This Saturday, five Chroniclers and one of our authors celebrated the beginning of Obama’s “summer of service” by attending the Craigslist Foundation Boot Camp in Berkeley.

Arianna Huffington

Arianna Huffington kicked off the day with an energetic keynote that touched on everything from the empathy index to poverty, from the importance of children volunteering to the election in Iran. She was choked up one minute, telling us about how her five-year-old daughter wanted to give her birthday presents to another less fortunate child, and then quickly made a joke about the years of selfishness that followed. Loved her.

Eugenie Harvey, author of Change the World for Ten Bucks, delighted attendees by telling her story: An ordinary person hoping to do some good, she used collaboration across sectors, charm, a dash of ignorance about the book business, and passion to launch the non-profit We Are What We Do and the internationally best-selling book.

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Do you ever have that thing where suddenly everyone you meet is talking about the same thing? It might be hippos or plastic cameras or trucker hats, but suddenly something-or-other is on everyone’s minds. Well, I had that this past week with the idea of the Making of a Photobook.

First, last week, a co-worker and I went to the Photography Book Now symposium. Blurb.com—the service that helps people self-produce their own books of photography—put on this seminar to help its users learn more about what goes into making a great photo book. It happened at Bimbos 365 Club, which leant a rather slinky vibe to an otherwise primarily educational event where book designers, editors, and professional photographers spoke about their part in the making of a book. It was pretty interesting to hear those different jobs dissected and described in detail—because, of course, when you’re working at something you rarely take the time to stop and articulate what it is exactly that you are doing, or how you do what you do—what skills and tricks and crazy weird ways of thinking go into this thing you call “work” and which, in our case, the rest of the world called “books.”

Then, this week, the September issue of Photo District News landed on my desk. And what does it contain but a longish article about how photography projects evolve from the proposal stage to become finished books. And one of the case-studies they dig into on this topic is our very own book Planet Shanghai. There are great interview excerpts with the photographer Justin Guariglia and our until-very-recently-very-own Alan Rapp, the book’s editor, about the process by which this book went from a gleam in a photographer’s eye to a delish little number between two covers.

And speaking of PDN, their website also just posted a great feature about our forthcoming book Right.

And, what the heck, since I’ve clearly veered down the road into shameless self-promotion here today, I’m just going to go whole hog. We’re just pleased as punch that Chronicle was recently nominated for a Lucie award for Photography Book Publisher of the Year for our book Manual Alvarez Bravo: Photopoetry. The Lucies are kind of like the Oscars of the photo world, with a big shmancy ceremony at the Lincoln Center in New York, so this is a pretty neat thing, and we feel special.

Whew! As a person who grew up in one of those self-deprecating families, all of this tooting of one’s own proverbial horn is making me a little lightheaded. I think I will go attend a meeting and maybe eat some rather humbling crackers or something now. You all have a lovely weekend.

Bridget Watson Payne
Assistant Editor

Popularity: 4% [?]

What would you ask one million people to do to change the world?

That was the question that got Eugenie Harvey and the non-profit organization We Are What We Do started. They received thousands of responses—decline plastic bags, talk with someone from another generation, bake something for a friend—and narrowed them down to fifty ways that people could use their everyday actions to change the world. Their charming book was first published in the U.K., and I’m very excited to say that the U.S. edition of the book, Change the World for Ten Bucks, is coming out from Chronicle early next year. (And yes, it only costs $10.)

Change the World for Ten Bucks will be full of the same kind of humor and heart as the first edition, but it’ll also have some American ideas in it. We want you to be a part of it.

So, what would you ask one million people to do to change the world? Post your ideas as comments below, and they might be included in the book!

Christina Amini
Editor

Popularity: 4% [?]

CraftCon Recap: How to Pitch Your Craft Book Idea

Another craft editor and I recently spoke at Craft Con about getting published. The goal was to share some perspective on preparing a book proposal, raising your profile, working through creative compromises with a publisher, and just generally shed some light on how to get a craft book deal. We shared the panel with two craft authors, an editor at ReadyMade, and an editor at CRAFT.

Here’s a Reader’s Digest version of what we covered:

PROPOSALS: Read these guidelines before you submit your proposal. Be sure to do your competition research - those craft shelves are crowded, so why is your book better than what’s already out there, and why would it be at home at Chronicle? Because craft books are super visual, include lots of photos of your finished projects, or send the projects themselves. (We promise to return them.) You can address your package to me. And don’t feel you need to spend a fortune on fancy packaging - I’ll see it whether it’s manila or neon. And, please, no glitter explosions.

