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Wish Us Luck!

Note from NDSU Press Publisher Suzzanne Kelley

Will we take Gold or Silver? Or maybe one of each or two of one–since one of our titles is a finalist in TWO categories: History and Multicultural! Whatever way, we’re fine with the outcome! This Friday, April 26, 2024, the Independent Book Publishers (IBPA) Award winners will be announced during the dinner and ceremony being held in Denver, 6:00 to 9:00 P.M. CDT. This celebration of “the best in independent book publishing” is an exciting gala to attend for publishers and authors alike, but alas we cannot be there in person. Instead, you’ll find us tuning in at 8:15 P.M. CDT, as that is when the hosts will livestream the announcements via their Facebook page.

And who is our charmed finalist author? Historian John M. Shaw, whose debut book is garnering great attention! NDSU Press published In Order That Justice May Be Done: The Legal Struggles of the Turtle Mountain Band of Pembina Chippewa, 1795-1905 in July 2023. We hope you’ll tune in to the award announcements, too, and maybe even cheer us on!

 

In Order That Justice May Be Done is available from our NDSU Press online store, Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Amazon, and your favorite independent bookseller.

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Every Book Has Its Last Chapter

Note from NDSU Press Publisher Suzzanne Kelley

This morning the news is all over town, blasted on the front page of our newspaper and filling our Facebook threads: “Zandbroz Variety, home to whimsy and charm in downtown Fargo for 33 years, will close in June.” 

Our whole community of readers is pasting and posting the news, waxing nostalgic for the significance of this integral space in our downtown. It’s the OUR that has us reeling. Reminiscence after reminiscence declares the personal touch the store’s proprietors and staff and bookstore dog (shout-out to Willow) have had on its customers. When we cross the threshold and step onto the wooden floor, we know we’ve entered a welcoming and enticing domain.

Every book lover knows that last chapter is coming. With that same dread and enchantment, we watch the Danzes make their exit.

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Good Prose: On Reading, Writing, & Publishing in 2024

Note from NDSU Press Publisher Suzzanne Kelley

Recently, Lonna Whiting, Communications Consultant for The Arts Partnership, asked member partners and artisans what books they liked best from 2023 and what they plan to read in 2024. I replied to Lonna with updates about some of our NDSU Press titles–past, present, and future–in an interview she published in the Arts and Entertainment section of The Fargo-Moorhead Forum, “Check out this list of the best reads for 2023.” We’re thankful for the attention provided to our press publications.

Lonna’s query got me to thinking about other kinds of reading that I conduct over the course of a year. As my TBR list for 2024 grows, I cannot help but think about books read previously–manuscript submissions under consideration for publication and books that help to inform which books we acquire, books that aid us in the professionalization of our work at NDSU Press, books that help us to stay au courant in the machinations of the publishing industry and in trends of scholarly and literary nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and translated publications. 

As the editor in chief for NDSU Press, I have the privilege of reading heaps of manuscripts before they come to the publication stage. Working through submissions can be a daunting task as we now receive more than one hundred submissions annually. I count my lucky stars to have the assistance of Dr. Kyle Vanderburg, Composer in Residence and Assistant Professor of Practice in the Challey School of Music. Kyle, a recent graduate of the Certificate in Publishing and a published composer, assists with our online submissions portal by tracking submissions, securing blind peer reviewers, and taking part in the first reads of submissions. 

Because our press has a regional mission, we are steeped in works about our state and the northern plains region. Happily, I love reading such works! But when I want to escape responsibility for edits and marketing, I reach for books outside the scope of our mission, but often within the scope of publishing as a field of study.

It’s hard to narrow my favorite reads from 2023 to just a few, but I’ll start with my top choice: Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver—a fabulous story that I did not want to end! I also loved Also a Poet, by Ada Calhoun, which I listened to as an audiobook. Calhoun’s biographical-memoir about her father (and her relationship with him) mesmerized me with her reading and her inclusion of audio excerpts from old-fashioned tape-recordings preserved from when her father was a younger man and she was just a child. I’m choosing, too, The Editor, by Stephen Rowley, a sweet, farcical fiction on the relationship between author and editor, with his editor being none other than Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

I’ve just finished reading Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction, by Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd. This memoir by an author and his editor is a lovely back-and-forth narrative about building relationships and trust. The subtitle says this book is about the “art of nonfiction,” and it is, but my biggest takeaway is that the book is about the art of being a writer working with an editor and vice versa. Particularly on point for me, the editor, is a comment from p. 157: “[T]he ability to preserve the distinction between the writer and the writing is a skill the editor needs more than the writer does.” Kidder thus reminds us of the vulnerability of the writer, and that–as an editor–I must be cognizant of that vulnerability at every turn, because the distinction between the writer and the writing is not one that the author is always capable of making. The chapter called “Memoir” is one I especially recommend! 

