Next meeting:

Tuesday, 5 March 2019

Technical editingThis is a well-paid, yet undersupplied, area of editing. As language and technologies merge, it is possible for trained editors to build the skills to take up this diverse and challenging work.

This presentation will include what distinguishes technical editing from other types of editing; as well as tips for developing a knowledge base in this area and winning freelance work.

Presenter: Lyneve Rappell spent nearly ten years with Techwriter Placements, finding technical writers and editors for projects in biotech, finance, construction and defence. Since then she has returned to editing, first with Boston Consulting Group and more recently with ANZ’s economic research team. In the 1990s, Lyneve worked in Japan, teaching English and journal editing before returning to Australia and gaining an MA in Publishing and Editing from Macquarie University.

6.30 pm for drinks/supper, 7.00 pm start.

Venue: Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts, Level 1, 280 Pitt Street, Sydney (near cnr Bathurst Street and close to Town Hall train station). This venue is wheelchair accessible and has an ambulant bathroom.

Cost: $25 members, $30 non-members,$15 concession (current Centrelink orDVA concession card).

Bookings via Events on the IPEd website: http://iped-editors.org/Professional_development/Events.aspx

April meeting: Educational publishing Tuesday, 2 April 2019

February 2019

Literary agents: what editors need to know

InsideEthics in editing: part 2 6

From the committee 8

Member discounts 8

Professional development 9

Little did we know when we invited literary agent Jane Novak to speak at our February meeting that we were in for such a wide-ranging delivery. Her career in publishing has covered both ends of the spectrum and plenty in between. If Jane were a celebrated chef, she would be the ‘nose to tail’ kind: she shared her experiences with our members, with grace and humour, and this is a compilation of her written notes and presentation for our members to enjoy.

Jane’s opening was an apology. She had just received news that her client Behrouz Boochani had won the Victorian Prize for Literature for his work No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison (translated by Omid Tofighian). He had won the Prize for Non-Fiction at the 2019 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, but then also won the overall prize. Busy handling international attention since the announcement, Jane had managed little time to sleep in previous days.

Jane decided to focus her presentation to us on what she thought might be something new to hear from an agent in the relationship between agent, author and editors. The number one question she gets from her clients, she said, is ‘why does it take so long?’ It seems a simple question, but it goes to the heart of the perception of the publishing industry. And it is obvious that to the outside world, the perception is one of glamour.

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Images: CC0

Image: CC0

2 February 2019

In her own wordsPublishing is seen to be an old-fashioned, romantic industry, conjuring up images of beautifully dressed editors in twin-sets and pearls, strolling around with piles of paper under their arms. We know it is not like that, but if you have worked in the industry, publishing is particularly opaque from the outside.

If I look back at my own career trajectory this holds true. My parents were country booksellers and I worked for them as a cranky teenager, usually hungover, never imagining for a moment that I would ever have a career in books. But having left home for university and completed an arts degree, which is what you do when you have no idea what you want to do, I was woefully unqualified to do anything really, so in my early twenties I found myself back working in bookshops. I was lucky enough to work for both Shearer’s Bookshop in Gordon and for Ariel Booksellers in Paddington – two wonderful independent Sydney bookstores. I was very involved in their events program as well as the day-to-day running of the store. I loved reading all the new releases and handselling them to customers, recommending classics and favourites. Opening all of the boxes delivered from warehouses around Australia each month was like Christmas, I loved it.

My first real introduction to publishing, then, was via the sales reps at the bookshops, because I organised events and I also did some of the buying. Before that, I had no appreciation of the sheer volume of books being published every month or the differences between each publishing house. Obviously, you are working to a budget, but the client base influences that – the customers at Shearer’s in Gordon were different from those at Ariel in Paddington – and I probably would not buy 30 copies of the Janette Howard cookbook for Paddington, for instance.

The best sales reps were the ones who understood who my customers were and knew when to push something and when something genuinely was not right for me. I was working at Ariel the year The First Stone by Helen Garner was published. The sales rep from Picador came to sell-in that month’s titles and told me I needed to take 200 copies. I told him he was mad. I knew of Helen Garner’s work, but she wasn’t the household name that she is today, and at face value the description of the book did not sound exactly mainstream – a sexual harassment case on a Melbourne University campus? The sales rep coaxed and cajoled, talked about the incredible media the book was going to get but frankly, I felt my job was potentially on the line, so I held firm and took 20 copies. The first Saturday after publication those 20 copies sold in 20 minutes and, having a small heart attack, I rang the sales rep begging for his help. Bless him, he was at the store within the hour because he had 200 copies in his car. He knew we would need them, and we had sold the lot by Monday.

