself in the reader's place.

Remember the things that bother you as a reader

and then don't do those things.

When I picked up his memoir,

I was hoping to hear about

the book publishing industry

and how it had changed

and what Gottlieb would also say

about marketing books.

Avid Reader did have some of that but not very much. I'll pass on the little bit that i pulled

from the book on the topic he talked about the move away from doing print advertising

so early in his career print advertising for books had been the primary way to promote a new book

but the cost of ads went up and so publishing houses moved away from print ads

it became less cost effective in selling books to the public. Because of this other forms of

promotion became more important at the same time print was fading you had the rise of the medium

of TV which we touched on in Episode 1 (https://probably-delete.transistor.fm/s1/1)

The reality was that tv appearances could sell books for the right

kind of author or the right kind of book and he called out people like Lauren Bacall the famous

hollywood actress or Julia Child whose start we covered back in episode one of the show

i encourage you to go back and listen to that if you haven't (https://probably-delete.transistor.fm/s1/1). For people like that

TV really could sell books. And that's true whether it's national tv appearances

on places like Jack Parr or later Johnny Carson or other late night tv programs or

local tv. Either national or local could be effective. But there were some books and some

authors for whom TV appearances would not move books. Gottlieb said "we couldn't sell a french

novelist

by sending him on a nationwide book tour." Back to print advertising even with the rise of TV

and the lack of cost effectiveness of print ads publishing houses still used print

print remained important to individual writers.

the writers not only

enjoyed seeing them but took them as a gauge of the publisher's belief in them

so print ads acted as a vote of confidence in the writer from the publishing house

and that's how the writers viewed it and you can kind of understand why an individual writer

might want print ads because it's something that you could go and cut out you could show to your

friends and family you could sell them to a publisher and that's how the writers viewed it

and because of this publishers kept using print ads for certain authors because that's what the

authors expected, so the publishers had to do it last we'll end with gottlieb's view of what

publishing is and as you'll see many of them relate to book promotion first

publishing is the business of conveying your own honest enthusiasm for a book and a writer

to the rest of the world i've got not much more to say other than that's really well put

the business of publishing and marketing a book is to convey your own honest enthusiasm for that

book to the rest of the world second if you believe in publishing you're not going to be able to get

In a book, there are others who will too, because you're not special.

This one's really interesting.

He is saying, you're not unique in your tastes,

and your interests will be shared by many, many other people.

Even though he's talking about books,

this insight well describes much of the power of the Internet.

If you have an interest, there are probably many thousands and thousands of people on the Internet

who share that interest with you, and you can then use the Internet to find them.

Third, "Every book has its own potential readership.

Figure out what it is and reach for it.

Don't try to sell every book to everyone."

The third pairs well with the second that we just talked about.

It's a great reminder, I think, for every author and publisher.

Not every book is for everyone.

You shouldn't write a book for everyone, and you shouldn't market a book for everyone.

You should write it not for everyone, but for someone.

Find the right market. Find the right someone.

Fourth,

"Take every detail seriously,

since we don't know what makes certain books do better than others,

except, of course, their innate qualities."

And fifth, which he says may be hardest to accept, is

"Readers aren't stupid."

Readers' tastes, judgment, and instincts "may prove to be sounder than" your own.

Hopefully, in that,

you've found at least one nugget of wisdom or entertainment

from the various quotes that we covered and from the points we discussed from Gottlieb.

For the postscript on today's episode,

I'm pulling from an interview that Gottlieb gave to Terry Gross of Fresh Air.

In that interview, she asked a question about his view of the decline in book culture

and the importance of books.

And Gottlieb was,

he didn't agree, he rejected the premise

and said that there are still lots of people who care very much about books

and that books are still really important.

He didn't have a negative view of the health of books or of book culture.

And I think that can be refreshing for people in the publishing industry to hear,

that it still is vibrant and important.

And at least during the pandemic,

and even the numbers from,

from 2024 suggest that book sales are growing.

So I wanted to end on that positive note.

For the bibliography,

obviously, we've got the book that we've been talking about this whole episode.

Again, it is Avid Reader, A Life,

written by Robert Gottlieb,

published in 2016 by Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux.

Gottlieb wrote other books.

This one is his,

his memoir of his life as an editor.

I will say that it is filled with kind of name dropping of authors

and other sort of notable or famous people that he worked with or rubbed elbows with.

But for the average reader,

and maybe I'm counting myself,

most of the names in the book will likely mean very little.

For some of you, however,

you fit nicely in that target market for his book.

If you're in that target audience,

I encourage you to pick it up.

Join me next time for another episode of

I'll Probably Delete This,

where we'll explore more stories from authors,

storytellers, great books,

and the people involved in publishing them.

Happy reading.

Thanks, everybody.