L'EDITION – BOOK EDITING



L'EDITION – BOOK EDITING

A glossary - Lexique

UNIVERSITE CHARLES DE GAULLE – LILLE III

U.F.R. ANGELLIER

"L'édition – du manuscrit au livre"

"Book editing – from the manuscript to the book"

AN ENGLISH/FRENCH GLOSSARY

LEXIQUE FRANCAIS / ANGLAIS

[pic]

Mémoire présenté par Claire THIBAULT

en vue de l’obtention de

la Maîtrise d’Anglais de Spécialité et de Lexicographie Bilingue

sous la direction de M. le Professeur Fabrice Antoine

Année universitaire 2000-2001

Je sais peu d’impressions aussi délectables que celle qui advient au moment où le texte, dépouillé du superflu, sort soudain de l’ombre pour étinceler à la lumière.

Hubert Nyssen L’éditeur et son double

I know but a few impressions as delightful as the one which dawns on me when the text, stripped of all superfluity, suddenly emerges from obscurity and sparkles in the light.

Acknowledgments

I am deeply thankful to the following people for their help and assistance, their support and trust :

Anne Aubert at Trampo’Ligne, création-production graphique : 19, rue du Mail, 75002 Paris

Kelly Notaras, editorial assistant at HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 1002-5299

Philippe Demanet, editor for Gallimard, 5, rue Sébastien Bottin, 75320 Paris

Kelly Honeyman and Joanne Claus at PaperHelp Online

Virginia Briggs at Oxford University Press.

Alexandra Anouar at SGDL, Martine Barruet at the Cercle de la Librairie.

Marie Renault and Cristina Laje at Unesco.

Martin Bryan at the SGML Centre.

A few people who were important to me during these two years: Dr. Cheryl Wachenheim from North Dakota State University, Julie Walker, Frédéric Viaux, Patricia LeLay, Mr Ebener from the University of Angers.

A very big ‘Thank you’ to the team of the Bibliothèque Angellier, especially to Nicole Gabet, for her support, her cakes, and for the great job.

My family and friends for their most important help, patience and support.

Mr Antoine

I- From the scriptoria to the virtual publishing house

1. From the turtle shell bit to the book

2. Early publishing

3. Publishing in the 20th century

4. The publishing industry today and its future

II- The will to publish

1. On writing

2. On the stake of the printed book in relation to the text

3. The book as a different commodity

III- The editorial and graphic chains

1. On editing and publishing

2. On the author-editor(-publisher) relationship

3. From the mailbox to the bookstore

IV- The glossary

1. Problems met

2. Analysis and reflection on the glossary

3. Codes and abbreviations

Introduction

In order to try and understand the status the book – and therefore the work done on the book – has acquired over the centuries in our society, it is necessary to go through a few points of history. This overview of the publishing world shall then lead us to the study of the different aspects and actors of the trade, and their interaction.

I- From the scriptoria to the virtual publishing house

Without scribes and papyrus in the Antiquity, without copyists and the codex in the Middle Ages, and without Gutenberg, what would we know about our past? For the history of Greeks and Romans to survive, the works of people like Herodotus or Plutarch did not simply have to be produced but had to be preserved for rea ding twenty centuries afterwards on what was the first media in history: the book. Because it retains men’s history, their sciences, their values, their beliefs, and all the feelings that have inhabited them for centuries, books are much more than the gathering of sheets of paper or parchment. As long as there are men to write them, to print them, to distribute them, and above all to read them, books will remain the guardians and the guarantees of our freedom.

1. From the turtle shell bit to the book

Very early in human history there was a need to express oneself in another way than orally. Oral communication turned out to be limited and was not sufficient to store the accumulation of information and ideas through time. Writing was to be the second great revolution after the elaboration and development of language.

Traces of writing – or to be more accurate drawing – were found in different parts of the world, some dating back to four thousand years before Christ. “Strictly speaking, writing only exists from the moment when an organized body of signs and symbols is put together, by which means their users can materialize and clearly set whatever they think and feel or are able to express.”[1] The first important step in the history of writing was to come from the East (Mesopotamia) with cuneiform script, in 3600 BC. It was a wedge-shape script which used simplified representations of objects, individuals and animals. These pictograms became interrelated and interactive so as to form new signs (ideograms) and later form a real writing – that is corresponding to the definition given above – in 2,000 BC. The most noticeable effect of the usage of writing is the transcription of religious hymns or incantations and of The Epic of Gilgamesh, a literary work that announced the legends of Greek mythology and the Flood of the Bible.

While cuneiforms were developing, more than seven hundred hieroglyphs were in use in Egypt. This script, created by the God Thot according to Egyptians, conveyed the spoken language (still used today by Copts) almost in its totality. Further East, in about 1,500 BC, the Chinese codified a unique kind of script made up of thousands of ideograms. It acquired its final form in 200 BC.

In the history of writing, the definite stage was the phonetization of script; that is the correspondence between the pronunciation of the word and the way it is written. The writing then goes along with the language and is made up of phonetic signs. The alphabet in use today originates in the Phoenician alphabet that the Greeks exported to Italy after they had adopted it (900 BC) and transformed it by adding vowels and reorganizing its reading from the right-hand side to the left-handside. The Romans also improved the writing and spread it over the empire and other areas of the globe.

The Latin word liber, which is the root of the word designating the book in most indo-European languages (livre in French, libro in Italian, etc), refers to the thin layer in between the bark and the trunk of a tree. The emphasis is then first on the medium onto which something is written; bark was one among many such media including turtle shell bits, stone, cloth, bone, or tablets of clay. For centuries, during the whole Antiquity up to the third century after Christ, there was papyrus.

Extracted from a water plant grown in the Delta of the Nile, papyrus was cut into strips and assembled by overlapping and compression. The leaves thus obtained were glued together laterally and formed rolls that were several meters long. Most texts that were considered worth preserving were written on papyrus, which was imported from Egypt into Western Europe. Papyrus sheets were difficult to fold, hence books of the time did not have the form we know them to have now. Sheets were not gathered but rolled, making what is called a volumen, on which it was possible to write on one side only. The text started on the right hand side and the title was at the end. Once rolled the volumen was labeled and placed into a cupboard or in one of the huge libraries, such as the ones that could be found in Alexandria or Pergamum which contained about 500, 000 “books”. The volumen, like papyrus, lasted during the whole Middle Ages until the great book revolution of the codex which was the beginning of today’s book form.

The break occurred between the first and the fourth century AC. Both economical reasons (it was hard to get large enough quantities of papyrus, for instance) and the religious factor (the expansion of Christianity) paved the way for the appearance of the new book. The codex was a bound and covered book formed of assembled sections. Christians traditionally wrote on codex made of parchment, that is sheep skin that originally comes from Pergamum, Asia Minor, if we look at its etymological root. The advantages of parchment compared to papyrus are significant. First, both sides can be used, which means that ipso facto the amount of material needed is divided by two. Second, parchment is a lot easier to fold. It is impossible to fold papyrus without breaking the vegetal fibers from which it is made, whereas you can make a codex out of parchment. Third, parchment can be found virtually wherever there are animals likely to be used for the making of the material, while papyrus is a regional commodity. Fourth, it is reusable. What was written on it can be erased; this is then what is called a palimpsest. Written one day, when and if considered useless, the text and its support was scraped off and cleaned. The piece of parchment was ready to receive another text. Only the texts to which someone was attached were kept. This is an important point of the history of the book: there is no systematic conservation of a text. Many works may have disappeared consequently. Whenever there is a change in the supports of the writing – from volumen to codex, for instance – copies are made of texts that are judged valuable at the time, the others disappear.