About that time, and because of that incident, I started to pay attention to marketing and publicity campaigns from publishers. I saw the things fall into place, a cover story in the Good Weekend magazine, for instance, that brought a book to people’s attention and drove them into stores. I thought it was incredible because I was too green to make those connections before then.

I became aware of the potential impact that a good marketing campaign can have on a book’s success. The River Ophelia by Justine Ettler was one of the first novels to emerge from the grunge period of the 1990s.

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The cover was a provocative image of a woman, possibly naked, sitting on a chair with her head thrown down in front of her, hair cascading down. It was a little reminiscent of the famous image [from 1963] of a naked Christine Keeler sitting backwards on a chair. The publisher made the bold decision to market the book almost exclusively through this image and plastered inner Sydney with band-style posters, and it was not exactly clear what it was, just the tagline ‘in stores now’. Then the book received a shocking review in the Sydney Morning Herald which compared the experience of reading the book to regurgitating a chocolate milkshake after being on a roller-coaster. This had the extraordinary effect of branding the novel as anti-establishment, sexy, cool and dangerous and suddenly there were people I had never seen in the bookstore before, lining up for copies. It made me stop and take notice.

A publicist is bornWhen I got my first job in publishing, it was as a publicist with Pan Macmillan and I was thrilled to pieces. Terrified, because I really had no idea what a publicist did, but I had been given a foot in the door to a world I had only previously peeked at. All the publicists I had come into contact with seemed terribly confident and glamorous, swanning around with famous writers, and I envied them. I was a total book nerd, so to be at the coalface and to see how a book was actually ‘made’ was utterly fascinating. I had no idea what was involved, how labour-intensive it was, and how many difficult decisions had to be made along the way for a book to come into the world, but starting my career as a publicist was perfect.

Firstly, it made me a better reader: like most people I started in publishing as a bit of a literary snob, but as a publicist you work across all the lists and I quickly learnt to appreciate all kinds of writing. Also, because publicists interact with every department of the publishing house – editorial, marketing, production, even finance – and then outside with booksellers and media/festivals, it was a crash course in how the whole system worked. That was invaluable.

Working as a publicist, I was trying to connect the writer’s work with the audience, the readers. So, when my career as a literary agent started, some 20 years later, not a huge amount changed in my working life except now, of course, I’m working to connect the author and their work with the right publisher (and I am not travelling quite so much!).

The giant leap to literary agentBecoming an agent was not something I had thought about, but after working at Pan Macmillan for 12 to 13 years, then Text [Publishing] for six or seven years, I knew I’d had enough. I also wanted to come back to Sydney because my family was here. I was good friends with Barbara Mobbs, an extraordinary person and a literary agent for more than 50 years with a string of clients that included Patrick White, Helen Garner, Morris West, Germaine Greer and Kate Grenville. We had worked together on my publicity campaigns for her clients and she was one of the first people I called when I moved back to Sydney, not knowing what I wanted to do. In a serendipitous piece of good timing, Barbara wanted to retire and offered me the business.

3 February 2019

Again, I thought this would be a steep learning curve, but I spent three months working with Barbara and then, of course, from my publicity days I was familiar with some key elements: I knew how to read a royalty statement and a contract; I knew how to work with writers; and I was familiar with how the business worked. In the end it was just the matter of running a business that was unknown and it’s not as though there is a huge cash flow to wrangle. I reckon it took me about 20 minutes to cover that!

Right at homeWeirdly, I feel as though I am now doing the work I was always going to end up doing, if that makes sense. I feel as though I have done a complete 360 degrees and ended up exactly where I am supposed to be, in the job I was always meant to do, and I’m loving it.

So, what kind of difference can it make to an author to have an agent? The first and most obvious is time. Unless an author has a pre-existing relationship with a publisher, their submission will go to the very bottom of the pile and it can take up to 12 months before they hear anything back, if they hear anything at all. Having an agent will speed up this process.

Part of my job as an agent is to decide which books to send to publishers and why. When I am reading for acquisition I need to be able to see a clear publishing path not just for the book but also offering a good match for the author with the right publisher/editor. Who will be able to see what I can see, and who will do it well? I think about the author’s temperament and who will be a good fit. We all know that it’s not enough for a book to be well-written; it has to be able to survive in an extremely challenging market. Educating writers about the realities of the market is something both agents and editors can do, and a huge part of my job involves trying to explain a little of the ‘nuts and bolts’ to writers, to highlight how the industry actually works, to try and allay some of their anxiety and frustrations.