PROCESS: We always respond to proposals, even if it’s not a match. Please be patient as we wade through the stack. If we like your idea, we will probably be in touch for more information. We then have to pitch it to our acquisitions board to decide how many copies, what price, what season, what format, and all that good stuff. We’ll make you an offer and then we’ll start working! It typically takes just over a year to go from proposal to finished books.

PLATFORMS: You don’t need to be a star on the DIY Network to get a book deal (though that helps). If you have an etsy shop, a website, a blog, or a booth at a craft fair, you have the makings of a craft platform. Be sure to send us relevant articles that you’ve written or that have been written about you. Share your blog traffic and or any sales stats. If you don’t have a blog or an etsy shop, think about starting one. Go to craft fairs, network with people in the community in person and online. Have friends who are better known than you are? Maybe they will write a foreword or a blurb for your book to add some name recognition. We get hundreds of proposals every year, so it might just help yours stand out. And remember, while one strategy is to publish the most well-known authors in the craft world, another is to debut people and concepts before anyone else knows about them. We like to be first.

CREATIVE COMPROMISES: Present the clearest vision of the project as you can up front, and we’ll present ours. Include visual examples to illustrate your ideas so that when you say “edgy” we know if you’re talking about a splash of animal print here and there or dropping the F bomb on the cover. If our visions match pretty closely, we’re in for a fun time. If your vision feels wildly different from ours, maybe you should think about going with another publisher. We’ve heard through the grapevine that we share our creative process with authors more than other publishers, but we still have a publishing strategy and aesthetic standards to live up to. We collaborate with you and ask that you collaborate with us.

Post a comment if you have other questions on how to pitch a craft book to Chronicle.

Check out more Handbound posts.

Kate Prouty
Craft Editor

Popularity: 6% [?]

In response to my recent post about the slush pile, reader Frank Renfro asks some pertinent questions about how editors think about the dozens of projects that come over the transom every week. To quote:

“As an editor who receives plenty of unsolicited manuscripts–the slush–how do you discern the good, the bad, the ugly, the great? Is there an intuition that you sense from the opening sentence or paragraph of a new work of fiction, cookbook, essay, or collection of poems?

Is it important that the author be known to you beforehand, that is, even if a stranger, that there be a referral from another trusted source? Or, if a stranger, how much time do you spend reviewing a new piece of slush?”

Here’s my Philosophy of Slush, combined with some advice:

Relevance: It’s easy to reject a great deal of proposals right off the bat because the subject matter is inappropriate for Chronicle Books. A quick review of our website should make it clear that we don’t publish books on traffic safety, psychology textbooks, etc. I know there are books that list the addresses of hundreds of publishers, but those should only be a starting-off point for an aspiring author. Research the publishers you are interested in. Find published books similar in subject or spirit to your own and see who published them.

Intuition: There is an element of intuition about what’s not going to make it, combined with the experience of opening thousands of envelopes. For example, a thin packet is usually a query letter (which we don’t accept). Long, meandering, highly personal cover letters usually introduce projects that appeal to a very small audience. A proposal that features lots of branded, trademarked terms with ® or © symbols doesn’t feel very Chronicle to me. Lots of misspellings (especially my name!) and crazy formatting often portend an inattention to such small details as researching competitive titles or determining the market for the book.

Audience: When the author says that their book appeals to “everyone” or “everyone who watches Oprah,” I am skeptical. Not even the Bible is for everyone and that’s the biggest selling book of all time! Think it over and give me information I can use. If your book actually only appeals to 20-something urbanites, Don Rickles fans, or suburban moms of teenagers, that’s still a whole lot of people. It’s often easier to publish successfully to a smaller, specific audience–just look at our publishing to see what I mean.

The Author: It doesn’t matter to me if the author is known to me personally, or endorsed by someone I trust, though my curiosity is piqued if the author is published or has a platform. (By platform I mean being known to hundreds of thousands of people, by, say, hosting a show on HGTV. Blogging rarely fits this profile.) But every proposal gets the same fair chance. This I can say is true for every editor here. We keep reading until we find something that tells us it’s a no.

Recipe for Success: As for what works…there’s no formula I can offer. Sometimes it’s a cool new topic, or a very well-executed take on an evergreen topic. Sometimes it’s a person with a platform, or a very credentialed author, but often it’s an unknown author who has a genius idea or really “gets” Chronicle. Usually, though, the winning entries (or strong runners up) have put a lot of thought into what they are doing and are familiar with our publishing.

This is an exciting moment for me as a new blogger…dialogue! I hope this is helpful for aspiring authors. Some of our most exciting acquisitions have come out of the slush pile, so please keep it coming. Hopefully my posts on this topic will increase the success rate for all of us.

Lisa Campbell
Associate Editor

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