These codex were held mostly in medieval monasteries; an example of which can be seen in Jean-Jacques Annaud’s movie In the Name of the Rose (1986). Between the 5th and the 11th century, with the disappearance of the Roman Empire, governmental and political structures vanished in Western Europe. Thus, the only places where one could copy books, where one could even learn how to read them, where one crossed the path of people who could afford to read old books, were monasteries. It is basically thanks to these copyists of the Middle Ages that works from the Antiquity have traveled through time, up to the 12th century. Without these monks we may never have known Plato, Plutarch and many other authors. We may actually have lost track of many more texts. The copy of manuscripts was carried out in monasteries first, and in the Carolingian era first (9th and 10th centuries).

Copying a book was a particularly laborious task. Together with text the book transmitted pictures and illuminations, which are the only medieval paintings we know today. Until the 14th century our pictorial heritage (painting and decoration) is indeed mostly contained in books. Partly for this reason, monks worshipped the object of their work. Books were the first, if not the only, things that were taken out if a monastery was in flame or threatened by pirates. A 14th century text reads: “A library is the true treasure of a monastery. Without it, the latter is like a kitchen with no cauldron, a river with no fish, a garden with no flowers, a vineyard with no grapes.” Copying books was considered as sacred as reciting prayers. For Cassiodorus, in the 6th century, it is “to preach by the work of hands, to fight by the quill and ink the devil’s suggestions.”[2]

As books were copied in monasteries, they were mostly religious works; thus texts of the Church Fathers, the Patristic, geography, but also from the Antiquity (we would not know them otherwise). One of the most famous works of these times was the Book of Kells which was elaborated by monks around 800 A.D. in a monastery of western Ireland. A token of the deep religious devotion of the monks, it was made of various pieces of materials and illuminated. This genuine treasure of the western culture can still be seen at Trinity College in Dublin.

In the 12th and 13th century, Western countries were to discover a new material: paper. Developed in China, paper traveled to the Mediterranean world through the Arabic invasions. It first settled in Spain and Italy, and soon reached France and other countries. The advantage of paper was that it was lighter and less expensive. But its shortcomings compared to the quality of parchment achieved in the 13th century – it was more brittle and its tolerance to illuminator’s pigments was lower – reserved it to a certain kind of document. Paper did not supersede parchment but took it over. Only at the end of the 13th and in the early 14th century did paper become of common use in Europe.

Codex is closely related to today’s book. It was made in the same way, with sections of parchment sheets which were folded either in two (these are called in-folio) or in four (in-quarto). At the same time characters started to be standardized, with one kind of type that spread in the different monasteries. A great innovation of Charlemagne’s time was the normalization of characters, virtually through the whole empire, with the small Carolingian script. This type in fact took up the models of the Antiquity and was rediscovered in the 14th and 15th centuries by the Humanists. It inspired them for their own writing and they transformed it, up to the point where the typography became the one in use today; with the appearance of the Gothic in between (used especially in Germany and various Eastern Europe countries).

With the growing rate of literacy, there grew a need for more books of different types. Universities were established in major cities all over Europe and students either bought copies of original manuscripts made by professional scribes or, for the poorer, copied manuscripts they had to rent. Latin had been the rule until a late date but, then, progressively, other books began to be written in local vernacular tongues, understandable by common people. These new books were to become “national” literatures – French literature, English literature, etc.

Codex was reproduced in such little quantity that the book remained a rare commodity up to the printing revolution, which took place in Western Europe in the 1450s. In 1455, in Mainz, Johann Gutenberg, a Dutch printer, invented the moveable lead type. As early as 175 A.D. the Chinese had started making inked impression with carved wooden blocks and a great quantity of books were developed thanks to this technique in the 8th century. The Korean in turn made metal types of crude quality about a century before Gutenberg. The essential difference with Gutenberg's predecessors was that the text was no longer typeset by block but by word or letters, which made a considerable difference in the time, efficiency and quality of the printing process. The invention of moveable lead type paved the way for a deep change from an oral culture to a scribal culture that could count on printing. The break was not actually as appreciable as one may have thought with the era of exclusive manuscript. The effects were hardly noticeable until 1500-1510, when two generations had passed. Indeed, these incunabula – name given to the first printed books — looked a lot like manuscript texts. Gutenberg’s Bible, for instance, reproduced the writing of a Rhenish manuscript. It was hardly possible for the uninformed to make the distinction between a printed and a manuscript book, all the more so as illuminators kept on drawing the frontispiece, initials, chapter headings and writing in red. The important difference lies in the economics of the book – how much a book costs, how much time it takes to be made, how many copies of it will be printed. With the appearance of printing shops throughout Europe, a kind of democratization of the printed matter started with the creation of newspapers and the copying of manuscripts that had remained unknown to the population and that became available to a larger number of people (although the lower classes of the society would still have to wait for a long time before these same works came into their hands).

While printing developed, paper mills sprouted in different countries, notably in France which became the first supplier of Europe at the turn of the 16th century, with two major centers: Troyes and Avignon, in the vicinity of the numerous typographic workshops of Lyons. Significant changes had occurred in the manufacturing of paper that made it more attractive to bookmakers and ended up setting this material as definitely the medium of the book, as opposed to papyrus and parchment. After the development of the culture of hemp which had become the essential component of paper and entailed both a better quality and a greater propagation of the product – therefore a decrease in its price –, another stage in the evolution of paper took place in the 1720s when wood entered its composition. It was only more than a century later that Woelter patented the mixing of cloth mechanical pulp with wood pulp slurry which he found provided for a more solid paper.

With the development of paper and printing, the number of books published increased dramatically and they became accessible to a wider population.

2. Early publishing

If we look at editing as the selecting of texts in order to reproduce them, editing has been in existence since the Antiquity with the scribes. They did not hold the actual name but played a part that can be assimilated to the editor's work. Also, it is known that, in the Roman Empire, authors had their own works published and that people assembled genuine collections. Atticus was one of these "publishers". A friend of Cicero's, he had his speeches reproduced by slave copyists so as to be able to sell them. Monks, in their scriptoria, could also be considered as editors since they sometimes did not content themselves with copying manuscripts but also annotated and altered them.

Later on, authors found a way to be published in patronage. Indeed, being taken under the wing of a wealthy and powerful individual, such as a king for instance, made it possible for a writer both to practice his art and publish it to a certain extent. A writer often had to take charge of the material production of his book but the commercialization of copies was not a problem. If one was worthy of the protection of a particular important man, it was good form for who pretended to be trendy in court to get a copy of his book.

The 15th and particularly the16th century, the century of Humanism, were a most flourishing period for the publishing trade. Economic prosperity allowed for great improvements in printing and books in general. A great name was to emerge at that time: Aldus Manutius. He was a printer who settled in the already important publishing center that was Venice, Italy, in 1490. After acquiring the workshop of a rich salesman, he set about publishing Greek literary works (by Sophocles, Erodotus, Plutarch etc). He called Greek scholars by his side to work on rare manuscripts; first by collecting them, then by reading and editing them so as to be able to print them in the most truthful form to the original. These erudites created what was called the Neacademia, or the Aldine Academy, which later gave its name to a type family. Manutius applied himself to ink making and to bind the books he sold. His great innovation was the invention of the italic character.