What makes a good manuscriptWhat I am looking for in a submission is, firstly, that the author has taken the time to make sure the book or proposal is as good as it can be. I’m as time poor as anyone in this industry and if I receive something that I regard as a lazy submission – something not finished, full of spelling and grammatical errors – then I’m going to reject it without much comment. If the writer can’t be bothered doing the work to put their best foot forward, then frankly I can’t be bothered with them.

The other big piece of advice I would ask authors to take on is to try to remain objective. You have is to listen to the right people when they give you feedback on your work. Do not take your friends and families opinion as gospel. They just love you and are excited for you. But if authors have come to an industry expert for advice, they give that the same weight as their neighbour’s aunt. The conversation none of us want to have with an author is the one where you take the time to read the work and offer constructive feedback on how to improve it only to hear that they have given it to their best friend, their partner and their aunt and they all think it is a work of genius.

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Our aim is to find books that are going to reach a wide audience but knowing what those books are is far from an exact science. If you are passionate about a book, there is nothing more satisfying than finding the editor or publisher who feels the same way you do about a manuscript. What I am always looking for is someone to reflect back to me what I see in a particular project, and who has a clear idea of how to make it work. And it is wonderful to be able to convey that to a client, but it is at the juncture that I need to explain how the acquisitions meetings work. That it is not enough to have one person in the company onside, we need everyone if the book is to be successful.

The inevitable rejections Acquisition meetings are brutal, I remember them all too well. Marketing and Sales are doing their job with concerns like ‘I don’t think Dymocks will take more than 2,000’ and ‘QBD won’t like it’ and ‘well, if the cover’s going to be blue, then so-and-so won’t like it’. In the end it boils down to making the numbers work.

That is hard to explain to a writer who has been trying to get their manuscript published for more than a year.

I try to prepare clients for the probable rejections that will come their way – bookselling and publishing is a very subjective business. No one reads the book in the same way. A Little Life [by Hanya Yanagihara, 2015] is the classic example: people either love that book or hate it, there is little in between. We can all read the same book and have wildly different opinions on all the elements of it. I still get heartbroken if I lend a book to someone because I think they will love it and they do not. That is how I present rejection to my clients: it doesn’t mean the work is no good, it just means that a particular person didn’t like it and that’s okay. I try to put things into perspective for them, because they are totally immersed in their manuscript, so I try to remind them that I love it and we will roll on to find that other person who loves it, to publish it.

I had a rejection very recently for what I think is a brilliant first novel. I found an editor at a big publishing house who agreed with me. She took it to a meeting where they discussed the fact that the author was very promotable – the writing reminded them very much of an early Helen Garner, the author would probably go on to win some significant literary prizes – but the subject matter was a bit tricky, so no publishing deal. How do you explain to the writer, ‘well, they really like it, but they don’t think they can sell it?’ That is a big part of my role, and my most frequent task, trying to remind authors that publishing is a business, with all the attendant decisions that entails. They are emotionally attached and just want people to read their book, but it is a complicated process.

What makes the cutI receive about a half dozen unsolicited submissions a month, some are complete manuscripts, others might be non-fiction proposals. If I am reading a novel, or short stories, I will forgive some clumsy plotting if the writing interests me. I think you can iron out plot stuff, if they can write.

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4 February 2019

I do not have an editorial background and I do not offer a manuscript assessment service, but if I feel I might be able to offer some advice on how to remedy problems with a work I will do so and offer to read again. One of the biggest problems I find with fiction, is that the novels are often way too long and if you want to have the equivalent of A Little Life considered by a publisher you had better be sure that every single word needs to be there.

Non-fiction I find interesting because a lot of people have great ideas, particularly for memoir, but they don’t know how to tell that story. Sometimes you can help them and sometimes you can’t.

To help a writer crystallise their intentions I have a huge list of questions for them. Why do you want to write a book on this particular subject? Why are you the best person to write this book? What qualifies you? Who will want to read the book and why? Who do you think the audience is? Are there enough ideas here to make a book or is it just a potential long-form piece of journalism? That is, do I want to read an entire book about this subject or just an article in Good Weekend? Have there been other books written on the subject before? If so, how will your book be different? How do you plan to approach the subject matter? Do you have an idea of what the chapter breakdown will be? How much research do you need to do and how long will it take? How will you ensure that you are presenting a balanced argument? Is there any potential for libel in the material you plan to present?

