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MELISSA KIMBALL

Intern at Dzanc Books

   Melissa Kimball is a current student at Florida State University. She's majoring in English with a concentration in Creative Writing, and she is also working towards the Certificate in Publishing and Editing.

   Melissa's life goal is to become an author, but, for now, she's aiming to break into the publishing industry as an editor in order to pay the bills. Her internship with Dzanc Books has been an invaluable introduction into the world of publishing and has helped narrow down what kind of editor she wishes to be.

SHORT BIO

BASIC INFO

i

Active:

Fall 2017

Publishing House:

Dzanc Books

Total Word Count:

6,034

Responsibilities:

Evaluating contest submissions and manuscripts; creating a mock-list of seasonal catalogues; attending weekly Skype conference calls with the Editor-in-Chief of Dzanc Books

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bio
Editing Work
EVALUATING CONTEST SUBMISSIONS

   This semester, Dzanc held an open contest for works of fiction. Novels, novellas, short stories, and poetry could be submitted. My job was to evaluate and vote on these submissions.

   I was asked to read thirty to fifty pages of each novel-length work submitted or the title story as well as two other short stories in each collection. Then I had write a short evaluation that touched on topics such as its publishing potential, audience/reader experience, and whether the work was a good match for Dzanc Books. I was also encourage to explain what was and wasn't working for me within the story and where/when I would have stopped reading and why.

Evaluations

Between the Mind and Sky

Santa Monica

Writing Madness in a Time of Terror

Riding the Number 7

Elaborate Preparations for Departure

Pandora's Snap-Top Clutch and Other Stories

Moses and Ronald Reagan are Beautiful and Other Stories

MANUSCRIPT EVALUATIONS

As an acquisitions editing intern, I was assigned manuscripts that had been submitted to Dzanc Books. My job was to read one hundred to one hundred-and-fifty pages of a novel-length work of fiction, or at least three short stories from a  collection, and then write up a one page evaluation.

In the evaluation, I was to write a summary of the title, a prediction on what kind of audience the work would have, give any comparative titles I could think of, and weigh its publishing potential.

MUSIC
WORD COUNT:
2,132

Seasons

 

Fall: Four titles

            August: The War of Unpleasantness by Carrie Hayes

            September: The Snow Collectors by Tina May Hall

            October: Transcendent Gardening by Ed Falco

            November: Captain Clive’s Dreamworld by Jon Bassoff

 

Winter: Four titles

            December: Iris Season by an established male author

            January: What We Do With Our Grown Children by a female author

            February: That’s Why God Made Men by Sean Murphy and Between Your Eye and Mine by J. Mae Barizo

 

Spring: Eight titles

            March: Between the Mind and Sky by Lydia Ship and Choke Box by Christina Milletti

            April: Something Less Fragile Than Love by a debut female author and The Penitent Man by a debut male author

            May: Murder Your Darlings by David J. Fleming and Crazy Mountain by Elise Atchison

            June: For What It’s Worth by Thorsten Nagelschmidt and translated by Time DeMarco

            July: I Carry a Map that Falls in Love with the World by Patrick Lawler

 

 

            Reasoning

 

            Fall: The fall season is for the big sellers. Returning champs and amazing debuts should be released in August, September, November, and October. Books are considered old news after about two months, so the best-sellers should be released just before the holiday season to make it onto the wish lists.

 

 

            August: The War of Unpleasantness by Carrie Hayes

Hayes’s novel is a great way to kick off the fall season. This genre-bending story takes place during the Civil War and deals with themes like poverty, dysfunctional families, and female sovereignty. With a clairvoyant protagonist and an author who has masterfully recreated the early 1860s, this book is sure to pique interest in readers across genre lines. Plus, August is full of military-related national holidays, so August is the perfect month for this book’s release.

 

            September: The Snow Collectors by Tina May Hall

Hall’s novella is another trade book that will benefit the fall season. Hall’s short stories have been widely published and awarded the 2010 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, but this will be her debut into longer narrative works. Centered around a writer who finds a body in the woods behind her home, The Snow Collectors is perfect for audiences who love thrillers and mystery stories. Hall’s writing style and focus on characters will also appeal to readers of literary fiction.

 

            October: Transcendent Gardening by Ed Falco

Falco’s novel about a mass-murderer is haunting and creepy enough to be a perfect fit for October. Falco’s dedication to creating empathetic characters will have readers understanding the logic of killers and will appeal to any who love mystery and crime novels. Even lovers of true crime stories would appreciate the way Falco turns a disturbed man into someone relatable by describing the events leading to one of America’s worst crimes.

