Emily interviews PDX-based print coordinator Jessica Clark about the unsung hero of traditional publishing: paper. We also take a dive into the totally-legit Amazon reviews of "Wasted: Tales of a GenX Drunk." Because you have to laugh so you don't cry.

Corinne is out at PNBA and I cry a silent tear.

You welcome to hybrid pub scouts. This is Emily

Einolander, one of your hosts. Corinne was at pnba, the Pacific

Northwest Booksellers Association trade show in

Seattle, so she is, sadly not here, but instead we have

Jessica Clark, who is here to help map the frontier between

traditional and indie publishing with me. Jessica works in print

production at a local company. Jessica, can you please tell us

what your title is and a little more about what you do? Yeah, so

I am a print production coordinator, so essentially, I

deal with the manufacturing of the actual books, so I don't see

much of the front end. Everything I do deals with the

physical product and the sourcing of materials and all

the all the stuff that editors are terrified to even think

about. Yeah, so costing sheets. I'm the one that gets you your

your quotes and helps you decide on specs and and tells you you

can't do things well, it's more gentle than that.

Okay, well, we'll get into that later, but first we're gonna do

our fun stories. Oh yeah, totally in the in the

publishing. We're gonna talk we're gonna talk about the hot

Goss first. That's what we do here.

I don't know how fun this hot Goss is, because this is such an

upsetting topic, but you know, you gotta always find a silver

lining. All of the Kavanaugh hearings this week, there was

one element that us, that we as book publishing people, I don't

know. I found this super interesting. You may have also

but the fact that they were questioning Kavanaugh on things

from a book written by one of his friends that used a very

poor like renaming of him, then they called him instead of Brett

Kavanaugh. They called him Bart o Kavanaugh, that's super

clever. Yeah, good. Anonymous name.

I believe the

person asking him was like, Is this you? And he goes, you'll

have to ask Mark,

yeah, yeah, you know, hey, we have the same last name. We hung

out all the time and changed two letters and yeah, it's totally

not me.

Why would you think that? So I got curious about the book.

Obviously, I my embarrassing admission. I am completely

willing to tell people that I read reverse harem books,

obviously, and that I love true crime and murder and all of

these things. And now that I'm comfortable talking about

romance, I still have things that I'm uncomfortable talking

about. So I'm going to come out right now and say I have a weird

thing for addiction memoirs. Okay,

I do not relate, but cool. Nobody does. I don't know. I

think it's whenever I have, you know, have had a really bad

hangover, I always go, what if be worse? What if this were me?

This is the road you could go down. I guess that's how people,

like used to view morality place back in like, the Renaissance or

medieval times. It's like, this could be you scared straight

program exactly watching Scared Straight that kind of thing. So

I wanted to see how I wanted to say Bardo Cavanaugh, but that

that's the character's name, close enough how the author, the

person who apparently is going to testify next week. Because we

are all very mature people in America right now? This is a

super professional process. The reason that you hear loud circus

music in your head whenever you watch anything is because this

is a circus so Mark gavro, Judge, I don't know if he gave

himself that name, or if that is just a rich prissy middle name

that is given to him. So the story is, the book

is called wasted Tales of a Gen X drunk. I was searching for it

and discovered that there are several other books with the

title wasted, which, surprisingly, I haven't read any

of which I can't believe you haven't just searched for wasted

books. No, no. They just kind of come to me benders. I don't have

to search for them. They just show up

because Amazon knows everything you're doing. Well also,

BookBub, do you do book? BookBub, I know you read ebooks.

Yes. Okay, I don't do.

Know any of that stuff. Like, I'm very you don't like mailing

lists new, oh, that's so nice that you like even pay attention

to hybrid pub cast, then, yeah, pub Scout, I'm selective about

what comes into my inbox. Well,

book Bub will give you like, you know what it is? Yeah, for

anyone listening who doesn't know it's a mailing list that

comes to you either every day or every week, that gives you a

list of books that are highly discounted. They're always

ebooks. They're not always Amazon. They also give you the

is Kobo even a thing anymore. I think I'm still seeing it, but I

haven't opened anything up but a Kindle. I heard that Kobo wasn't

updating anymore. I heard being nook wasn't updating anymore

either. Oh, that's a bummer. Weird, yeah. I mean, not

surprising, but Well, we also, we were about to talk about BNN,

and then I kind of got off on this whole, like Brett Kavanaugh

thing. And I was like, Oh, well, we'll talk about this instead.

Yeah, it's topical.

B and N will fail for a couple more months, at least. This is

going on now. Well, I mean, they're, yeah, they can be

talked about at any point, which I don't know if you listen to

the Book Riot podcast at all. No, at the beginning of

practically every episode, they just do a BNN update. Well, I

mean, it's kind of interesting, but it's also going to be a

long, slow plane crash, instead of since about 2016 or before, I

think a little before. But, yeah, it's, it's been in trouble

for a while, yeah. I mean, other than the fact that it was being

taken over in the in the normal sense, yeah, the self

cannibalizing part of it is, yeah. Anyway, so I finally found

this. It was published in 1997

by Hazelden publishing, which is

the publishing company of the Betty Ford Center. So it's a

nonprofit publishing company that is completely based on

healing from addiction. So these are more instructing people

about why they should. It's less the salacious, terrible stuff

that I like to read. The best example I can give you of the

terrible things that I enjoy is Cat Marnell is how to ruin your

not ruin how to murder your life.

She was a, oh,

crap. She literally wrote an article for this website that

was popular a few years ago. That was like, I just take Plan

B all the time.

So she was on Adderall, like her whole thing is about Adderall.

And, okay, yeah, you have a better memory for things and

details than I do,

because you have missed all of that. But it doesn't, I mean, I

guess, like it was a best seller, but it wasn't something

that every single person was reading. It wasn't like, wasn't

like Fates and Furies, or, you know, those big literary fiction

books, that it's like, oh, you have to read this because, well,

and as soon as I start hearing that, I am very unlikely to read

it. You're one of those. I'm one of those. You're like, oh, this

is popular sort of, yeah, I just don't like feeling peer

pressured into reading something. It's just, I don't

know, tell me to watch a show, and it could be one that I

really want to watch, and I'll be like, Yeah, I'm not gonna do

it anymore. And then, like, four years later, I'll get to it

eventually. If it's something that I really want to do, I just

will not do it. If I start feeling like you're putting me

on a timeline to do it.