I know that publishers are looking for a writer who has given serious thought to all of these questions because they will have plenty more of their own. I know they are also looking for genuine passion and good writing, so an effective proposal will showcase both of these. It should be a kind of mission statement if you like. I once worked on a proposal for six months because we knew it had to be as good as we could make it, and I had to nail down what the author felt about the issues in the book because it was a personal story and it was important that we did not put her in the position of the publisher dictating the direction the book should take.

It is also useful to me to have an idea of what different publishers (and editors in publishing houses) like to read for pleasure. So, when I get something in I might have an idea of who will take a punt on it. If I have just read a cracking good crime thriller set in South Africa, I am probably not going to send it to Text Publishing because they already publish Peter Temple. But I know that an editor at another house would give their left arm to publish someone like Peter Temple: it’s all about strategy and it’s not a million miles away from how I used to work with literary editors, as a publicist.

Inevitably, it comes down to the synopsis. I talk to the author about what kind of book they think they have written and I find that most times, if I ask them for a synopsis, it bears no resemblance to the book they have written, but it gives me an idea of what they think they have written and what market they think it belongs in. Then, when I talk to them, I can direct them into what genre I think it is. It is important that we share the same vision for the work.

One client had a brilliant idea for a non-fiction memoir and I gave her a lot of notes on several drafts.

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But, with each successive draft, it became clearer and clearer that we wanted the book to go in different directions and I just could not see a way to make her version of the book saleable. It is terribly important that this writer keep true to their vision for the book, it was a personal story and I did not feel comfortable continually trying to steer it in a contrary direction. My hope is that she finds another agent who better connects with what she is trying to achieve because they will be a far better representative than I could ever be.

I don’t seek the biggest advance. I have seen first advances for books ruin careers, so I would rather take a good deal that will sell as many copies as possible and the publisher and author have a sense of achievement. The publisher is also more likely to look at the next book by that author.

So, a smaller advance, with good book sales, gets you the money anyway, just not up front. I realise this is probably not the greatest business model in the world, but if I believe in an author’s talent, then longevity is what I am aiming for.

ContractsMost authors, unsurprisingly, are so overjoyed when they get a deal they would sign anything and most of them never read the contract, which I find a bit shocking. Then what they think they have, for example film rights, they find they have signed away. And for those authors who do not have an agent to go through the details of a contract, there is often a fear of asking tricky questions: they think it will sour the deal. Two basic considerations, for any author, are: what rights are involved, do they cover Australia–New Zealand or the world; and what is the split and subsidiary rights. They are the main things an author has to worry about.

Helping the author understand the industryWhat I did notice, after 20 years in other parts of the publishing industry, was that as an agent, I began to see the industry wholly and solely from the author’s point of view. That sounds obvious, but of course when I was working for publishers, my first responsibility was to them, while now I see that looking from the outside the industry is pretty intimidating for most writers. Yet of all of us, it is the writers who have the dreams and fantasies about what the inside of a publishing house looks like; getting a contract is the key to their dreams. Then the reality can be quite different.

If they do not have an agent, they have no one to explain the process to them. Why does it take so long? Does anyone read the slush pile? What is a reasonable amount of time to wait for an answer? Can I submit to more than one publisher at a time? What does everyone do? I have finished writing the book and it has been accepted so why do I have to wait two years to see it in print? They don’t understand the steps. Being ignorant about how something works can make you feel powerless and this goes as much for writers publishing their tenth book as their first. Writing is a lonely business and writers almost always come from a place of incredible insecurity and anxiety often fuelled by a lack of understanding of the internal workings of a publisher and what low profit margins the entire industry operates on.

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5 February 2019

The first thing I try to make them understand is why it takes so long for a publisher or editor to read their manuscript. I understand their impatience: they have just spent a huge amount of time struggling with it and now they are desperate for some feedback. What none of them know until you spell it out for them, and I mean NONE of them – even those authors who have been published multiple times – is that publishing editors do their reading in their own time. Many authors think editors swan into work with a coffee and a Danish ready to curl into a comfy chair with a manuscript. They don’t really know the volume of work publishers are expected to read and in what kind of time frame, or how many projects they are working on at any one time. So, when my authors nag me (generally after the three-week mark) and want me to push for an answer I tell them I am happy to do that provided they understand that it is likely to lead to a no.

For the publisher, saying ‘no’ gets this thing off their desk and me out of their inbox or not nagging them on the phone. Because maybe they had a quick look the other night on the train home and thought there may have been something there, but they can’t see themselves getting home until after eight o’clock tonight and then there are two other books to get to the printer, so they think ‘maybe I’ll just flick this one into the too-hard-basket’.

When you point out that scenario, then authors understand and are often quite shocked.

