I will be stopping at the Barnes and Noble closest to our college to ask if they would sponsor our competition with some prize money (I am hoping for $500, but will gratefully accept less) or Barnes and Noble gift cards. However, my goal was to contact a publishing company who might not only fund the prizes but offer one of their editors to review the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winnners’ submissions in each of the two categories and to offer the students some constructive criticism.

Could you offer any contact information for any of the large publishing companies in their public relations or community relations departments–hopefully with a name, title, phone number or email address?

This competition would be through our SCC College Foundation, which is a 5013(c) non-profit so contributions would be tax deductable.

Thank you.

I want to share my short experience with this anoying place, yes that one on Fifth Ave. between 17th and 18th street, at the fourth floor, yes with the manager of Human Resources. As a job seeker, I applied for a job call, it was   entitled as Editor. The job’s description was wrong, because they were looking for an Editor Producer or Production  Assistant at least. Anyhow, I submit my resume and got an interview request sooner than usually is nowadays, when you are luky enough. This manager made me lost my time and frustrated. She called me because she has nothing else to do, I think. She has no idea what is publishing, not even, I am sure, has read a book in her life in any language.

For me this was the one and only experience I would have in this place. I don’t think I will ever buy a book over there in my life.

Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing (TM): Hi, Sandra. I don’t know what happened to you on the 4th floor in Human Resources and B&N, Inc. My interactions with Human Resources were always fine. That said, as I read your email and struggled a bit with your sentence structure, I realized that English was your “second language.”  Imperfect sentence structure and punctuation when writing or editing would handicap you as an editor of books written in English. That might have been the problem. (Great shot of New York City from Weehawken, New Jersey on your Web site. Most people don’t know about that spectacular view!)

Jim

I spent so many years at the far end of the pipeline, in the frontline bookseller trenches at an independent (and I’ve known so many frontliners who labored on B&N’s sales floors) that I sometimes forget there are these islands in the sky where things move and things shake.

For some reason, your post made me think of the Edward Gorey classic, “The Unstrung Harp: or, Mr. Earbrass Writes a Novel.” At one point, Mr. E. delivers the manuscript to his publishers, Scuffle & Dustcough, and Gorey describes the building as follows: “The stairs look oddly menacing, as though he might break a leg on one of them. Suddenly the whole thing strikes him as very silly, and he thinks he will go and drop his parcel off the Embankment and thus save everyone concerned a good deal of fuss.”

Later, at a “literary dinner,” Mr. Earbrass continues to bemoan his fate: “The talk deals with disappointing sales, inadequate publicity, worse than inadequate royalties, idiotic or criminal reviews, others’ declining talents, and the unspeakable horror of the literary life.”

That’s Gorey in 1953. God bless us every one.

And welcome to blogland!