It's like, is our friendship at stake? Yeah? Then, no, yeah.

Like, does this really matter to you? Um, no, then I'm just, I'm

just gonna wait it out. We'll be good. Well, it'll be fine. I'll

just, I'll just nod at you while you talk about it, and be like,

That's really interesting. Yeah, it's on my list. If you're

telling me all about it. Why should I watch it? Oh, well. And

that's my other thing. I love spoilers. So I'm just gonna,

I love spoilers, so I look them up. It doesn't ruin any of the

experience of actually reading or watching the thing. You're

not the only person that I know who has done that. It's it's

funny. I know two people who share an office, and the one

person loves spoilers, and the one person hates spoilers, and

the person who hates spoilers recently ran out of the office

and came and sat in my office, and I was like, do you do it?

What's what's up? Do we need to talk about a book or something?

And she was like, No, she's just talking about spoilers for this

book I haven't finished. No, I love them. I look them up. I

think it's awesome. I don't know, it's kind of like a peek

behind the curtain for me, for some really weird reason where

I'm like, Ooh, I know what's coming up, and I want to see how

they do it. Do you think it's anxiety related at all? It's

definitely control related? Yeah, I don't like being

surprised by stuff, so I'm going to do my.

Research and know about it before it happens. Know thyself.

Yeah, I totally understand it. I know why,

but it really, I still get the same amount of enjoyment out of

all of the, you know, movies and surprise twists, like I don't

feel like I'm being shortchanged, and I don't also

have to do all of the work to avoid spoilers, because they're

everywhere, right? I feel like most of the time I'm okay with

them, but every once in a while, I'm just That's why, if it's

really important to me, I'll try to see it first, yeah, because I

don't want to go out of my way to avoid them, because I'm on

Twitter all the time, and you get everything spoiled for you,

if you are one of those people. So if something comes out, I try

to see it like on the first night, if I actually care about

spoilers, but otherwise I'm like, Yeah, I deserve this.

Yeah. I know I like spoilers. I enjoy them. So odds are I

probably know about everything you're telling me already

anyway, because I've looked it up hot topics, yeah, yeah,

controversial. Speaking of which, let me continue with what

I found

about tales of eugenics. Drunk. So this is a very well meaning

Publishing Company,

which is, you know, great for a minute. When I first saw it the

way that the cover looked, I said, Oh, is this a 1990s self

published book? Because that's something special. That would be

really something interesting to find, kind of wish it were, but

I don't know. I don't know at what level that I've heard of

Hazelden. So I know that they're not nonsense, but right at the

same time, their priority is probably how helpful something

is, rather than how well written, specific goal in mind.

And there was only one review on Amazon that was before, like two

weeks ago, and there were hundreds of reviews obviously,

obviously, that's how it works, right? Everybody flocks to

whatever it is to support or burn whatever it is, yeah, and

most of them were like, one star. And they were like,

testify, you coward.

There was one that was five stars, and it said, I stand with

Brett Kavanaugh. Judge. Kavanaugh is a fine, upstanding

man. Nothing wrong with knocking back a few cold ones. I'm an old

booze hound myself. Yep, that is definitely the thing that you

want to write about yourself on the internet.

He this man loaded his photo to Amazon for his reviews. Oh,

those are the best when they take a picture of themselves and

are like, Yes, this is me. I stand by what His full name is,

foster Scott Devine, like first, middle and last name on Amazon

for his Amazon reviews in which he says, I'm an old booze hound

myself. Like, I mean, yeah, 31 people found this helpful. You

know, it is, it is helpful in many ways. It tells you a lot

about the writer and

where we currently stand in the proceedings.

It's helpful how much self respect we have. Okay, so there

was just one

user review made in 1999 actually, I believe when Amazon

was just getting its wings. You definitely know more about yeah

of them than I do yeah. This book is wonderful. Mark tells of

his own battle with alcoholism and his determination to become

so sober, he gives good insight on the root of alcoholism. His

recovery alone is inspiration for anyone to believe that they

can they too, can be sober. I must read for anyone who's

trying to overcome an addiction. 93 people found this helpful. So

pure,

well, that's a, that's a real review, like that's, that's a

legitimate review, and that was the only one before this month,

right? Yeah, because nobody would pick that book up if it

wasn't tied to politics Exactly. So I found a New Yorker article

from a couple of days ago,

and it quoted the single review that that was in the New York

Times. And I think it's because

Mark judge has written other books

that have been more popular in our ebook and stuff like that.

Most of them are about addiction. Apparently, he is now

a Christian writer who writes about like, sobriety, etc. Okay,

I actually know you know, very tangentially,

couple people who like his work. Oh, cool. And think that it's

really helpful, so interesting, cool, but it did not get a good

review from the New York Times. Oh, really when it came out?

Well, that's always kind of hit and miss, yeah, quality wise. So

okay, let me I found.

Review, okay? And it said,

Mark gavereau Judge has written a naive, earnest book that might

have been subtitled, I was a teenage alcoholic, if it weren't

so well, naive and earnest, which, you know, is kind of

snooty New York Times. Oh, yeah. That's typical. That's, that's

right in line with how they speak, yeah. Which, yeah,

exactly. That's like most everyone else. He alternated

between deception and rebellion in school and recounts the

obligatory run ins with the nuns. He stole pens and later,

priests. He dressed up as a priest and tried to cover

someone's house with toilet paper.

I mean, that just sounds like teenage hijinks. Yeah, this is

well traveled territory, and judges writing does not allow

for any interesting detours in the end, skipping a bunch of

stuff in the end, wasted does stand as a cautionary tale, not

necessarily for alcoholics, but for anyone who wants to write

about alcoholism. Ooh, 1997

Oh, that was actually, that was when it came out. So this was

the original, okay, so that's not politically motivated, no?