Presses spread all over the world over a period of a few centuries. The first press in England was William Caxton's in 1476, who published the translation of the French Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, along with dozens of other titles. In Mexico City also, a press was set up by Juan Pablo who published Breve y Mas Compendiosa Doctrina Cristiana, a religious work. As for the British colonies in Northern America, the first press appeared in Harvard College in 1640 and the first book published in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was the Whole Book of Psalms (also called Bay Psalm Book). At this stage, competition was already fierce and countries mostly worked to the reinforcement of their own publishing trade before trying to expand on foreign markets, particularly England. On the other hand, individual craftsmen easily move from one country to another and teach their skills to the locals.

In the British colonies, the control applied by the Crown was such that the development of presses was quite slow. It was not until the end of the American Revolution, and therefore the independence of the country that the publishing industry tremendously developed in cities like Boston, New York City or Philadelphia. This had been entailed by dissent during the war and continued decades later. M. L. DeFleur, in his book, stresses the fact that "books published early in American history included religious works, almanacs, and political and social treatises."[3] These were then mostly "practical" books and hardly any space was left for literary works.

The mushrooming of universities throughout Europe along with important religious movements such as Protestantism, and historical periods such as the Renaissance, which was a time of considerable development for art, literature and philosophy, strongly contributed to the expansion of the book as a popular object.

From then on books were to be a powerful instrument of power and liberty[4]. The mighty of this world found this out pretty rapidly. Henry VIII, for instance, censored and licensed publications in 1529. In 1557, the Guild of Stationers was virtually granted a monopoly over the printing industry by a Royal Charter. This Charter also empowered Stationers with the right to search houses and bookstores for libelous works or illegal printing and to put the people concerned in jail. There still were documents issued that escaped the system and illegal presses developed but the repression lasted for about a hundred years.

With the French Revolution and the birth of public instruction, literary property came to be acknowledged to authors by a law initiated by Beaumarchais in 1777 in France and it was reiterated in 1793. Writers could therefore be paid by a percentage on the sales of their books. This did not allow them to earn their living properly and most of them – if not all – had to have another profession or benefit from the benevolence of a wealthy aristocrat, or still obtain patronage. Nonetheless, it was a considerable breakthrough for the recognition of the status of author concerning his work and his place in society. The time was far when "the author [was] never considered as a creator since there is no other creation than the divine one."[5]

In the 1800s, the democratization of countries and the industrial revolutions implied a need for a more knowledgeable population. Measures were then officially taken to improve the school system, which greatly affected the development of book trade. The editor as we mean it today appeared only in the 19th century, when the publishing world grew to such an extent that crafts separated and became specialized. It was the start of modern publishing. While up to the turn of the century techniques had not improved much since Gutenberg, mechanization and automatic inking along with the invention of the rotary press which supplanted manual composition marked a dramatic change in the trade. The unit price of a book decreased with the production of great series of books and magazines. Editing then became a job of its own, as paper-making, printing or distributing. The editor could therefore concentrate on his own work and entail the creation of a lot more original titles. Hence, it is the century that saw the publication of such works as Whitman's Leaves of Grass or Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin or in the United States, Honoré de Balzac's Human Comedy or Flaubert's Madame Bovary in France, and Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles or Sir Walter Scott's Waverley in Great Britain.

3. Publishing in the 20th century

For publishing, the 20th century means the turn towards a more commercial product. Indeed, when the world production was two hundred thousand books in the 16th century, it reached eight million for the whole 19th century and five million for the first quarter of the 20th. It was not only about making literature anymore, but also about making money. And this part of the publisher's job will become more and more important. This situation shaped a new kind of literature, as the focus was set on the kind of books and authors who can be on the bestsellers list.[6]

In the 1920s the creation of the Book of the Month Club and the Literary Guild opened a new market by reaching people directly into their homes, which contributed to expanding the audience for fiction or other works.

But one of the most determining event in publishing history was the development of paperbacks or pocket books. Although the sale of such books had started in the 19th century, the real expansion of this type of books came in the 1930s in England with Penguin, in the 1940s in France and in the 1950s in the United States. With the rising cost of book production, it became necessary to find a way to make less expensive books and the solution was found in lighter binding, recycled paper and cheaper printing. New techniques were invented in the 1950s which great share in the creation of paperbacks. The latter contributed, along with the G.I. Bill – which made it possible for thousands of people to go to college - and the post-war baby boom, to the explosion of the market. Between 1953 and 1970, the yearly production of pocket books represented 10% of book publishing[7]. Today, it seems that paperbacks have outweighed hardbacks both in the publishers' marketing logic and in the readers' heart and wallet as the production of bound books is more and more limited.

The second half of the 20th century is characterized by a dramatic change in the approach of the book, which tends to become a consumable product like so many others. Hence the distinction between hardbacks and paperbacks allowed for a rise in prices on hardbacks. As the latter came out – and still do – six months to a year ealier than their pocket version, publishers sold best sellers at maximum price, thus charging those who could not wait to read them. The development of techniques also contributed to the phenomenon. The mergers were introduced in the publishing world in the 1960s. Big publishing houses started buying smaller ones and building empires of the publishing industry. In turn they were bought by communications firms or other businesses. This largely particpated in the greater commercialism of the trade. In parallel with the leaders of the publishing world, small and independent presses have sprouted in France as in Great Britain and the USA and continue to ensure the good health of the publishing trade. The variety of products they imply is definitely vital for the industry.

The industry has had to change how it worked. In the same way that the 19th century had brought about a clearer definition of the editor-publisher as such, the 20th century was the time for the delegation of tasks to outside resources, such as freelance readers, binders, distributors etc. Also, houses have had to diversify. By publishing fiction and non-fiction books, a publisher divides risks: instead of publishing ten or fifteen titles in a year, he publishes sixty, emphasizing on those which are likely to sell well. Out of all these, forty will fail, a dozen will make about 3,000 or 4,000 copies and balance the budget, six or seven will be profitable, especially if subsidiary rights such as translation rights, television adaptation rights, etc are sold.

In August 1981, French Parliament passed the single price law of the book, initiated by Jack Lang. This law imposed the unification of the price of a book fixed by the publisher in all stores where the book is sold. Moreover, discounts cannot exceed five percent of the publisher's price. This policy was shaped to face the new problem bookstores had to deal with: the development of book supermarkets. Before 1981, booksellers were free to sell books at any price and this new competition threatened the survival of independent bookstores. Thus, since 1981 and despite attacks from all fronts – publishers, booksellers, consumers – the single price law has been enforced and has somewhat succeeded to keep smaller businesses running. This piece of regulation is now spreading through Europe. Still the book price keeps rising as the cost of paper increases and the runs of a single book are less important.

In 1993, with the opening of the European market, the French publishing industry had to face not only European publishers but also the rest of the world. It negotiated the turn well and despite the on-going concentrations of the industry, did not suffer too much of the liberalization of the market.

Today, fiction represents only ten percent of the total book production, as opposed to textbooks which sell by tens of millions each year.

4. The publishing industry today and its future

Because of mergers, the publishing world of today is concentrated in a few areas and national capitals such as Paris in France, London in England, New York City in the United States; although a few houses have demonstrated that it was not necessary to be in the state capital to succeed, for example Actes Sud in Arles (but opened offices in Paris).

Concentration inside the industry also keeps growing; with two major groups in the US (Time-Warner and the German giant Bertelsmann which recently expanded its grasp on the American publishing trade) and two in France (the "new" Vivendi-Universal and Hachette). These take-overs jeopardize the diversity of publishing and the need to keep the smaller publishing houses alive is increasingly felt as they represent the creative influx necessary to the well-functioning of the industry and the durability of a few values that are specific to the book trade. The French publishing house Editions de l'Aube acquired a new notoriety in the country when Gao Xingjian, one of their authors, was awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize in literature for his novel Soul Mountain [La Montagne de l'âme]. The search for profitability is necessary – publishing houses are like any firm after all, they need to make profits if they are to survive — but it could also mean the end of a certain conception of the content of the book.