But say I get the good news and I’m able to tell my client that the publisher not only read it but loved it. Once they have gotten the long-awaited email with an offer, once the contract has been negotiated, I then have to help them understand the delay in publishing. They all understand that the book will need to be edited and that a cover will need to be designed and so on, ‘but it is early 2019 so why can’t the book be ready for an August release? The publisher told me the book will only need a light edit and I’m ready to go so what do you mean it will not be until next year? Or worse 2021’.

This is the time where both the agent and the publisher should work together to explain the realities of lead times and scheduling. That even if it only takes a couple of months to do the edit, you can’t start work on the edit until you have finished with x, y and z. And then the sales teams need three to four months to sell to booksellers, publicity and marketing teams need to be briefed, the cover needs to be finalised and by then it will be in a Christmas market and it is not a good fit there but it’s not quite right for Mother’s Day either … and so on and so on. The last thing a publisher needs at this juncture is an agent who blindly supports their author’s demands and because I worked on that side of the fence for 20 years, I can help convey this kind of information to a client in a way that makes sense.

Authors simply don’t understand the processes involved. And why would they?

We have to find a better way of breaking down the processes for authors. We have to find a way to explain that everything we do is to give the book the best chance in a really, really difficult market. It will help. Authors don’t understand about publishing months, for example, so when the publisher says, ‘we don’t want that released in November,’ the author of course says, ‘why, it’s a Christmas market?’

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It is up to us to explain that rationale and generally, the authors will understand but like anyone, they just want it explained to them.

And importantly, agents should be clear, within themselves and to their clients, that it is not useful for literary agents to blindly follows the author’s demands. They should be educated about how the industry works, talk more to the editors and publishers about what the next steps are in each instance.

Everyone involved can be aware of the assumptions and mythology about how decisions get made and what things cost, not just financially but in time: your time and your colleagues’ time. Publishing is a team sport. Writers need publishers and publishers need writers. It takes an enormous amount of courage to write a book and then it is a huge act of faith to put it into the hands of a publisher. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I do know that we need to respect the authors’ fears and to do whatever we can to put their minds at rest.

They spend most of their working lives alone, and inside their own heads. When an editor, publisher or agent says they will call them on Thursday, chances are they will sit by the phone all day. Meanwhile said editor, publisher or agent has had their day blow out and knows they will call another day. The author doesn’t know that. In my experience, a quick line, to let them know you are swamped and will come back to them, goes a long way. I always include a brief outline of why I am not available and when I will be free. It also arms them with a few more facts about the industry, and its many facets, and hopefully it makes them look more kindly on the industry as a whole – an industry of which I have been proud to be part for the past 20 years or more.

Written by Susie Pilkington, from transcript and Jane Novak’s extensive notes.

Indexing the world of informationhttp://www.anzsi.org @ANZSI_Indexers

@ANZSocietyIndexersImage: ANZSI

Copy deadline for thenext (March) issue of

Blue Pencilis Friday, 15 March.

6 February 2019

Continuing our write-ups from the Editors NSW November 2018 seminar Ethics in editing, this month we cover Julie Ganner’s presentation on core values and the importance of a code of ethics within an organisation.

Julie Ganner AE is a freelance accredited editor who has worked in publishing for more than 30 years, in Australia and overseas. She has served as IPEd Councillor and Accreditation Board delegate and is currently the president of Editors NSW. Julie chaired the committee that developed the IPEd Code of Ethics.

While Julie’s presentation was directed at the Code of Ethics, she started with the notion of blurry lines. Ethical dilemmas, she proposed, tend to be those that make us squirm because none of the options is ideal, there is no right or wrong answer, and so we need some sort of framework to determine which path to choose.

As a system of moral principles that affect how we decide what is right and wrong, ethics is concerned with other people’s interests – as individuals and as a society – and the courses of action that affect something beyond ourselves and our own self-interest.

And ‘the question that stopped the room’ (as mentioned in Blue Pencil, November 2018) is encompassed in the trolley problem, first posited by British philosopher Philippa Foot in the 1960s.

A railway trolley is careering out of control down a steep hill. Further down the line, five people are working on the track. You can see them, but you are too far away to warn them (this was before mobile phones were invented). You cannot stop the trolley, but if nothing is done, the five people will certainly be killed.

There is only one other option available. You have a lever near you, which you can pull to switch the trolley onto another track. However, on that track there is one person working, who will also certainly be killed if you take this course of action. What would you do?

Each option is, of course, repugnant and how you answer reflects your core values and principles. The decision is generally based on relativist or absolutist principles:

• the relative principle – you make the decision based on the number of lives to be lost

• the absolute principle – you take the decision that killing is always wrong, you have no right to play God.