That's just snooty. That's just snooty New York Times stuff,

yeah, but the New Yorker said this is the title of the

article. Is Good luck finding a copy of Mark judges wasted tales

of Gen X drunk. I couldn't imagine. It's in print, yeah? So

I found the publishing relevant paragraph here is so how many

copies of wasted are there and where have they gone? A

representative for Hazelden publishing, the nonprofit that

released the book in 1997 said he did not know offhand what the

initial print print run of the book was, but we can make an

educated guess. I would think that selling a few 1000 copies

of a self help book like that would be a reasonable success

for a small press like that, reasonable success keywords

there, at least from my experience, a publisher of a

major New York imprint said that might be optimistic. A Nielsen

bookscan sales report reveals that 80 sales of wasted have

been recorded to date, which is data speak for since the book

was published. That number, however, is likely misleading,

since book scan, which tracks for an estimated 70 to 85% of

book retailers in the US launched in 2001

and the sales tracking for small presses in the early days of

bookscan may have been spotty, According to industry sources,

yeah, and I love how when I read that paragraph, I just kept

going, but, okay, they said it, but, but, but, okay, yeah,

that's like, completely well within my understanding, yeah,

yeah. I would say they printed no more, like, guesstimating,

definitely no more than 2000 copies.

I mean, that's, I mean, that's, well, in any less than that,

you're wasting money, right? Yeah, yeah, you would know

basically, yeah,

basically, I mean, short print runs you can do in different

formats and stuff. But in 97 they didn't really have digital

printing. So,

and we'll get into that, yeah, soon after I just read a couple

more Amazon reviews, and then we'll be done. Let's keep going.

So let's see I did the fun old booze hand one that was my

favorite.

Mostly just the title of this one is pretty fun. These are all

obviously September of 2018

certain men like Mark and Brett should be struck regularly,

like, gongs. Yeah, that was a good one.

Yeah, let's see. So obviously, I

don't need to read the rest of that, but a lot of the other

ones were other than just saying, like, you coward,

testify, were very angry, alcoholic people who had gone

through the 12 Steps. There was one woman who posted and said,

maybe it's time to review step nine and the 12 Steps of

recovery. And she copy pasted the entirety of step nine

from the 12 Steps, because Google does not work well. I

mean, when you're when you're righteously angry about

something, you gotta reiterate, there was another one traditions

10 and 11. If he was working in a program, judge would know

better than to break his anonymity on the level of press,

radio and film, he is not an example of what to do through

the steps. One takes responsibility, makes amends,

and through action, cleans up the mess alcoholism creates,

which like, so, so I get that. I get the whole you're not

supposed to talk about it, or, you know, be anonymous, which

is, I mean, it is very important I understand that, however,

there is something to be said for writing an alcoholism memoir

to try to help other people. Yeah, um, yeah. And it's his

anonymity. It's not like he was like, oh, and I was also in the

program with, you know, but I think that's the thing I I don't

know. Maybe the person.

Person is talking about other people who had been in the

program. I don't know, but I doubt it, because it was recent.

I think it's more just like angry that he was so bad at

concealing other people's names. I mean, there is also that I'm,

you know, it's, there's a certain level of diligence that

should go into writing something to preserve people's not, you

know,

Oh God, I can't say that word, but

you guys know what she's gonna say, you know, staying

anonymous, yeah, you add extra syllables and it becomes

unpronounceable. For me. It's, it's a give and take kind of a

situation. And he exposed Nope. Not gonna continue with that

one. Say he exposed himself, but it was like, Nope. That's, well,

I mean, probably he, I think that's part of the problem,

isn't it? Yeah, it is. But he, you know, named himself, and

it's himself. It's like self, it's his thing. So I understand

both sides. And because we can't read it, we can't really say

whether or not he was exposing people who were in the program

with Right, right? Yeah, I have nothing to base this on, because

no one can ever find this book again. Probably not. You never

know. It might become very popular on eBay or, well, no,

that's that was the whole thing. Let me look at this New York

time, not New York Times. New Yorker article again, it said

the last known available copy of the memoir in the US, available

on the internet. They capitalized internet.

Thanks, New Yorker. I thought they changed that in the in the

manual style. Go into this. Maybe not the AP manual, okay,

on the internet. Sold Friday afternoon for $850

right? That is too much for a hate buy.

I don't care. I don't know. Maybe it was one of his friends

and it wasn't too much for a hate by that. That's just too

much money for a paperback book. According to eBay, the listing

for the 250 page memoir that's a long book was getting 71 views

per hour before a seller named lost a bit

lost a bit received a winning bid. Searches of bookseller

databases, including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, eight books

google and dozens of other sites turned up only one other listing

via bookfinder.com on amazon store in France for a bargain

price of $226

I mean, if you really want it better than eight, 850

but even that was a dead end, as clicking through to the actual

listing takes the users to A page missing a buy button. Oh,

they're just driving traffic at that point. Haha, we got your

clicks. It

was extra 10% of a penny.

Your ad blockers on, though, so there's no point, yeah, anyway.

So I just thought that was pretty interesting. We're gonna

see how this pans out. Oh, okay, yeah, he has ebooks, including a

tremor of bliss, sex, Catholicism and rock and roll,

which was number 1340

on Amazon on Friday evening. That's the biggest seller. And

there's another one called damn Senators. My grandfather in the

story of Washington's only World Series championship, damn

senators. Damn senators. Anyway, so let's talk. Let's stop

talking about this, because if we go any further, we're going

to get upset.

So what article did you bring to discuss, just so so mine,

I guess, yeah, it is. It is still a little political, but

basically, the tariffs that were discussed about, you know,

Canada is ripping us off and blah, blah, blah, and so we need

to tax them and add tariffs. And not everyone might know about

that, though, okay, well, um, well, I think it's been

discussed in the news that that the United States is raising

tariffs on everything that they think they can raise tariffs on

one of those was paper coming in from Canada,

which, I mean, on the surface, might seem like a good idea, but

it was. It's like, super not a good idea.

Or, yeah, for a couple reasons.

One is that the United States doesn't produce enough print,

enough paper and pulp and corrugate cardboard kind of

stuff for United, you know, the needs of the US printers and

everything else. So it would have like, tanked the book

publishing, book printers and all kinds of other, you know,

like every like domestic, yeah, hey, you like your, you like

your Amazon boxes? Well, guess what? Now you're gonna get

Amazon tree crap. Yeah, you can't, because it's cost too

much to get the box. That's, that's where a lot of this is

coming from. Is just, there's not a whole lot of paper left.

I'm saying.

This in, like, huge, massive ton, you know, tonnage. But

paper is hard to get a hold of, because everybody likes buying a

cardboard. Cardboard makes more money than paper. So when they

were like, Oh, we're gonna tear, you know, we're gonna raise the

tariff on paper, people were like, oh, no,

this is gonna be really bad for, you know, publishers and

printers and all kinds of so is, is paper and cardboard kind of

lumped into the same thing. So a paper mill will take the pulp

and then they run it through, you know, the the process, and

come up with a million different, you know, grammages

and paper weights and thicknesses, right finishes. But

they could also, like, take that and turn that into cardboard.