In the year 2000, the trends show a steady increase in sales in French publishing. Books sell more but the number of books increases too, which means that a single title sells less. A book that would have been run at 15, 000 copies a few years ago is now impressed at 5, 000 copies and returns from bookstores are more and more common. English-speaking fiction, despite bestsellers like Stephen King, Michael Crichton or Mary Higgins Clark has been stagnating in the last few months and should not regain strength before some time. The fact remains though that publishing in the United States is a huge industry which is not about to fade away. While publishing is considered a risky occupation in France, it is one more way to make good money in the US. The production of books has never been as important as it is today, with millions of titles published every year.

The advent of new technologies such as the Internet entails new fears concerning the end of the book as an object made of paper. It is indeed possible - and it will be so increasingly in the years to come – to download a whole book on one's personal computer or e-book. No ink, no paper, no cover; at least up to a certain point. This instrument should enable writers who have not been able to find a publisher to promote their work either by publishing the whole of it on the Internet or only part of it in the hope of finding a "real" publisher. But the development of such a device as the e-book will – and already has in a sense – challenged the whole concept of literary property. As it will be easy to download books, it will equally be easy to copy them and, more importantly, to alter their content. For now, it is hardly possible for anybody to read a whole book on a computer screen since it has not yet been adapted to this kind of practice. Nevertheless, it is to be expected that new techniques will soon allow for an easier and cheaper device to come on the market.

However, in the 1960s, Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian literature professor, announced the end of the book for the end of the 20th century. We are now in the 21st century and still other researchers or, more understandably, e-book designers predict the upcoming end of the book. The relative failure of Stephen King's "book" The Plant that was to be downloaded for a couple of dollars from the web, challenges the future of fiction literature on this new support, all the more so as it questions the protection of copyrights[8].

II- The will to publish

1. On writing

Whether it be in Greek Antiquity or in Ancient Egypt, the writer –understood as the person who is able to write, i.e. the scribe – was as weak as a slave or more powerful than the pharaoh.

Today, it seems that things have not changed that much for the person who has decided to devote a part of his/her life to writing. The authorities are different: a writer does not refer to a master – although the publisher might be seen as one by some – but socially he is either considered as a failure if he does not sell his manuscript easily enough or does not make money out of it, or as a king if his book has turned out a bestseller. Being a writer is hardly ever regarded as a real job, as being a banker, a plumber or a teacher is; even if most writers have to work outside so as to earn a decent living. The system of patronage almost disappeared with the leveling of the wealth of patrons and the industrialization of publishing brought about by printing. It still exists though through the grant of scholarships and titles such as Poet Laureate in the United States but most writers have to practice self-financing.

Writers are not the last to say that what they do is not a job. But any writer will tell you that this kind of consideration is not their primary concern. What matters is writing. The writer does not write under the dictation of an author as was the use in Greece or Egypt. He is the author of what he writes down. Not only does it make a difference in the way the narrative is put together, organized, it also implies a different approach to the very material of the text, of what comes out of one’s head. “When writing, one is forced to weigh up with one’s ear and eyes what one’s hand is tracing” acknowledged Ambrose.[9] Where the Egyptian author had his scribe reread what had been drawn on the tablet of clay or on the piece of papyrus, the contemporary author can contemplate his work by himself, revise it, rewrite it on his own.

Writing is perhaps more than ever a solitary task. Most of the time the penman sits alone at his desk, a blank sheet of paper in front of him, and closes in in his own world. Authors as different as Stephen King[10] and Paul Auster[11] describe their writing environment as a space isolated from the rest of the world, with no domestic noise, maybe some music (King listens to ACDC cds, Hubert Selby Jr. to classical music…), no television, no outside visibility – in the first stages of the writing process at least. The page of paper has been replaced by a computer screen in most cases but the outcome is the same concerning the source of inspiration: the writer has to get every thing out of his own imagination, of what he has previously digested from the outside world. Fiction writing is about digging into one’s brains and create plausible surroundings, characters, plots and spelling out the whole mixed with one’s history, life, apprehension of events. A writer would somewhat be a smaller God, making up his own universe, with his own vision of how things should or might go, in the world he has created as well as the one he is contemporary of. Young French author Denis Lachaud compares the writing process to Ali Baba's cavern; "writing is the exploration of the cavern and then, suddenly, you feel you have seen all of what there was to be seen in this cavern, that you have explored all of it. At this particular moment, it closes up. It stops. Writing is indeed very mysterious."[12]

Once started, the literary work takes its own path. Writers often say that the narrative leads them, which does not prevent them from fighting for the right words. Andrée Chédid compares writing to “clay, to a river which flows like this and that I architect. I wrote The Sixth Day six times.”[13] Thus there would be a main stream that the writer would mould and rework, playing a puppet game with his characters, being both their puppeteer and their puppet. Obviously, there is no single way of taking up a story and reaching its end. Some let the story lead them and do not know where it is going, how it will end, whereas others have everything planned before they begin and put the story in writing. Claude Roy "writes to be able to read what [he] did not know [he] was going to write." (quoted by C. Gagnière[14]).

What changes with the disappearance of the sheet of paper in favor of the computer screen is the way one writes and organizes the narrative. Word processors have made it a lot easier to make changes, using the cut and paste function for example. Where one needed notes, arrows, scribbles, erasures in a handwritten manuscript, had to retype dozens of pages on a typewriter, a simple click on the mouse makes the text take the shape the writer wants it to have.

But whatever the writing instrument is, writers have one thing in common: passion. Passion for writing, for which most writers claim they have a physiological need. They would not be able to consider a life with no pen and paper, typewriter or computer to write out the world that is hidden in the back of their mind. They expressly feel the need to clear their head or they would probably go insane. Some are more pragmatic and pretend that it is the only thing they can do. Ilan Duran-Cohen, author of Le Fils de la Sardine (2000], says that writing is "a way to find his oxygen" which he cannot find in the stifling world that surrounds him[15]. Writing is part and parcel of his life even though "[his] biggest problem is that he can only write only when he is depressed […] when life is beautiful he doesn't do anything." Numerous writers need to be in a certain state to write. The practice needs time and discipline, which many lack of but nonetheless find necessary.

What matters is writing and being published. A writer does not limit his gesture to writing; in his mind he goes all the way to the book, he assumes he will be read and he wants to be read. Hence, thousands of unsolicited manuscripts are sent to French publishing houses. Only two or three of them are published each year in a house such as Gallimard. The problem is different in England and the United States since no unsolicited manuscript is even read if received by a house (important ones). Writers must first find and go through an agent to get a chance to be published.

2. On the stake of the printed book in relation to the text

Ultimately, one writes to be read. Whether one writes about his own life, a fiction or anything else, it is made to be read even if the writer is not conscious of it right away. It is not forcibly aimed at being read and not forcibly to be read by an editor so as to be published and read by hundreds or thousands of people. Your audience can be just your neighbor, your friends, your parents, your teacher, but it is bound to be read at some point of its own life.

Who does the writer write for? Ezra Pound answered: “for the most intelligent reader I know.”[16] Every writer makes up an ideal reader in his mind – who does not exist but acts as a referee. This reader, who ultimately personifies in the content editor during the publishing process, is used as a guide. It helps to fix the limits. D. Lachaud[17] says that he thinks about the reactions he does not want to prompt and not the other way around. The ideal reader does not exist but it does not mean that a writer does not write for someone in particular. Stephen King, for instance, bases his narrative, his way to assemble words on what he thinks his wife would enjoy reading.