Luckily, as editors we do not have to make such drastic decisions. The only thing we have to worry about is killing the occasional author’s darling. However, the tricky problems we do face may not always have a clear-cut answer and this is where an ethics code or framework is useful.

Firstly, it is important to remember that the relationship between the author or publisher and the editor is transactional. We provide a service for payment and like all relationships, this can be open to abuse, particularly where power is unequal, for example, employer/employee, large publisher and freelance editor, experienced editor and first-time author.

Clear abuses of these relationships are covered by laws to protect against misrepresentation and discrimination, but there are grey areas:

• Is it ever acceptable to criticise another editor’s work? What if you feel an author has been taken advantage of by that editor? If you answer yes, how should you go about it?

• Is it okay to give an author advice on, say, the cover design or marketing of their book if they ask for your opinion as the editor, even if you don’t have any professional experience in those areas?

• Is it ever acceptable to break an author’s confidence? What if their manuscript incites violence?

The decisions we make in relation to these questions depend on our values and principles. That is why one of the key policy documents for any organisation is its code of ethics, encouraging decision making in line with its own principles rather than those of the individual.

A code of ethics is a public statement of an organisation’s core values and specifies its expectations, providing broad guidelines to help members clarify their decisions about difficult problems that arise in the course of their work.

IPEd’s Constitution states: The purposes for which IPEd is established are to represent professional editors and develop a high standard of professional practice [presenter’s italics] …As a membership organisation, the members are at the

core of IPEd’s aims and their professional behaviour should align with the aims and principles stated in the Constitution, just as IPEd’s aims and principles should align with editors’ collective and individual needs.

Such aims and principles work to reassure those who employ us that they can do so with confidence – trusting the work to be undertaken well and honestly, at a fair rate. The Code’s statement of values is about establishing that trustworthiness and ensuring the reputation and standing of the editing profession is maintained.

The IPEd Code of Ethics is a statement of values and requires that

members of IPEd will conduct themselves with:• integrity• professionalism and competence• respect for confidentiality• respect for conflicts of interest• respect for IPEd, its principles and its members.

Ethics in editing: part 2

Image: Adapted from McGeddon, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem#/media/File:Trolley_problem.png

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7 February 2019

Integrity means working with honesty and transparency including how we communicate with and what we communicate to clients; treating clients and colleagues fairly and impartially; and remembering that we have an influence on language and how information is communicated, so we can flag or avoid demeaning content and language, and ensure inclusive language is used. We should be unafraid to voice concerns about language or content and respectfully raise difficult issues, even if the author or publisher doesn’t agree with or act on your concerns.

Professionalism and competence come from setting high standards, working to best practice principle and striving to maintain and improve our collective professional knowledge. Language use, standard spellings, grammar rules and then technical tools change with time and editors should make a commitment to lifelong learning and professional development opportunities.

Respect for confidentiality includes remembering that work remains not just the copyright but also the intellectual property of the author and we keep it secure just as we would any other private information, including errors the client may make, no matter how bad or funny.

Respect for conflicts of interest require vigilance and transparency. Ignoring conflicts of interest damages the trust and honesty of the profession.

Respect for IPEd, its principles and its members recognises that within the course of our work we will not engage in any behaviour that damages the reputation of our industry, our organisation and the individuals of the organisation.

Committing to these principles contributes to the profession as a whole, so choosing to be a part of a professional association such as IPEd, is in part an ethical choice in itself.

Susie Pilkington

Image: CC0

continued from page 6

You ask a philosopher a question and after he or she has talked for a bit,

you don't understand the question anymore. Philippa Foot

8 February 2019

With the temperature soaring to 37 degrees outside, we convened in the cool climes of Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts for our February committee meeting.

Always top of mind is the bottom line and we scoured our budget figures to ensure we continue to deliver the best services to our members, at competitive prices, while staying in the ‘black’. As a volunteer group, the committee’s time and effort are continually focused on bringing members a newsletter each month (with a write-up of each speaker meeting for those members who cannot attend), workshops through the year, and a speaker presentation eight times a year.

This month we also discussed the results of the recent member survey on meetings and workshops.

A review of the comments for each of these event series will be published in Blue Pencil. In response to the issue of cost, coordinator Lilla Wendolowski compared Editors NSW workshops with those held by other branches. Her report showed that our fees are lower, on an hourly basis, than those charged in the other states, and that our workshops continue to offer exceptionally good value professional development opportunities to New South Wales members.