Cardboard is more expensive. It sells more so, yeah, so, you

know? So the the mills look at it like, well, you know, I could

make a million dollars with this paper, or I could make $3

million in the same amount of time for cardboard. So let's

see. I'm gonna make cardboard. How does this work?

So it's, you know, there's just and as Mills

across the United States, is what I'm aware of, specifically,

but mills are closing and consolidating, and so there are

fewer options and fewer ways for the consumers to keep the price

of raw materials down. Because, you know, because when it's

like, oh, well, there's only two paper mills left, which is part

of what this this article that I brought in

that's tariffs on Canadian paper products dumped. Yes, so they're

not doing tariffs, because when the idea was floated, there was

only one company, one American paper mill, that said Canadian

paper is destroying our industry. You know, like

Canadian paper is running us out of business. Oh, and that was a

Pacific Northwest company, wasn't it? Yes. However, they're

one of the only paper mills in the US. So what they're we got

all the trees, yeah. So really, what they were trying to do is

drive all business heat to themselves in favor of tariff

like, it's not, it's pretty transparent, or, like, not

transparent, but, like, obvious it was, it was, they were

definitely trying to game the system and

get themselves more business. They're trying to, like,

capitalize on that America First thing, yes, yes, by far. So

we're not doing tariffs, and that's awesome, because it means

that we can continue, for the time being, to get a fair amount

of paper and, you know, printing and making all the beautiful

books that people love without having to like pass the costs on

to consumers, which, because it's hard to get people to buy

more expensive books, yes, and I struggle with buying expensive

books, yeah, yeah. That's, I mean, that's where we're

heading, though. I can say that, you know, like Papers getting

more and more expensive, the raw materials to make the books that

everybody likes to buy it like 1099, you know, yeah, it's, it's

getting harder to find, and it's getting more expensive, and it's

taking longer to print, because there are fewer Mills producing

the paper. There are fewer printers printing the books.

Yes,

so, so while the content, there's more and more titles

every year, there's a lot more competition to make those into

physical books, a lot more demand on these. Yes, you

printers, yes. And there is, and it's, it's a challenging aspect

of book publishing and manufacturing, specifically that

people don't realize. I think, yeah. I mean, a lot of people

don't think about it, yeah, yeah, there's papers everywhere

you can get paper, no problem. But can't you just recycle it

and make it into the same thing? Well, I mean, I could talk to

you about recycling paper, but I don't think,

I mean, I kind of want to know, but maybe we should just talk

about it after everybody

totally like specific and not interesting, in a way that is

there any way to sum up that idea that, like, you can just

recycle the paper and make new paper with it? Yeah, totally.

When you recycle it, you shred it up, and then you make it new

paper, but those fibers get shorter and shorter, and so your

paper gets weaker and weaker. There you go. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. That was a good summary. Yeah. So you can't, you can't

recycle things forever, because eventually it'll be too small to

make into more paper. Sorry, I just kind of, my eyes drifted

away because I was thinking about how as you age, your DNA

strands get shorter. It's, it's basically like that, yeah,

that's so depressing, right? But metaphorical, and also I'm

existential crisis.

You just Yeah, it's yeah, it's, it's good, but no, you can't

just keep recycling paper because the quality drops, and

that is yay. No tariffs.

So

and everyone lived at happily ever after for now or now

for now. All right. Jessica, well, we're gonna talk a little

bit about your background. And yeah. All right. So obvious

question, how did you get into publishing? Oh, because I was

super cliched. And like, love books, isn't that so.

Sort of, oh yeah. So, I mean, I do. I love books.

I think stories are awesome. It was something that I had always

been, you know, as a kid, like, what do you want to be? And it's

like, oh, I want to be an editor, and I want to go to the

big fancy meetings and make the big decisions. And I think

that's something that separates you, though, because you said I

want to go to the big fancy meetings. Oh yeah. A lot of

editors, people who wanted to be editors as a kid that I talked

to were like, I want to sit in a big chair with a cat and a cup

of tea. Oh, no, no. My, my vision of the kind of editor I

wanted to be was always much more like Sandra Bullock in the

Oh, the wedding. No. Oh, well, now that we can't think of the

title, where she pretends to be dating that guy, yes, her

assistant, where she presents her assistant, yes, crap. Okay,

I have to look it up. Yeah. So that was always the kind of

editor that I envisioned myself being as, maybe,

so you can marry your assistant more, so I could, like, wear

super fancy suits and be, like, in charge the proposal. The

proposal, yes. So I have a wedding date is the one with

Deborah messing, which is also a solid movie,

but yes, so I that was always the kind of editor that I wanted

to be.

And I got there eventually, sort of, I mean, not editor wise, but

I you refined your vision, yeah. Oh, of course, once I found out

after the military, who wanted to be editors, sort of after the

military and doing logistics, I wanted to be creative. So

publishing is great for that. So you were in the military. Yes, I

was four years I did the army officer program through college,

so they paid for my schooling,

and so I did four years in logistics for the military.

Got out and continued doing logistics as a civilian,

working in shipping and handling for a year as a supervisor, and

realized that this was not for me. Just because I had been

doing a job like that doesn't mean that, oh, you can't, like,

that's it. This is the first thing you did. So it's what you

do for the rest of your life. Yeah. Okay, so I had moved at

that point up here to Portland, and I was looking for other

options. And I found the book publishing program through

Portland, state, that's how we met, and saw that it didn't

require a whole bunch of GRE test.

That's part of why I did the entrance was fairly

straightforward, and so I applied and got in and did it in

a year. And

while I was there, realized that I absolutely did not want to be

an editor beyond the

difficulty in getting a steady job. Yes, I know I'm not

interested in, like freelancing

for my career, right? Like, I want some stability, and you

want to be part of, like, a business, a business. Yes, I do

want to be in charge someday,

and in charge of people, not just in charge of me, so in

charge of learning about spoilers. You know you gotta,

you gotta be able to do it for yourself. What is your sign?

Virgo, oh, yeah, yeah, all right. Well, that makes sense.