Between the moment when the writer inscribes the last word of his narrative and that when the first reader opens the finished book, a real transformation of the work has taken place. The typescript has not only become a real book, with all the physical changes it implies, but it has undergone a kind of metamorphosis – although as we will see later on the degree of this varies from one writer to another, one editor to another and also one book to another.

The writer’s work is acknowledged only from the moment it is published. For Michel Tournier, an unpublished work is only what he calls a "half-book". It fully exists only from the moment it reaches the hands and mind of a reader. Importance of the “paratext” defined by Gérard Genette as “what makes a text a book and presents itself as such to its readers and more generally to its audience.”[18] The way a book is presented – its typography, the quality of paper, cover design – conditions first the purchase of the book, then how the reader is going to apprehend the text of the book. Hence the material aspect of the book is quite important. Somehow it is what differentiates a book from a movie or a text read on the computer via the Internet, or even on an e-book. The relation of the reader to the book is determining. It is not only a matter of telling a story and calling out the reader’s imagination, but also an appeal to sensations. To feel the page under one’s fingers is part of “the experience” of reading, as looking at the cover of the book gives one an indication of what is in it – however slightly though this is.

There would the life of a book start, in the hands of the reader.

3. The book as a “different” commodity

The book is the support of our civilization. It is based on it. We have been able to retrace human history mostly thanks to the written word. Furthermore, the Christian world – thus our everyday life – is the result of one of the most famous books: the Bible. Without these writings and what is taken to be Jesus’ word (taken somewhat as a proof of his existence), we might not be living in the 21st century today but following the Chinese century system. Our whole approach of our environment would be different. Claude Gagnière for that matter makes another connection between book and religion as he writes that "the civilized man needs books as he needs God: to foil death and oblivion, to feel immortal."[19]

Like the Bible and the many interpretations that have been made of it, “A book does not have one single author, but an indefinite number of authors. Because with the one who wrote it, all those who read it, have or will read it add up rightfully to the creative act.”[20] This is an idea shared by many writers, such as Paul Nizon and Paul Auster. Like the author, the reader creates a world of his/her own, with a sensibility, an environment particular to a factory worker, a dentist or a secretary. Each person reads a different story and each reading of the same book by the same person can turn out to be different too. A book is therefore a very personal object which gives us, readers, the opportunity to get to know ourselves more deeply and/or to open ourselves to the outside world.

What also distinguishes the book is that, by the stimulation of imagination that it provokes and by the facts it sometimes reveals, it is an instrument of freedom, therefore it represents a threat to anybody tempted by any kind of control over the population. Writing was developed partly to extend the power of invaders on the conquered as it was quite difficult to control a tribe or a society without close supervision assessed by documents. But writing soon changed sides. Roger Chartier, in his Histoire de la lecture, emphasizes the part of Napoleon III as a censor forbidding the spreading of the chap book in the second half of the 19th century, so as to cut back the expansion of reading in the country. Others have turned the virtually unavoidable phenomenon of the democratization of reading to their advantage and used it as a propaganda instrument.

The case of Salman Rushdie is one emblematic instance of the power a book can acquire. In 1988, the British house Viking Press published Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. A few weeks later, in Bradford, Islamists burnt a copy of the book and on February 14th, 1989, Ayatollah Khomeiny launched a fatwah against him: any good Muslim is to kill the author as well as his publishers and translators. Rushdie was then forced to hide and can only move around accompanied by an army of bodyguards. His Japanese translator will be stabbed to death in 1991, both his Italian and Norwegian translators were attacked and seriously wounded, and his publishers were threatened with death – among whom French publisher Christian Bourgois. Iran thus showed the intolerance of the regime in place in this country and acknowledged and established fiction as an enlightener, as an instrument of power in the hands of the people that should be censored by the authorities. Curiously, Rushdie's previous book, Shame, which denounced a particular form of Islam a lot more explicitly, was awarded a prize in Iran about a month before the fatwah. It seems that the fatwah did not the expected effect for the book since instead of reducing the import of the work, it enhanced a general outcry against any form of censorship and the Iranian fundamentalist regime in particular. Along with Taslima Nasreen, and Bangladeshi woman writer against whom a fatwah was launched in 1993, Salman Rushdie has become the symbol of literary resistance of the turn of this century.

As Bradford (England) fundamentalists showed by burning a copy of The Satanic Verses, the book is a most fragile object. The very materials it is made of condemn it to certain death if not taken care of. It can easily be burnt, torn, cut, eaten away by time and moths. But the fragility of the book is also its strength. It finds defenders, whether it be in relation with censorship or with the advent of new technologies and the e-book in particular, in all kinds of social environments. As Melvin L. Defleur emphasizes it, "books remain the most respected medium of communication."[21]

But what makes this object so special might simply be this fact: “The book is a piece of silence in the hands of the reader” (Pascal Quignard)

III- The editorial and graphic chains

1. On editing and publishing

Robert Escarpit summarizes the mission of the publisher in three verbs: to choose, to make, and to distribute. He selects a manuscripts from hundreds, he transforms the typescript into a book, and ensures the distribution of the book in the different bookstores of the country. But his job does not stop there: in order to have the book known and to sell it well, he must promote it. In the traditional scheme of publishing, the publisher is the contractor-producer who obtains texts that writers-achievers supply for money, who then, for money still, obtains service from a manufacturer who is the printer and who transforms the texts in a number of marketable objects – books. It is then up to him to market those books and to get back, on consumers, the money invested even if it means passing on part of these benefits to the writer as a sign of the privileged link the latter keeps with his/her work.

The first job of an editor – or an assistant editor - then is to chose a manuscript among the hundreds that a publishing house receives that he deems publishable. According to editors, there is no fixed rules about manuscript selection. A few French companies work with agents who know what this particular house is interested in and the typescript might have more chances to get published. This is the case in North America and Great Britain, but the concept is still relatively new in France. If the manuscript arrives by mail, there is no apriorism about the quality of the work but for its physical appearance. Generally, if the author of the manuscript has done a proper job in targeting the right publishers for the kind of work he sent out, there is no reason for it not be at least read. Afterwards, it is a matter of affinity between the editor and the text. If it is accepted for publication by the reading committee, the editing strictly speaking can actually start.

“In fiction, the editor’s hand must be as light and as accurate as the hand of a very good surgeon as he probes the intricate network of veins and tissues, cutting away what should come out without cutting anything vital and making sure the patient will live, in a healthier condition,” Joan Kahn wrote[22].

The publisher has a certain prestige, a certain image in the eyes of authors as well as the public in general. Whether the writer wants it or not, the selling of his/her book will partly depend on the name of the publisher. The editor’s job is to act like a mirror to the writer and his/her text. Hubert Nyssen[23] compares the work of the editor on the text to maieutics, that is the revelation mechanism. Yet, despite the importance of the editor’s work and influence on the final book, he keeps in the background when it comes to the acknowledgement of the work by the general audience. The publisher, all the more so the editor, scarcely appears in the spotlight when the book comes out – aside from the publisher of the Nobel prize of the year maybe.

2. On the author-editor(-publisher) relationship

When a manuscript is chosen by an editor and a publisher, accepted for publication, it is hardly on rational ground. Editors all confess that would not be able to set a kind of list of requirements. Of course there is a house editorial policy and the publishing house is often specialized in an area or a style, but the selection of a manuscript depends mostly on the reader and later the editor. If an editor wants to publish a writer, he is most likely to fight for it. And if he has fought for it, he will be all the more involved in the editing process. A manuscript and its author are chosen; the author has sent his manuscript to houses he appreciated. Now they must work alongside. Olivier Cohen, from the French publishing house Editions de l'Olivier, compares work on the manuscript to "a house that you like a lot but is not complete yet. Still you buy it and make construction work in it."[24]

The author-editor relationship can only be particular, since they exist because the other one exists too. There is no editor if there is no writer to provide him with material to work on and publish, and there is no author ultimately speaking if there is no editor-publisher, as a work is considered as in existence only if it comes in the form of a book. Thus there is an interdependence of both.

