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Re: picking your own clothes
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From: bookmarch_at_aol.com
Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2012 08:36:27 -0400 (EDT)
While I agree that much is open to negotiation, I must disagree with Lionel in a couple of ways. First, photo research is not necessarily best done by a professional. Indeed I -- and many of the trade NF authors I know -- fin d that doing that research is an essential part of our work as authors. Onl y we know in depth the kind of images that support our text. Indeed locatin g and using (sometimes obscure) image sources is part of what Susan Campbel l Bartoletti calls the "extreme research" we do in creating our books (one that, as I have been discussing in my blog, reviewers never notice or credi t us with doing). Locating an image, "reading" it carefully, placing it in the text, and writing the apt caption is part of the work we authors do in making our NF into immersive experiences. Only that tactile contact with im age location and selection allows us to surround the reader in the world we are evoking in our books. Using a professional would be like hiring someon e to pick your clothes -- we'd rather sho p for ourselves, and show the worl d our own sense of style.
Second, while it is useful as a negotation strategy to limit the rights you want, increasingly publishers, aware of the digital and thus global future of books, require you to clear -- or at least know the final cost of -- al l rights.
Marc Aronson
Received on Sat 31 Mar 2012 08:36:27 AM CDT
Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2012 08:36:27 -0400 (EDT)
While I agree that much is open to negotiation, I must disagree with Lionel in a couple of ways. First, photo research is not necessarily best done by a professional. Indeed I -- and many of the trade NF authors I know -- fin d that doing that research is an essential part of our work as authors. Onl y we know in depth the kind of images that support our text. Indeed locatin g and using (sometimes obscure) image sources is part of what Susan Campbel l Bartoletti calls the "extreme research" we do in creating our books (one that, as I have been discussing in my blog, reviewers never notice or credi t us with doing). Locating an image, "reading" it carefully, placing it in the text, and writing the apt caption is part of the work we authors do in making our NF into immersive experiences. Only that tactile contact with im age location and selection allows us to surround the reader in the world we are evoking in our books. Using a professional would be like hiring someon e to pick your clothes -- we'd rather sho p for ourselves, and show the worl d our own sense of style.
Second, while it is useful as a negotation strategy to limit the rights you want, increasingly publishers, aware of the digital and thus global future of books, require you to clear -- or at least know the final cost of -- al l rights.
Marc Aronson
Received on Sat 31 Mar 2012 08:36:27 AM CDT