It's just my birthday. Yeah? Virgo, happy birthday. Thank

you. You celebrated with me. It was awesome. I know I was there.

Yeah, yeah. We learned how to cook.

It was fantastic. Oh, well, I learned things. The lady who was

leading our class kept pointing at my head and going cook it

until it looks like her hair. That's true. Her examples

weren't great. I was a little like, self conscious about that.

Samples weren't great, but I think we did all right as a

group. Yeah, I had a great time anyway. So we're talking about

how you want to be in charge someday. We're talking about how

you went to the school, yes, so I wanted to be I went in

thinking I would be an editor, and then I took my first editing

class and realized that I did not care enough about commas and

sentence structure and all of the little things that editors

pay attention to. I kind of enjoyed the developmental stuff,

the bigger picture stuff,

and being able to say, you know, hey, this, this pacing, big

picture things well, and that's why, when you, when you first

were talking about what you wanted to do, you said, I like

storytelling, and I can see that playing into what you're

describing, right? Yes, very much. I like, I like the

stories. I like the storytelling. I like big

picture. I really, I really do not care about commas.

It's, it's hard for me to think about doing that every day as a

career, and also that

I don't, I didn't really fit in with the editor culture.

Um, the way that we were taught. I am a little bit more direct.

And, oh, you don't do the compliment sandwich. I don't,

um, I call it a shit sandwich.

That's why you're not.

It's not,

and I understand the psychology behind it, and, you know, like,

why it's good to, like, cushion the blow and all of that stuff.

But for me, I like to just be direct and get, you know, I'm

not gonna, like, tear you down and say you're terrible and your

writing is terrible and all of this stuff. But I'm not gonna

also say, Well, I think you're awesome. And here are a million

problems with your book, but you're doing a RE, you know,

like that seems super insincere for me. That's not how I speak.

That's not how I interact with people. I'm not like super

caudally, right? But if you take a person who can do that and

then you put them into the job that you have right now, that

can probably get really confusing for the people that

they're trying to work with, right? So I'm saying, like your

personality is probably more suited to what you do now than a

person who would be editing very much and delivering that kind of

information. So I am as print coordinator. I'm the middleman

for a lot of things between, you know, the editors and the

printer and

editors and design, you know, like, Oh, there. There's a lot

of information that flows through me, and so it's best to

just be direct and upfront and

as simple, like, simplify things as much as possible, so that

everybody understands where we're at. And it works for me,

it absolutely works. And it's much more interesting for me to

be able to work with the physical objects. That's

something that's really

inspired, you know, like, I get a lot from the physical book

it, you know, it's like, super cool. And especially the

technical, technical stuff. So I like the, you know, Oh, are we

going to sew the spine or stitch it, or, you know, like, all the

different things that go into making the book, in addition to,

like, Oh, this is what we can do factory wise. And so the

manufacturing is also very important to me, and

interesting, and I love it.

That's great. Yeah, yeah, no, it's production. Is exactly

really happy to wonder that people love that. Yeah, I love

it.

So if you ever thinking about going into publishing there,

there are opportunities at printers, and you don't have to

throw yourself into the snake pit. You don't you don't have to

be an editor. There are other avenues, or the lobster bucket

or whatever, not to be too. Jordan Peterson about, there are

other avenues in publishing that you get to like work with books

but not follow the stereotypical path. So, so, so how did you

like make it into your current position? Um, I owe that

completely to Abby. Abby, our graduate publisher, yes, she was

a publisher for elegant press, and I spoke with her several

times over the course in the program about how much I was

interested in production, because I learned, I mean, after

that first class, I was like, Oh, well, got to find something

else, because I am not first class being intro. Or did you

start with editing? No, I started with editing.

Yeah. So after after that, I knew I was not going to be an

editor,

but I still wanted to work with books, and I realized more that

I was interested in the business side of things and the

production side of things, so I was talking to her about it,

because the program doesn't offer a whole lot of that, no.

So when she found out about the job opening, she emailed me and

said, This is gonna be perfect for you, yeah? And send me your

application. And other people who like that would have been

perfect for Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, definitely, it's, it's

been great. I've been there for a little over a year now.

Love going into work every day. That's awesome. Yeah, it's great

to love your job.

So,

best parts, best parts, um, coming up with really creative

things, being able to offer a designer a cool treatment, or,

um, like treatment. What is that so? So, you know, the cover of

book covers specifically, but

like, Oh, is it going to be glossy, or is it going to be

foiled? Or, you know what materials you can use that

aren't just paper, or, you know, all of the, like, really cool

physical stuff about a book, and you work, you work for a company

that does more color, customized, illustrated, yes,

so, so we do graphic novels and comics and art books

pertaining to graphic novels and art books and video games and a

lot of color, a lot of there's a lot of art everywhere. So it's.

There's color printing. There's a lot of room, especially with

our books, to get really creative and make a beautiful

package, and, you know, all of that stuff. So it's awesome. So

when a designer comes like, hey, what cool things can we do to

make this a special package?

So it's great for a person who loves production to be working

at a place where you have so many options, and it's not like,

oh, well, we're going to do two color because it's cheaper,

yeah, yeah, yeah. It's awesome to be able to explore that and

be creative and suggest, like, cool materials or processes, you

know, like, oh, we can do foiling, but we can also use

acetate and burnish it. You know, all of these very

specific, specific things that make it fancy. What are some of

the more, like, upscale, expensive choices that someone

who's creating an art book can choose? I mean, the sky's the

limit. Really, the sky is the limit. Give us some examples of,

like, really, really cool stuff that you only do for special

occasions. So we recently completed

the printing and design. We have advances now, but it's not on

sale yet. For the Breath of the Wild books, the Zelda books,

like the video game, the video game and it's it's stunning. The

designer, like made just three gorgeous options, and one get is

progressively fancier than the next. But we used

a lot of burnishing, which is where you heat so you make a

stamp, a metal stamp, and then you stamp like faux leather in

this case, but it's just the heated plate. So this is on the

cover, yes, so it's the on the cover.

So the the faux leather is like stamped in, and it it's darker

in a slightly different texture. So that's burnishing. It's just

a heat stamp, cool and foil. Oh, man, it's, it's crazy. The

number of components, and there's a map and there's,

there's just so many different things and textures, and we got

to go through the specifications for all of it, and is that, is

that paper overboard, or is that jacket? So, so this package is

paper over, well, it's leather overboard, or, like, faux

leather, so that that means, like, there's a board, and then

you basically just wrap the cover around it, rather than

having a, like, plain board with a book jacket, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah. I didn't know what that was when I started working

overboard. Yeah, that's, that's the book that's the book cover

is, you never see the actual board of it. You see the paper

that they stretch. It's like the hard covers without the jacket.

