Last Friday was a particularly interesting author day. The book project was fascinating. It was about optimizing the effectiveness of governmental intelligence and counter-terrorism teams. A very relevant topic for today's political environment. The author was entertaining and got the BK team strategizing like an intelligence team. I am getting a better picture of the book production process with every author day I attend.
After the author lunch, Jeevan presented the interns with a great opportunity to chat with a "rock star editor" named Alan Rinzler. To be honest, I had not heard of him prior to the praise the BK editors divulged. But after a bit of research online, I knew that he certainly is a great editor with a wide range of experience and just pure talent for the trade. He was one of the first acquisitions and development editors of Rolling Stone magazine and worked for some of the biggest publishing houses. I learned how he approaches editing, what he considers to be the skills necessary to succeed as an acquisitions editor specifically and the differences between editing for a magazine v.s. book editing. He was very open to give us his view on the future of the publishing industry in this digital world. He believes that digital does not mean the end of physical books. I am hoping he is right about that.
Overall, I am grateful to Jeevan for giving us the opportunity to talk with Alan. I learned a lot from him. One thing he said that was simple, but stood out as an obligatory quality of an editor is to know good writing. Alan said that one of authors he edited, Hunter Thompson, typed out the entirety of "The Great Gatsby" just so he could experience what good writing feels like.
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