These relations can become complicated as soon as the editor’s job starts on the writer’s manuscript. First of all, an author's manuscript is a very personal work, on which many fastidious hours have been spent. The investment in terms of human energy and emotion is tremendous and whatever the extent of the editor's influence on the final book, the relationship between the author and his assigned editor will be quite important. The editor is the first external reader of the work. When the writer rereads what he has written, he sees what he believes he has written, that is what he imagined when he wrote. But it is not necessarily what can actually be read on the page and the editor is the first reliable judge of this. Whether it is the title that needs to be changed or a part of the text that has to be edited out, the writer who does not have the necessary distance can hardly accept what the editor considers as the right thing to do – which can also end up going against the intention of the text.

This is why the author-editor relationship is based on trust. Trust and honesty, of one towards the other. In The Publishing Game, Anthony Blond described this situation in these terms: “The wise publisher should never presume to offer judgment as a connoisseur of literature, but see himself as the author’s converter, in the sense that a calico printer ‘converts’ grey cotton cloth. He must explain to the author that he represents the public because he has to sell to the public and that it is only on these grounds, and not on questions of style, that criticisms are offered. This way they are more palatable to the author and should be swallowed.” The editor must get into the writer’s mind and see how best he can help the writer put it into a legible and understandable form for the reader.

Obviously, though, not all relations between an editor and an author are the same. Marie N’Diaye and Pierre Vidal-Naquet[25] have – or had – the same editor in the same French publishing house Les Editions de Minuit in the person of Jérôme Lindon, but describe very different realities as far as work with the latter was concerned. While N’Diaye claims that Lindon never asked her to alter her manuscript, Vidal-Naquet asserts that sometimes he had to rewrite everything or the editor himself did it. It seems to be all about striking a balance – if one has a way to put it right.

Part of the publisher's job is to make the author understand that from now on, that is from the moment his/her typescript is published and issued on the market place, he/she belongs to another world than his own lonely, narcissistic universe of writing. While the writer is a unique piece and should be treated as such by his editor and publisher, he is part a whole system of communications and media and the little contribution he has made to this world by the book that has been processed his only one part of the web in which many other people, books and factors gravitate. Thus, in the madness of the start of the literary calendar in September, among the hundreds of books that are published, a very few of them will get all the attention. And whether it is justified or not, a lot will go unnoticed and end up selling only half of what has been printed – and will later be pulped. Even without going all the way to pulping, a writer always expects his work to sell relatively well in its field, and it is at this point that the publisher's diplomacy and transparency towards its authors are tried. Once extracted from the quasi-monastic life of writing, the writer finds himself in the midst of editorial unrest and needs to be comforted by a perceptive and communicative human environment.

Henceforth, the literary fish pond will be inspected with a magnifying glass: each writer is accompanied, demanded for, joins such and such "stable". The publisher becomes a friend, a counselor, a banker for his/her authors. He/she chooses them, creates a review for them (see the NRF – Nouvelle Revue Française – created by Maurice Nadeau for Gallimard)[26], guides them, pushes them in the race for awards. Awards which often mean the acknowledgement by peers and the public that leads to larger sales.

3. From the mailbox to the bookstore

Assumption: the writer delivers the typescript of his/her first novel to a publisher or sends it through the post-office to submit it for publication. He/she can also call on an agent, in which case the approaching process is quite the same since he/she will have to find someone who accepts to represent him/her to publishers.

Once in the publisher's office it goes throught the "office of manuscripts" where manuscripts are sorted out according to the manuscript presentation, a skimming through of a few paragraphs or pages. Publishers are haunted by the fear of missing the next Proust, like Proust was missed in his time so this process is quite special. We will not be able to check if the new Proust has slipped out of big publishers' hands before a number of years but we already know the latest Nobel Prize in literature did. At this stage, the manuscript is rejected or directed to an editor who decided or not to have it read by a reader.

The reader then writes a report. It goes to the reading committee, is rejected, sent to another reader, or accepted for publication. The author is invited to meet the publisher and his/her editor who has been assigned.

Once accepted for publication, an editor is appointed for the follow-up of this particular book and this particular author. Alterations, rewriting, etc are made. At this stage, or before, depending on the house policy, an estimate is made about the cost of the book manufacturing. A contract has not necessarily been signed – it is done now or the house decides not to publish the book.

When the different parties have agreed on the conditions of the publication of the manuscript, the latter is sent to a copy-editor who will send it back to the author and the editor for another reading. It is then sent to composition and page proofs are addressed to author and reader. They in turn return them to the typesetter. Press proofs (of the whole book or a few pages) are addressed again to the editor, an ultimate reading is submitted to the proofreader. Once the printer receives the pass for press from the editor – who has had the author’s go-ahead –, the actual manufacturing of the book can start.

Then begins a series of actions that has not much to do with the artistic process of the writer such as spreading of the rumor preceding the publication date so as to create a curiosity in the little world of publishers and literary reviewers, who receive advance copies. The author still has to write the text that will appear on the fourth cover. When this is done. Stacks of book are then sent to the distributor's warehouses in which they are stocked until the official publication date; date by which they will have been transported to the bookstores by the firm put in charge by the publisher.

The success of a book depends on many factors. The part of the mass media is dominating. A good review in a major magazine can get you thousands of sold copies and, at the same time, a disastrous appearance in a tv show can be very damaging. The personality of a writer imports a lot more than it used to in the success of a book. Whether it be extravagant, mysterious, cold or spiteful, it shows in the interviews or articles – that is for the few ones that are chosen each year by the media. In the fall, hundreds of fiction books are issued and ninety-nine percent of them will remain anonymous.

[pic]

"This was Ludivine Perruchon introducing her latest book"

IV- The glossary

1. Problems met

For a time the title of my work was not definite as the research I had undergone had not yet allowed me to make a clear distinction between the two English words corresponding to the French verb "éditer": editing and publishing. It turned out that after a while, "editing" imposed itself as the right translation as far as the subject matter of my dissertation is concerned.

My first intuition was to entitle my work "book publishing", as "editing" seemed a word too morphologically similar to the French "éditer" to be acceptable. Therefore I looked closer into what I wanted to examine in the publishing world so as to address such a field as would be pertinent enough to justify a work of this sort while determining whether I would use the word editing or publishing.

There already are many books dealing with books and their phenomenon. One more – though I do not claim to write a publishable work here – would not make much of a difference if it just compiled the sum of documents that I was to be able to find in libraries or other research facilities. The goal was then to look for what was not in books and see what I could do with it. Yet I had to be realistic enough to know I would mostly have to make do with a theoretical knowledge of the industry since however numerous the professionals I was to contact I did not expect to gather enough material to write a glossary exclusively thanks to the answers these would give me. My predictions turned out to be right to my great regret.