Meanwhile, the editors’ lunches have started for 2019, with the first on Thursday, 28 February in Dulwich Hill (see editorsnsw.com for a link to the details).

Our new social media team, Russell Noakes and Katrina Gibson, are working on a strategy to better utilise Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

This will broaden our reach with news of Editors NSW, generally, and details of events, specifically. We will keep you updated on progress.

There are only two speaker meetings yet to be finalised for the year and the committee discussed various ideas, led by meetings coordinator Caroline Birch. All details will be loaded onto the Editors NSW homepage as they are confirmed.

And we formally welcomed Linda Nix (Editors NSW Accreditation Board representative) to her two new roles as Chair of the IPEd Standing Committee for Professional Development (SCPD) and Chair of the IPEd Accreditation Board. IPEd’s professional development is in good hands and we thank Linda for taking on these roles.

Susie Pilkington and Julie Ganner

From the committee

Image: CC0

Member discountsNew South Wales:Boomerang Books: free shipping to members. Apply the code on your membership card to receive the offer when you purchase online http://www.boomerangbooks.com.au.Abbey’s Bookshop: 10 per cent discount on books purchased in-store (present your membership card) 131 York Street, Sydney 2000 Phone (02) 9264 3111.Constant Reader Bookshop: 10 per cent discount on books purchased in-store (present your membership card)27 Willoughby Road, Crows Nest 2065 Phone: (02) 9436 3858 or (02) 9438 1763.Better Read than Dead Bookshop: 10 per cent discount on books purchased in-store (present your membership card)265 King Street, Newtown 2042 Phone: (02) 9557 8700.

Editors NSW membership cards are available on request. When you join or renew and would like to have a card to access the discounts listed here, please email ednsw.admin@iped-editors.org with your name and postal address.

National:Books+Publishing / Weekly Book Newsletter: 25 per cent discount on subscriptions.Macquarie Dictionary and Macquarie Thesaurus: up to 15 per cent discount on online subscriptions.Australian manual of scientific style: $10 discount ($60 to $50) for a subscription to Biotext’s online manual.PerfectIt: 30 per cent discount on subscription to PerfectIt Cloud (PC and Mac).Geoff Hart titles: up to 25 per cent discount on titles including Effective Onscreen Editing, 3rd edition.Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP): various discounts off online courses and conferences.Editors Canada: member rates on webinars, online training courses and conferences.Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA): member rates on webinars, online training courses and conferences.

To find out more or how to take advantage of these (national) offers, log in to the IPEd Member Portal, go to Resources for editors and click on the Member discounts tab.

9 February 2019

Workshop: ‘Word: intermediate to advanced’Friday, 15 March 20199.30 am to 4.30 pmUTS Short Courses, Level 7, UTS Building 10, 235 Jones Street, Ultimo (map)

Event description: This course will be an interactive workshop which requires participants to bring their own laptop (PC or Mac). The presentation is designed for editors who are experienced users and have a strong grasp of basic Word tools.

It will include topics such as:• working with PDF documents• table features• footnotes and endnotes• autocorrect• document proofing features• tracking changes• comparing documents.

Wi-fi and power outlets are available at the venue.

Presenter: Denise Tsagaris is a highly regarded, accredited Microsoft trainer and consultant with over 20 years’ experience. She provides training in Microsoft Word, at all levels, through Sydney University’s Centre for Continuing Education.

Bookings: via the Events page on the IPEd websitehttp://iped-editors.org/Professional_development/Events.aspx

Bookings close Friday, 8 March 2019.

Complete logistics for workshopsTime: 9.30 am to 4.30 pm (registration from 9.00 am, with tea and coffee available)Venue: UTS Short Courses, Level 7, UTS Building 10, 235 Jones Street, Ultimo(The facility is accessible and ambulant bathrooms.)Note: While not all workshops require a laptop, participants are always welcome to bring their laptop to any workshop. Wi-fi and A/C power are available at the venue.Cost: $250 members and members of affiliated organisations; $175 distance members (more than 200 km from Sydney); $450 non-members.

(Cost includes morning and afternoon teas and casual lunch of sandwiches, juices and fresh fruit, with water available all day. Please indicate dietary requirements when booking.)

Cancellation/refund policyCancellations up to 24 hours prior will be refunded all but a $50 booking fee.

No refunds issued for cancellations less than 24 hours prior. The organisers reserve the right to cancel the event if fewer than 10 people register.

Waitlist:If any workshop is full or you are unable to attend a particular workshop, please contact us on ednsw.profdev@iped-editors.org and we will place your name on a waitlist. If we have a sufficient number of people on the list, we can consider running the course again in future, for which you will be given priority.