Yes, yes. But, I mean, there are so many options you could do.

And I could talk your ear off about everything that you

can do.

So so, you know, it's, it's awesome for me to come up with

different, different ways you can achieve a look, the look of

a book. And there are infinite ways you can do that. It's just

then you also have to, have to balance the cost and the sales

and whether the market is interested in so what are the

biggest pains in the asses for you? Oh, man. Page count

changes.

It's and I know it's very difficult. A book gets, gets put

into costing, going through the process of approval, whether

it's something that will will publish or not, very early on, a

year before it goes to the printer,

you know, and the editor comes up with an idea, and they're

like, Oh, this is gonna be 200 pages. And along the way, that

often changes, yes,

but when it gets tough is when it changes repeatedly and

quickly. You know where they'll be like, Oh, well, I think it's

going to go up a little bit, and then it goes up a lot,

because at that point, then we have to one

recost and get a new book template and make sure that the

measurements are all going to work.

So, so

when we get down to a deadline like that, where they're like,

you know, because I only find out about it right before it

heads back out the door, right and goes to the actual printer,

right, things start getting a little crunched. Um, but I mean

that that's, that's just a minor pain. It's not big. It's just

part of the job. It's just, I mean, it is, it is things

change, and I understand that it's just it, uh, if there's a

time crunch with the change, that's when it gets tough,

right? When people are putting that kind of pressure on you and

you can't, you literally can't rush art. Well, I mean, not just

you can't rush art, but a lot of our printers are in China, and

they're on, they're just on a different time clock than we

are, you know, like, right 8am our time is not when they're at

work. No, someone's

like, well, I can.

It to you. You know, in a couple days, what's the city where your

manufacturing is in China? Oh, we have a few. There's several

different plants. I think the main one is probably Shenzhen.

Oh, yeah, okay, that's, that's a big printing manufacturing area.

That's the one that's just on the border with Hong Kong. So if

you go up through Hong Kong, you can pass over into the border to

Shenzhen, and it kind of just bleeds into it, yes, yeah, yeah,

yeah. And there, and, I mean, there are different rules that

that border is a tricky thing, the Special Economic Zone, um,

yes. On on one side of it, you can, you can print maps and

anything you want. And on the other side, you have to be

careful.

So, so we also have to know about the content of all of our

books and where we place them. And the same goes for printers

everywhere. Some printers don't like printing certain content,

yeah, yeah. They don't want to run it through.

So interesting, yeah. So you have to be you have to, you

know, work with your editors to make sure they understand like,

what needs to be flagged so we can place it is that mostly like

political or like sexual violence, the biggest, the

biggest one is sexual violence.

Well, sexual and violence. Put

them both together. Yeah, they're money, not combined

together, but sexual and violent. Those are the biggest

red flags, nudity, a lot of nudity.

I mean, because you work with artwork, yeah, yeah, it's, it's

graphic novels. Graphic novels, yes, yes. So you know, nudity

gets flagged. And in China maps,

I don't understand it. I don't, is it because,

because they're very strict who belongs to who? Kind of thing,

partially that. But, I mean, like we have, they'll print it,

but it has to go through, like, a almost two month approval

process, and it's like, you have to make sure that no one here

sees this sort of, yeah. I mean, I don't know why the is it any

map, or is it just maps of Asia? Well, we're gonna go ahead and

say any map, because we, you never know. We, you never know.

And we recently struggled a bit with a big fantasy map,

interesting, yeah, where we were, like, this is not a real

place. This is not a real map. Like, why does it need to be

approved? And it it needed to go through approval.

That's fascinating for a fantasy world. For Yeah, yeah. So and

things are changing. If anyone knows about why that might be,

please email us. Please email me at emily@hybridpubscap.com

because I want to know well what part of it is. The current

political climate in China is clamping down. Well, absolutely

everything is being scrutinized much more heavily. So think more

heavily. Yes, yes, very much. So I lived there 10 ish years ago,

okay? And, I mean, I can understand why it would be an

issue with real world maps because of all of the

issues, yeah, issues with

belonging. I guess I'm thinking of Taiwan in particular, yes,

but a fantasy world is,

I guess I can see why it might be an issue of like subtext and

encoded messages that they'd be concerned about. But I'm That's

fascinating. I don't know, and I don't, I mean, I don't, I don't

know all of the details. I just know how we have to be flexible

and work around them, sure, um, and try to anticipate them so

that things can come out on schedule. Wow, huh? That's very

cool, yeah. I mean, I mean, really kind of annoying. This is

part of the obnoxious section, it is. It is a little bit of the

obnoxious section, but I'd love to, I'd love to know more about

that. Yeah, okay. Um, uh,

did you did you like? No,

no, I actually did you like comics and graphic novels? Not

everyone can see the outline. Jessica,

let me just jump in. No, I actually didn't. I hadn't really

ever read them.

The most exposed I had been was, like, vague understandings of,

you know, like Batman, Marvel, superhero, the biggie, whatever,

Marvel and DC and I'm super not into interested in superhero

caped comics. Like, no, I just, I just don't. It does not

interest me. Um, so I'd never read any graphic novels and and

I still don't so much like there. I like them on occasion,

but it's not my preferred reading format, because I do

read pretty quickly, and so for me, a graphic novel never quite

feels fulfilling, because you're just kind of scanning the word.

Because I.

Than getting absorbed in the because, yes, because the images

mean less to me than the words do. And so like, and I do enjoy

what some of what we do now, when I have you really picked up

anything that you find you like, um, you know, I was surprised at

how much I enjoyed Red Sonja, what? So it's a comic.

And at first, I think I picked it up out of like a hate read,

because she's like a barbarian Amazonian woman, probably perky

breast, and she's wearing a chain mail bikini. It's like

Jabba the Hutt Princess Leia situation a little bit. She's a

little more assertive and a little less Princess, you know,

like, Well, yeah, Princess Leia was not, it was against her will

that she was wearing that

no Red Sonja is actually, like, super kick ass. Cool. Yeah, she

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it and how much I still

like, I'll pop in and read a you know, little issue every now and

then, fun. I don't think it's still going on, and I know that

we are not publishing it, but I was surprised at how much you

know, at first I was like, God, what is this so dumb? And I will

say, like, the art is still like, her, her boobs are just

improbably perky. Like, that's not how the representation is

problematic, yeah,

whatever.