What I have set about doing is to limit my study to the process of selecting and editing manuscripts the personnel of a publishing house (also to be briefly defined in the following glossary[27]) are involved in, including such topics as the drawing of contracts and proofreading. For a matter of convenience but also of necessity I focused on the publication of literary works, that is to say, works made out of text, excluding any kind of graphic elements. Still, the definition of a framework for the glossary I worked on was no easy task as the publishing circle is a very moving world, in the sense that each link in the chain of a book publication is dependent on each of the others. They may not have the same level of importance but all together they interact so that a book will be a success or not – editorially, artistically, as well as commercially. The typescript to be published goes from hand to hand and from the moment a writer drops his manuscript into a mailbox or at a publishing house to the appearance of the finished book on bookstore shelves, the text has been submitted to numerous transformations. This is what I intend to analyze in this dissertation, focusing on the part visible by the writer making a kind of What every writer should know about having his work published, trying to include jargon of the craft and to demonstrate how important the attention of the author is in this process. I therefore chose to gather this glossary keeping in mind the writer's point of view, what he/she should be informed of or would be interested in knowing about is going to happen once he/she decides to publish. This explains the relative subjectivity of the glossary, as I have tried to put myself into the situation where I would like to publish my work and what I should do about it.

2. Analysis and reflection on the glossary

The content of the latter paragraph implies and claims, so to speak, the non-exhaustive character of this glossary. I do not pretend that it covers the whole field of editing and publishing. I only intend to make the manuscript submitting and editing clearer. Yet I have had to go a little further than that in specifying what goes where and why. And I have to admit that I found it difficult to set a border not to cross and to define the exact frame of my work. For this matter, I decided to stop at the publication date of the book. What goes on afterwards – promotion, autographing sessions etc -, since it is no longer part of the editing process, is not included even if the writer may be involved.

As mentioned above, the gathering of information was no easy matter but I expected it to be this way. A couple of people from the trade replied to my letters very kindly and said they could not see anything really special about the vocabulary of book-editing. This is obviously not what I think but it had the advantage to convince me of one thing: the English language is a lot richer than French, more specific. For instance, the nouns "editor" and "editing" come in a variety of forms and can be found preceded by a number of different adjectives or nouns such as assistant editor or senior editor. The problem is that there are a few words I needed to include in the glossary for which I did not find any translation. This for different reasons: either the term simply does not exist in English or in French or the phenomenon has not come to France yet. Therefore I had to find so-called translations, that are not official but can make sense. These are signaled by quotation marks, whether it be the English headword or its French equivalent. Another difficulty I had to face was that I was not able to find quotations for a number of words (which is understandable for the English translation of French words that I had to put in), but this does not that mean they do not exist of course and I decided to include them anyway.

Besides, I also took the liberty to include a few words inside the articles that are not part of the glossary, in the sense that they are not headwords. They do not appear in the index either. The reason for my putting them in the articles is that I thought they were complimentary of the headword they are associated to but not necessary to understand the craft. It is only about fulfilling the curiosity of some of us.

3. An article

The glossary works as follows:

Each article shows at least the English headword on the right and its translation on the left.

Here is an example of what an article looks like and what you can find in it.

[word number]

headword syntactic indicator translation of headword s.i.

Field [Sources of translation]

DEF: Definition of the headword

CIT:

Quotation in English

Author of the quotation

Translation of the quotation from English into French

Ant. Antonyms

Syn. Synonyms

( see headword…

Other cross-references are signaled by a * at the end of each word that can be found in the glossary. The list of words at the end of each article is not definitive. It makes reference to a few words, which in turn can refer to other words, which in turn…

4. Codes and abbreviations

Table of Abbreviations – Table des Abréviations

n. noun / nom

f. féminin

m. masculin

n.pl. noun plural

v.t. transitive verb / verbe transitif

v.i. intransitive verb / verbe intransitif

Br. British

trad.p. traduction proposée

US American

DEF Definition

CIT Quotation in context / citation en contexte

Ant. Antonym

Syn. Synonym

American Book Publishing Website American Book Publishing

Aubert Interview Anne Aubert

Australian Publishers Website Australian Publishers' Association

Barnard Barnard, Michael. Dictionnaire des termes d'imprimerie, de reliure et de papeterie.

Berthelot Berthelot, Jacques. Edition et techniques éditoriales.

BNCanada Website Bibliothèque Nationale du Canada

BookZonePro Website Book Zone Pro

Burak Burak, Sylvia. The Writer's Handbook.

Calcre Website Calcre

Collin Dictionary of Printing and Publishing. Peter Collin Publishing.

CUP Indiana Website University of Indiana

Dict. Term. Website Grand Dictionnaire Terminologique

E&E Ecrire & Editer

Earthscan, Notes for Authors Website Earthscan

Website Editorial Service

EEICom. Editorial Services Website 'Editorial Eye'

Feldman Feldman, Tony. Dictionnaire des termes d'édition.

ISBN International ISBN Agency. Publisher's International ISBN Directory.

Jdl Le Jour du Livre.

Legendre Legendre, Bertrand. Les Métiers de l'Edition.

Lesauteurs Website Les Auteurs

Mondelo Mondelo, J.M. Du Manuscrit au livre.

Morà Morà, Imre. Publisher's Practical Dictionary in 20 Languages.

Morfouace Morfouace, Pauline. Le comité de lecture: Traitement des manuscrits, démarchage des éditeurs, lettres de refus, récupération des œuvres: enquête sur les services éditoriaux.

Neal Stephenson Website Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson

Notaras Interview Kelly Notaras.

Orne Orne, Jerrrold. The Language of the Foreign Book Trade: Abbreviations, Terms, Phrases.

OUP Notes to Authors Notes to Authors – Oxford University Press

Website Pneuma Books

R&C Robert & Collins Senior.

Schuwer Dict Schuwer, Philippe. Dictionnaire bilingue de l'édition.

Schuwer Traité… Schuwer, Philippe. Traité pratique de l'édition.

Website Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc.

SGDL Le Feuilleton, revue de la SGDL.

Viaux Interview Frédéric Viaux

"What have you done…" Website 'Speculations'

by Elizabeth Waters

What's What's What.

WIPO Website World Intellectual Property Organization.

The Writers' Union of Canada Plaquette

Writing-World Website 'The Writing World'

Glossary – Lexique

A

[1]

AA/AAs n. correction(s) n.f.(pl) d'auteur

Editorial work sur épreuves

[Schuwer Dict, Dict.Term.]

DEF : Abréviation de author’s alterations*

Note: La traduction par CA semble être possible mais l'abréviation existe déjà pour "contrat d'auteur*".

Ant. PE

( AC, alteration, proof

[2]

AC/ACs correction(s) n.f.(pl.) d'auteur

Editorial work [Schuwer Dict, Dict.Term.]

DEF : Abréviation de author’s corrections*

Ant. PE

( AA, editing, proof

[3]

accept v.t. accepter v.t.

Manuscript submission

DEF: Prendre volontairement.

CIT:

Authors* – please note that we do not accept any of the following types of books*: cookbooks […], children's books with color illustrations (Harry Potter narrative youth books are OK), art, photo or design books.

American Book Publishing "Manuscript Submission"

Aux auteurs* – veuillez prendre note que nous n'acceptons pas le genre de livres* suivant: les livres de cuisines […], les livres pour enfants avec des illustrations en couleur (les romans pour la jeunesse comme Harry Potter sont admis).

Ant. reject, refuse

( agreement

[4]

acceptance n. acceptation n.f.

Manuscript submission [Schuwer Dict, E&E]

DEF: Fait d'accepter.

CIT:

On his acceptance of the terms* we will send him a contract*.

Dictionary of Printing and Publishing. P. Collin Publishing

Dès acceptation des termes de sa part, nous lui enverrons un contrat*.

Note: Dès acceptation du manuscrit* par l'éditeur*, le processus éditorial se met en marche et l'auteur* est contacté afin de voir les détails du contrat* et des évènements à venir.