I generally begin my New Year’s picks for reading by going to the National Book Awards winners and finalists, but right now I have on my desk two titles next in the queue. First up is The Pages, a novel by Hugo Hamilton that I just picked up at Full Circle Books. Described on the jacket as a “formally inventive novel,” with a storyline that takes place in the 1930s and is about “a book–a 1924 edition of Joseph Roth’s masterpiece Rebellion–[that] narrates its own astonishing life story.” I am intrigued by the notion of a book as narrator! Hamilton’s writing drew me in, and so did his connections that focus on censorship…apparently a timeless topic. Next on my TBR list is Index, A History of the, by Dennis Duncan. The perfect play of an index entry in the title won me over, and I’m eager to see how this story unfolds.

In addition to books, I subscribe to The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and Publishers Weekly, all of which keep me up to date on current writing trends and topics and new and not-so-new authors in fiction and nonfiction. With these resources, I’m always spying new books for my reading list. AND, I’m always looking for recommendations from readers! Feel free to reply with YOUR recommended read. 🙂

 

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Our Semester Ends with Something New . . .

Note from NDSU Publisher Suzzanne Kelley

All good things must come to an end, but that does not mean the end of all good things. Yesterday–our final exam day for the Intro to Publishing–closed with brief and not-so-brief presentations from each of the thirteen students. Beginning with our graduate students, we learned new information through cutting edge research and two how-to (and how-not-to) segments, all three presentations bringing new insights to our understanding of the publishing industry. The graduate student presentations were followed by a round of three-minute book summary presentations. Every student chose a book related to publishing, sometimes broadly construed. Students were asked to select from fiction or nonfiction genres on virtually any topic grounded in the publishing industry. Their formal reviews will soon make it to our Books on Books page at this NDSU Press website.

Dibyanshu (pictured above) started off the presentations with the topic of Artificial Intelligence and Publishing. Working on his PhD in Computer Science, Dibyanshu combined his interests in technology with his interests in publishing. Since the publishing industry is driven by the latest technologies, this match of interests made for perfect exploration.

One of Dibyanshu’s findings is that there is little scholarly research published to date on what he identified as the “Artificial Intelligence Taxonomy for Publishing.” The data he collected and shared–which we might hope will find its way into a scholarly publication–was most informative, outlining attention to technologies, applications, and benefits.

Abbie, our second presenter (pictured below), is a college lecturer in writing (and a mom and a former hockey player), a freelance editor, and a nonmatriculating Certificate in Publishing graduate student. (She may be joining us next fall to work on her PhD in English.) As each of the presenters’ topics were related to their individual interests plus the publishing industry, their personalities and subjects turned out to be beautiful blends of study and articulation. Abbie outlined benefits and pitfalls for authors who self-publish books, and she provided keen insights for the discipline of writing. 

Mike (pictured below), our Graduate Research Assistant in Publishing and also a poet (and film production manager from his undergrad program at Concordia in Moorhead), melded his research with the prospect of publishing poetry as video and audio productions. He selected a poem, “December,” from our recent publication of Mark Vinz’s The Trouble with Daydreams: Collected and New Poetry. Collaborating with one of last spring’s graduates of the Certificate in Publishing, Mike worked out musical sequences and film production, adding Mike’s voice overlay. In the picture below, Mike shows how to “storyboard,” or visualize, the video production process. May I never forget the day when Mike came to my office, excited to show me footage he had collected for the project, flashing through brief videos on his cell phone and sharing each scene and its potential. 

Our last moments in class included (pizza and homemade pumpkin rolls and) individual book talks from each of the students. Jamie got us started with Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing, by John B. Thompson (published by Polity). Briefly (although the book is anything but brief), we learned about the author’s theories on how “the idea of the book” has changed over time. Each student’s presentation will eventually land on our Books on Books page. 