It's dumb. Like, why would you go fighting if you were in a

bikini, like, sports bra, you idiot, none of your important

parts are, like, protected, like, what?

This is highly impractical. Yes, this is so impractical,

but I like her story. She is super kick ass. She doesn't

care. She does what she wants.

She like, does the right thing, even at a cost to her. And she's

a hero. She's a hero. She and she's also, like, doesn't take

any shit, um, which is super cool. It's not, it's not

necessarily a brooding hero or anything like, right, right.

She's out to kick some ass and drink some beer and nice, yeah.

Oh, well, I'm interested then. So that that was one that I

actually read all everything we had, and was like, wow, I really

like this. Do you get a good discount? Yeah, yes. All right,

yeah. Everything, yeah,

everything digital is free so I can, oh, wow, yeah, so I can

find out what really interests me, and you don't mind reading

digital. Like a lot of people who love physical books, yeah,

I'm not particular about how I read anything.

I actually have started to prefer digital. First

one, it's easier for me to carry around, yes, and I've moved

enough to never want to move books ever again, fair, um,

because you lived in Afghanistan and also Germany, right? Yeah, I

was in Virginia, and then Germany, and then Afghanistan,

and then Germany, and then Virginia, and I finally made it

back here,

um, and, I mean, I was lucky, like I the military actually

moves you, and so they packed up my stuff. But then when I had to

do it myself, I that was because you end up with all that stuff

when you're out of the military, yeah, and then I'm responsible

for it.

So it, it,

the physical books that I have

are physical books that I want instead of just accumulating a

whole bunch of books, the ones that I have are ones that I

actively like. Have read either through a library book or an e

book, and I actually want it physically so you almost vet

your books before you buy them. Yes, very much. I don't buy a

whole lot of books anymore.

Yeah, not, not physical books. And I've actually met a lot of

people who love reading who do exactly the same thing, yeah, as

you do. I mean, what can you do? There's so much content right

now, there's, there's so much going on, and you can't ever,

like, read it all, or watch it all, or hear it all like

there's, there's a lot. So you got to be a little picky.

I find that, I mean, I'm less picky than you are, obviously,

because I will buy something before I've read it. I try,

after this whole Amazon thing, I've realized I can't completely

dissociate from Amazon just because, especially because I'm

trying to support indie authors. But my one thing that I'm really

trying to do now is only buy literary fiction from a

bookstore when I read it, or get it from a library before I read

it, and then buy it later. But that's, it's hard, it's hard,

it's hard, it's hard, it's it's expensive, it takes time, it's

inconvenient, but, you know, you have to have some, some sort of

moral compass, yeah, yeah, no, I, I, I'm, I'm pretty sunk with

Amazon now, yeah, yeah, it's hard to disentangle. I'm just

trying to be real utilitarian about it at this point. Yeah,

it's like, okay, this is the one thing I can do that is like,

because we have Powell.

Pounds, yeah. Like, true, true. Yeah. If I didn't have pals, I

would just give up. Yeah. I mean, it's because it's hard to

be like, well, I want to support a local bookstore, but lots of

times they just have use Oh, I'm not a used book person, so I'm

also not precious about books. Um, I you don't care how good of

shape they're in, is that what you mean, there isn't a whole

lot of,

like, want to keep it, or like, an object of reverence. Or, you

know, when people are like, Oh, don't dog, you're the pages. Oh,

yeah, no, you know, all of that, all that kind of stuff. It is

just, it is an object. To me. It's not,

not something that I like Revere. You know, I'm not, I

understand. There's things we can talk about later that I can

talk about on here. Yeah, I'm not necessarily a Oh, books are,

you know, the smell of them is just so true. Well, you already

know I would kick you out of my house if he said that. It's not

important to me. You're smelling chemicals. You're sniffing glue,

you're you're smelling the glue in the ink and some of the

paper. And like, old books smell that way because they're

decaying. I drive a I have a hard line on that. So, yeah. So

yeah, I'm not, I'm not one of I'm not a romantic

person. So you do buy ebooks like,

yes, yeah, less now, but I do buy ebooks more and more. I've

been trying to go to the library and get them first before I

spend money on something. You know, you can get ebooks. I

know, as soon as I found that out, I was like, Oh, I can't

find it anymore. Gonna have to wake up that library card. Hey,

everybody did you know you can get ebooks from the library? Go

get ebooks from the library. Yeah, it's called overdrive. Use

your libraries, get it there. It's it's an awesome program,

yeah, and then if I like it enough to want to reread it,

because I do reread books

regularly. I love it

so well, this is probably a good time to get into what you're

reading, because you told me you're rereading a series right

now I am, I reread it multiple times a year, really quick

little books. They're fun. That's like, how I watch Archer,

like, 5000 times, yeah? It's just like, it's a reading Yeah,

yeah. So I'm, I'm currently rereading the rivers of London

series by Ben eranovich, and that's urban fantasy, right?

It's, it's urban fantasy, yes. So it's set in London,

and it's a new police officer who finds out that magic is

real.

Is that, like the concept of a lot of urban fantasy? Maybe it's

because I've heard a lot of urban fantasy just kind of

getting into it is like magic exists on, like, just like a

half, half beat out of step with real world. So it's all a

surface, so it's all around you, and you just don't notice. So

he, he finds out that magic is real, and he joins the only

other, like detective in London who's gonna train him.

And so he's like, an Apprentice Wizard,

and they deal with all of this supernatural stuff, and he's,

like, super snarky. And which is your thing, which is my thing?

Yeah, he's pretty irreverent and tongue in cheek, and it's

British, so that's awesome. Yeah, you're not the first

person to tell me that that series is amazing. So it's a

lot. It's, it's just so much fun.

It's good to read. The story is actually really good. So yeah, I

definitely recommend it. I recommend checking it out. And

it's, it's just such a like, comfort read for me at this

point, I don't have to pay a crazy amount of attention, and I

don't feel like, oh, I have to read all night because I don't

know what's coming up next, but it hits your Yep, yeah. Trope

points, yeah, exactly. Um, Sandy redstone and fire. I have read

it. It was fun. I'm learning more about that particular brand

of romance, rivers, hero.

