My commitment is to story-telling, however it happens.
I'm sitting here leafing through bound galleys of one of our forthcoming books.
Even in these electronic times we hold fast to bound galleys, or uncorrected page proofs.
We circulate them (often in spiral binding) to people who've agreed to read the manuscript months before it's published, and perhaps review or endorse it.
That's how we garner comments on the back covers or first pages of a book.
I'm set to hand-deliver our galleys to a well-known personage who kindly agreed to read this zesty memoir that you'll hear more about soon.
But first, I call a literary agent with whom I'm working on another project — selling a timely medical self-help manuscript about statin drugs.
My agent mentions the Borders bankruptcy debacle, quoting that Borders now owes publishers 141 million — or something outrageous like that.
As if our fragile industry needs another hit!
Still, I trot to midtown on this blessedly warm day, deliver bound galleys into welcoming hands and then head over to a production studio.
We've just taped two Shakespeare plays for a special project that combines words and images, and will be announced soon.
I sit with the director and my co-producer, who's managing the splices with an expert in Avid.
Watching colorful actors on screen, I think of typed words in the bound galleys I just handed over.
I think of all the ways to convey stories and sequences.
This is my passion, why I've stuck with this crazy publishing industry, even as it founders and sputters.
There's almost nothing so thrilling as helping a story to unfold.