Ant. refusal

( agreement, contract, manuscript, reading committee, submission, typescript

[5]

acceptance letter n. lettre n.f. d'acceptation

Manuscript submission [Morfouace]

DEF: Note envoyée à un écrivain faisant état de l'acceptation* de son manuscrit* par un éditeur*.

Note: Une lettre d'acceptation n'engage par un éditeur à publier le manuscrit envoyé.

( refusal letter, submission

[6]

acquiring editor n. responsable n.m. d'achat et acquisition editor n. de vente des droits

Publishing house [Collin, Jdl]

DEF: Personne en charge de l'acquisition et de la gestion des droits des œuvres publiées par la maison d'édition dans laquelle il est employé.

Note : ( "acquiring editor" est un terme américain.

( Le responsable d'achat et de vente des droits s'occupe notamment des relations avec les maisons d'éditions et agents littéraires étrangers.

[7]

add v.t. ajouter v.t.

Editorial work [R&C, Feldman]

DEF: Inclure de nouveaux éléments dans un texte.

Ant. delete, kill

( addition, edit

[8]

addition n. addition n.f.

Editorial work [Dict. Term., Collin]

DEF : Ajout effectué sur le texte* au stade des épreuves*.

Note: Parfois abrégé et appelé "add".

Ant. deletion

( alteration, annotation, paste-on, proof

[9]

advance n. à-valoir n.m.

Contract avance n.f.

[Berthelot, Schuwer Dict]

DEF: Abréviation de advance on account* et advance on royalties*

CIT:

The author* may receive advances from the publisher* before book* publication*, but almost all the money comes much later from royalties*.

Understanding Mass Communication by M.L. DeFleur, p. 65

Il se peut que l'auteur* reçoive des à-valoir de l'éditeur* avant la publication* du livre*, mais presque tout l'argent vient beaucoup plus tard avec les droits d'auteur*.

( contract

[10]

advance copy n. 1 . bonnes feuilles n.f. pl

Book production [Schuwer Dict]

DEF: Exemplaire d'un livre non encore distribué*, envoyé à certaines personnes, comme les journalistes littéraires, pour critique.

CIT:

The marketing department needs twenty advance copies for the exhibition.

Dictionary of Printing and Publishing. P. Collin Publishing

Le service commercial a besoin de vingt bonnes feuilles pour le salon.

Syn. folded sheets, review copy

2. exemplaire n.m. témoin

[Schuwer Dict]

DEF: Exemplaire soumis à l'éditeur pour approbation avant le bon à relier.

[11]

advanced proofs n.pl. premières épreuves n.f.pl.

Book production [Schuwer Dict]

DEF: Epreuves non corrigées.

( proofreading, printer

[12]

advance on account n. à-valoir n.m. sur droits

advance on royalties n. [Berthelot, Collin]

advance royalties n.

Contract

DEF : Somme versée par l’éditeur à l’auteur avant publication comprenant les droits d’auteurs* à venir et fixée par le contrat d'édition*². 

CIT :

Advance royalties and general payments to the author present the editor with an economic responsibility to the authors not to bankrupt them by encouraging them to think that they can support themselves by writing*.

Editors on Editing by Gerald Gross, p. 17

Les à-valoir sur droits comme toute rémunération de l'auteur* donnent à ce dernier une responsabilité économique par rapport à l'éditeur*, qui est de ne pas le ruiner, en encourageant l'auteur à penser qu'il peut subvenir à ses besoins grâce à l'écriture*.

Note: ( L’à-valoir versé à la signature du contrat ou à la remise du manuscrit reste acquis à l’auteur même en cas de ventes insuffisantes pour couvrir les différents frais.

( Abrégé en advance*

[13]

advances n.pl bonnes feuilles n.f.pl.

advance sheets n.pl. [Schuwer Dict, Collin]

Book production

Syn. advance copies (1)

( folded sheets, proof

[14]

agency n. agence n.f.

Manuscript submission [Schuwer Dict]

DEF: Abréviation de literary agency*.

( literary agent

Annexe Address book - Carnet d'adresses

[15]

agency contract n. contrat n.m. d'agence

Manuscript submission [trad.p.]

DEF: Accord passé avec une agence littéraire* concernant la recherche d'un éditeur* et divers aspects de la gestion des droits* d'un manuscrit*.

CIT:

An agency contract, for example, may provide that the agent* will continue to handle the unsold rights* to a property the agent has handled, should a writer* leave the agent. This is not what would happen without the contract*.

The Writer's Handbook by Sylvia K. Burack, p. 565

Un contrat d'agence peut, par exemple, prévoir que l'agent* continuera à gérer les droits* non vendus à une propriété que l'agent a géré, si un écrivain* quittait l'agent. Ce ne serait pas le cas sans contrat*.

( agreement, literary agent, manuscript submission

[16]

agent n. agent n.m.

Manuscript submission (Mondelo, Schuwer Traité…)

DEF : Abréviation de literary agent* ou agent littéraire*.

CIT :

Effective agents are valued for their contacts in the publishing industry*, their savvy about which publishers* and editors* to approach with which ideas, their ability to guide an author*’s career and their business sense.

1997 Writer’s Market... by Kristen C. Holm, p.10

Les agents efficaces sont estimés pour leurs contacts dans l’édition*, leur bonne compréhension de quel éditeur* ou directeur littéraire* aller voir avec quelles idées, leur aptitude à conduire la carrière d’un auteur* et leur sens des affaires. 

( agency contract, literary agency

[17]

agented adj. représenté adj.

Manuscript submission [Trad.p.]

DEF: Qui est pris en charge par un agent littéraire.

CIT:

Accepts* only agented submissions*.

The Writer (07/01), p.54

Accepte* uniquement les soumissions* représentées.

Ant. unagented

( agency contract, author, manuscript

[18]

agreement n. contrat n.m.

Contract [Schuwer Dict]

DEF: Accord entre deux parties, au minimum, définissant un certain nombre de règles à suivre.

Syn: contract

( agree, publisher's agreement

[19]

allonymous adj. allonyme adj.

[Berthelot]

DEF: Qui a été écrit* par un écrivain* utilisant un pseudonyme*.

Note: Ne pas confondre avec anonymous*.

( ghostwriter

[20]

all rights reserved n. tous droits réservés n.m.pl.

Resources [Dict.Term., Orne]

DEF: Mention apparaissant sur tous les livres* publiés* qui fait état de la protection des droits* de l'auteur*.

Note: Symbole ©

( copyright

[21]

alter v.t. modifier v.t.

Editorial work [Schuwer Dict., Dict.Term]

DEF: Apporter des modifications à.

( alteration, correction, cross out, read, proofreading, write in

[22]

alteration n. correction n.f.

Editorial work modification n.f.

[Schuwer Dict]

DEF: Apport de rectifications et de changements.

CIT:

Usually the contract* between author* and publisher* stipulates how much of the cost of alterations in proofs* (including both galleys* and pages*) the publisher is to pay – for example, 10 percent of the cost of setting* the original type*.

Manual of Style, p.76-77

Généralement, le contrat entre l'auteur et l'éditeur stipule la part payée par l'éditeur sur le coût des corrections sur épreuves (comprenant placards* et épreuves en première*) – par exemple, 10 pour cent du coût de la composition d'origine.

Note: En anglais les "alterations" sont des corrections faites par l'auteur ou l'éditeur, les "corrections" sont celles faites par l'imprimeur.

( alter, author's alterations, correction, PE

[23]

anglicise v.t. angliciser v.t.

Editorial work [Dict. Term.]

DEF: Adapter ................
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