I'm, I'm, you should start reading the Phoenix cry books.

Those are the Phoenix the werewolf. Okay, cool, yeah, I'll

get that name from you later. The rogue witch series is what

it's called, sweet, yeah, get it. I'd be into that, um. And

then you have another book that you're reading right now, yeah,

um, Proust, Proust, Proust. Yeah, sure, um,

proves in the squid. So it's your brain on reading. So it's

neuroscience. You made it sound so hip. This is your brain on

reading. It I think, I think

that's like the tagline, but it's, it is. It goes into the

nurse neuroscience on how your brain changes while reading

and how it's evolved, and how it continues to evolve now that

people are reading differently and on different materials. So

I've just started it, but it's super fancy and nerdy. Was

there, like, some kind of factor hook that kind of dragged you

into it and made you go, Oh, didn't know that. You know? I

think Abby recommended it. I remember, yeah, I.

I read it, but I literally forgot everything about it,

except that

we weren't made to read, right? Like we were made for story, but

we weren't made to read. Yeah,

and Abby recommended it, but I like neuroscience and psychology

and how your brain rewires itself for all kinds of things,

so

that kind of hits one of those interest points for me is, is

I'm not necessarily big on like self help and psychology stuff,

but

I mean, it's not really self help, is it like, no, no, this

one isn't. But there are a lot of you know you can read about

neuroscience, biohacking, yeah, yeah, that doesn't interest me

as much. But this one, it's, it's been good so far. Granted,

I, you know, I just started it, but, um, yeah, you know, great.

Read for fun, read for expansion, so you've got, like,

one simultaneously with the other

Yeah, and I only do that if I'm rereading something right,

because it's, it's like a rerun you have in the back of your so

you got to eat your vegetables with your

okay? So I am, according, we had a little Twitter thing. The

whole goal was to make Corinne read something that she actually

liked, because she kept kind of getting mired in books. Oh no,

because literary fiction, she's a little more into that. Yeah, I

don't. I mean, I do as well. But so we were trying to, like, pick

a book where that we would be forced to read, okay, and one

that I kind of just threw in there and didn't think people

would vote for it, because we did a twitter poll. We had the

incendiaries by aro Kwan, okay, which I bought anyway, because I

really wanted to read it. Nobody voted for that one, which I

thought was interesting, because I would have voted for that one

myself. NK Jemisin, the fifth season.

Heard of it. I actually own it. Haven't read it yet. And then

one that I threw in there. What's it called?

It's two words. It's, it's not stay awake, because that's a Dan

K on short story book. It's by Sarah grant. It's a book about,

I think, a woman who thinks she's possessed or something,

okay. Got one vote for that one, and then the other one was

Florida, by Lauren Groff, who wrote Fates and Furies, which is

also a short story collection. So we got the equal. We got an

equal amount of votes for fifth season in Florida. Okay? And so

I'm starting with the fifth season, which is a fantasy

series, and she's won the Hugo Award, yes, like, every year,

yeah. And so I was like, Okay, well, this is for a person who

mostly reads literary fiction. This is a very, very highly

acclaimed fantasy series, so maybe we should, like, try,

yeah, something new. But I didn't expect everyone to vote

for it. I did expect Bree to vote for it, and

of course, she did. Yeah, I'm looking forward to starting it.

I'm really enjoying I'm about I'm 300 pages in. It's like 450

i i took some self care this week because it was an off week,

and I was like, I'm going to read for two hours.

Yeah, not every night. Two nights ended up being but, yeah,

it's um, it's not something I'm used to. It's not very I feel

like sometimes fantasy, when I do try to read it, not urban

fantasy, high fantasy, they'll try to introduce too many

concepts in a very pretentious sort of way. Oh, yeah, yeah. It

definitely exists a language. This is what our characters are

called, yeah. It's a fine line between dropping you in and

expecting you to just figure it out, or a whole lot of

exposition, right? So it's yeah, it's tough to and somehow she

manages to just balance it perfectly. And I'm really

enjoying it, awesome. Yeah. So, yeah, yeah. If you, if you like

urban fantasy, you're already kind of, like, open to that, I

would imagine, yeah. So, yeah. I mean, like I said, I own it. I

just haven't been in the Oh, new book, kind of a mood, yeah, I

really like it. It's, um, I think for you, there's a there's

a particular character that I really like that I think you

will also really like and so once you start reading it, let

me know. And okay, I'll ask you. I bet you, you think it is, I

bet we will be on the same wavelength. Yeah, probably.

Okay, well, is there anything else you want to talk about

here? No, buy books. Buy books, yeah, yeah, yeah, and ask

questions. Try not to buy them from Amazon, but it's better

than nothing. Right for the publishers. You know, my thing

is there's no wrong way to be a reader, so you buy them.

Read those cereal boxes wherever you can you you buy your

material from wherever you can afford to get your material and

wherever you happen to be and wherever you happen to be. Yes,

just read that's lazy. Please read books. Yeah, yeah. All

right. Well, you can find hybrid pub scout. Thank you, Jessica.

Oh, thank you. Thank you so much for coming in here. Hybrid pub

scout. COMM is our website. You can go there, sign up for the

newsletter, and you'll get you'll you'll get our episodes

as soon as they come out. You will also get first dibs on

currents very clever articles that she's she's creating that

don't get posted until like, a couple weeks later. Nice. So it

makes it fun. Also,

reviews, I'm going to start doing reviews again. I did those

in the beginning, but we're going to do that also,

especially for indie publishers. Oh yeah, indie publishers, indie

books, that's important. And then we're on Facebook at hybrid

pub Scout, and then we are on Twitter at hybrid pubscout, and

it's, it's fun. It's fun if you're on if you're on Twitter,

that's the most fun you're gonna have on Twitter, because

Twitter's rough.

I don't I'm not on Twitter. We're also on SoundCloud,

iTunes, podbean and TuneIn, oh, and Google Play. So options,

yeah, all kinds of options. It's a fresh happy world. And also,

like, if you're gonna tell me, like, oh, you should get on

blah, blah, blah, it just give me a couple of months. Because

apparently these things cost money.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, be patient, people. Anyway, we hope to see

you around. And thank you Jessica, and thanks for giving a

shit about books. Yeah,

you.