It is sad to see the semester draw to a close, and yet we are all glad for a breather. We also congratulate the students who are graduating this semester. We laud their good work, and we’ll miss seeing them in the classrooms. Whether the students are continuing on to the Practicum in Publishing or leaving campus, I’m confident they can field questions about the history, business, and practice of small press and university press publishing, and they depart with ideas about new trends in AI and publishing, poetry published in video form, and self-publishing.

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A Good Day to Give

Today is the perfect day to contribute in large or small ways to the work we do at NDSU Press. ALL of our production, marketing, and distribution are dependent upon sales and donations. Your contribution is most appreciated. Please help us in our efforts to give region a voice.

Follow the link below to Arts and Sciences and choose NDSU Press Endowment. THANK YOU.

https://bit.ly/NDSUPressGivingDay23
#NDSUPress #NDSU #NDSUFoundation

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Keeping a Close Eye on Fonts

Note from NDSU Press Publisher Suzzanne Kelley

Breanna (at right) and Megan scrutinize each font’s every twist and turn in their mystery collection.

Our 2023 Introduction to Publishing class has just returned from its Braddock Expedition. While at The Braddock News Letterpress Museum, located on the grounds of the South Central Threshing Association, NDSU students were tasked with a number of activities under the tutelage of Leah Burke and Allan Burke. The museum collection of fonts is magnificent, replete with multiple cases full of alphabet and punctuation pieces. The fonts are mostly formed of metal, but some are wooden and large. A few of the font styles are italic; some are bold. Each case contains lowercase and uppercase fonts of a single type. Previous classes and volunteers have sorted the type so that there is only one style per case, a detail-oriented task that has taken place over time in order to organize the collection. Now, students and volunteers are tasked with the detective work of identifying the measurement and name of each type style. 

Type Gauge Tool

There are tools–physical, printed, and digital–to help the students determine the size and style of the type case they are assigned. Beginning with the Type Gauge Multi-Tool, students insert a sample piece of type to determine the height of each font. Font heights are measured as “points,” there being approximately 72 points to an inch. A size 36 font is about one-half inch, and a size 12 (typically used for Word documents) measures at 12/72 of an inch, or, about 1/6 of an inch. (OK, that is enough math.) 

 

Sara, shown here using digital means to narrow down her font identity search.

A digital resource our font detectives enjoy using is Identifont, one of many free options available for finding font families. Identifont asks questions such as, “Do the characters have serifs?” If the answer is yes, then the next question might be, “What style is the upper-case ‘Q’ tail?”

Each question the students answer leads them to the next narrowing-down clue, much like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure kind of book. Students can also make use of type-face identification books held in the museum library.

Ella and Mike study a printed font-style resource.

 

Once the students identify the font style in their type case, they have the great fun of setting type, using their fonts to name the type in their case, and thus building pages for a museum catalog in progress. 

 

Some mistakes were made. It is not easy to set type to “read wrong” and “print right.” (Yes, these are the technical terms.) Here, we see that a first try at typesetting and printing the font identity and size needs a little work.

 

Fortunately, our mistakes are easily corrected. (Maybe not completely in the first try. Can you see the extant error?) 

 

Check out this brief video, where you’ll see that Anish (in the blue jacket and yellow tee) and Abby keep at the task until everything reads right.

Mission accomplished! 

Among other assignments on site this past weekend at The Braddock News Letterpress Museum, all students had their try at identifying fonts, typesetting, and printing. Our hands-on learning experience illustrated how typesetting and printing were done at the turn of the twentieth century and provided a plethora of new-to-the-students terms for the art and process of letterpress publishing. (They also learned about the magic of Gojo.)

We so appreciate our community-university partnership, teaching students (new and) old ways of publishing, while providing aid to the collection management at The Braddock News Letterpress Museum. Special thanks go to Tracy and Paula Moch–who kept us fed and hydrated (and to Johanna for her delicious homemade brownies)–and to Allan and Leah Burke, who kept the training and tasks a’coming! Leah, in all those years of running the newspaper business, you may have missed your calling as a teacher! 

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Bus to Belcourt With Us!

We hope you’ll join us, July 27, 2023, for this historic event celebrating the appointment of Denise Lajimodiere as North Dakota’s Poet Laureate!

We’ve arranged for free transportation departing from and returning to Bismarck and Fargo for this single-day event. There is no cost to attendees. RSVP BY MONDAY, JULY 24, TO SUZZANNE AT NDSU.Press@ndsu.edu. There is limited seating available, so please RSVP ASAP!