If you have any suggestions for workshops that would interest you, please email your ideas to our Workshop coordinator, Lilla Wendoloski, at ednsw.profdev@iped-editors.org.

Remember all workshops are first advertised via email, so watch your inbox for the next professional development opportunities.

Lilla Wendoloski

Upcoming monthly meetingsOur 2019 monthly meeting lineup is almost complete. Here are the next few months’ talks.5 March: Technical editing - Lyneve Rappell2 April: Educational publishing - Gurdish Gill, McGraw-Hill7 May: Australian Style - Adam Smith, Macquarie University4 June: Copyright and IP: what editors need to know - Olivia Lanchester, Australian Society of Authors.

Caroline Birch

Professional development opportunityThe Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers (ANZSI) will be running a two-day introductory indexing course in Sydney on Friday and Saturday 3 and 4 May 2019. This course covers the basic principles of indexing with a focus on book indexing.Topics to be covered include:

• indexing context (working with editors)• indexing processes (reading, highlighting, indexing,

editing)• project planning, analysis of text, selection of indexable

concepts, and indexing to the appropriate length• principles of indexing, including the wording of entries,

and creation of cross-references• style, types, elements and evaluation of entries, cross-

references• filing conventions and special issues• indexing software – a brief introductionDetails are now online at https://www.anzsi.org/events/

introductory-book-indexing-course/. The cost of the course is $600.Please contact ANZSI Education officer Glenda Browne

(email glendabrowne@gmail.com, if you have any questions).

Professional development

10 February 2019

Editors NSW 2018–19 committee President: Julie Ganner

Email: ednsw.president@iped-editors.org

Vice-president: Zoë Hale Email: ednsw.vicepres@iped-editors.org

Secretary: Sally Asnicar

Email: ednsw.secretary@iped-editors.org

Budget officer: Russell Noakes

Email: ednsw.budget@iped-editors.org

IPEd councillor: Owen Kavanagh

Email: cr.ednsw@iped-editors.orgAccreditation Board representative (NSW): Linda Nix

Email: ednsw.ab@iped-editors.orgMeetings coordinator: Caroline Birch

Email: ednsw.meetings@iped-editors.org

Workshop coordinator: Lilla Wendoloski Email: ednsw.profdev@iped-editors.org

Membership liaison officer: Katrina Gibson

Email: ednsw.memberliaison@iped-editors.org

Mentoring coordinator: Shannon Kelly

Email: shannon.tyler.kelly@gmail.com

Social media coordinators: Katrina Gibson and Russell Noakes Email: ednsw.online@iped-editors.org

Newsletter editor: Elisabeth Thomas

Email: ednsw.news@iped-editors.org

Office manager: Susie Pilkington

Email: ednsw.admin@iped-editors.org

Editors NSWPO Box 828, Willoughby NSW 2068 Voicemail: (02) 9294 4999http://www.editorsnsw.com

© 2019 Editors NSWISSN: 2202-1361 (Online)

Blue PencilEditor: Elisabeth ThomasAssistants: Robin Appleton and Zoë HaleBlue Pencil is available in interactive digital format (PDF). Open with Adobe Reader to get the best results. Published: generally 11 issues a year (combined December – January issue).Your comments and contributions are welcome. Post them to the Editor, Blue Pencil, Editors NSW, PO Box 828, Willoughby NSW 2068, or email the editor at ednsw.news@iped-editors.org.

Copy deadline for the March issue is Friday, 15 March 2019The views expressed in the articles and letters, or the material contained in any advertisement or attachment, are those of individual authors, not of Editors NSW.

Advertising ratesFull page $375; half page $200; one-third page $125; quarter page $100; one-sixth page $75 (half of one column). Circulation: approximately 400. Please note that the committee reserves the right to decide whether advertisements are appropriate for this newsletter.

MembershipEditors NSW is a branch of Institute of Professional Editors Limited.Details of memberships are available on the IPEd website http://iped-editors.org.

Professional listingUse IPEd’s national Editors Directory (ED) http://iped-editors.org/Find_an_editor.aspx for professional members.

Committee meetingsAll members are welcome to attend Editors NSW committee meetings, generally held on the second Tuesday of each month. Please contact the office manager for details if you wish to attend the next meeting.

IPEd contactsChief Executive Officer, ceo@iped-editors.orgCommunication Officer, communication@iped-editors.orgFinance Officer, finance@iped-editors.orgMembership Officer, members@iped-editors.orgCompany Secretary, secretary@iped-editors.orgAdministration Officer, admin@iped-editors.org Image: CC0