 

            November: Captain Clive’s Dreamworld by Jon Bassoff

Bassoff’s sixth novel is this fall season’s star seller. Bassoff is a proven seller, and he hasn’t shifted from his gothic-noir roots in his newest story. Captain Clive’s Dreamworld centers around a deputy who is sent to be the police force in a utopian town without crime. With such an interesting plotline and a beautifully-crafted utopia that is hiding an ugly secret, this novel will draw readers from Bassoff’s established fanbase and newcomers interested in mysteries and dystopian societies. Bassoff has already had a novel translated into other languages, has been nominated for prizes, and has had two of novels adapted for the big screen. Captain Clive’s Dreamworld has a lot of potential and will be released right as the holiday season is kicking off, so it will be fresh in the audiences’ minds when compiling their wish lists.

             Winter: The winter season is a bad time to release books. Booksellers want proven sellers rather than debuting author or experimental works. Short stories and poetry collections do well during this season, however.

 

 

            December: Iris Season by an established male author

Dzanc will be kicking off the winter season with Iris Season, a collection of short fiction by an established author. Dzanc has published two other short story collection by this author, so even though the winter season is often pretty dead, this collection will still garner sales. As a proven seller, December is the perfect month for Iris Season’s release because it will take advantage of both the winter travel season and the last-minute shopping season. The short stories are perfect for plane rides and, coincidentally, the theme of this collection is travelers of all varieties. With a release in December, the collection will also be open to professor curating required texts for the spring semester, which will generate even more sales.

 

            January: What We Do With Our Grown Children by a female author

This short fiction collection has already been shortlisted for the Pushcart Prize for its title story, so even though the other shorts in this collection range from traditional to experimental, this female author has already proven herself sellable. This author also has another published collection. What We Do With Our Grown Children will be kicking off the new year and will be perfect reading for the end of the winter traveling season. This author may have another collection in development that Dzanc could possibly acquire at a later date, too.

 

            February: That’s Why God Made Men by Sean Murphy

Instead of sappy love stories, cliché rom-coms, or dime-store paperbacks with Fabio half-naked on the cover, why not publish a short story collection for the bitter, single people this Valentine’s Day? That’s Why God Made Men feature shorts that explore toxic masculinity in our everyday lives. Murphy’s narration, characters, and perspectives on masculinity are compelling, thought-provoking, and perfect for every woman who does not need a man this February. Of course, this collection isn’t only for women; these shorts explore an issue that is very prevalent in modern society. It isn’t male-bashing but rather insights on men by a man. Murphy has been published across a wide range on magazines and newspapers, so it is obvious he can articulate both sides of a conflict in a way that doesn’t step on any toes. Murphy’s other fiction has also been widely published, so he has accrued a substantial audience.

 

            Between Your Eye and Mine by J. Mae Barizo

February is also Black History Month, so it is the perfect time to release Between Your Eye and Mine, which features a woman of color and investigates how the many layers of cultural identity inform the spaces one inhabits. This novel is perfect for readers of literary fiction. Barizo’s style may experimental and diverse, but it is closing off the winter season, and it will still crossover well into the spring season. Barizo is a fellowship and award-winning poet, critic, and performer, so she will also have a large network of potential reviewers to choose from.

 

 

 

            Spring: Unlike the winter season, the spring season is the time for all those debut authors and experimental novels. This is also the season where light reading, works about traveling, short stories, and coming of age novels should be released. Dzanc, personally, is all about the weird and experimental, so the house should use this season to the fullest.

 

 

            March: Between the Mind and Sky by Lydia Ship

Lydia Ship kicks off the spring season with Between the Mind and Sky, a shot story collection that uses strong feminine leads to explore the influence of media, religion, death, and female culture. Because March is Women’s History Month, these themes and characters will have a stronger impact. Ship’s previous stories and poetry have been widely published, and this collection will readers who like thought-provoking evaluations of prevalent cultural issues set into a fictional background.

 

            Choke Box by Christina Milletti

As another release timed with Women’s History Month, Choke Box explores the darker side of motherhood—that of filicide, the act of a parent killing their child. Milletti tackles this taboo subject by taking the reader through this mother’s life and the events that led her to her breaking point. The subject matter and the unreliable narrator makes the novel somewhat experimental, and although Milletti has had her short stories published by many journals and anthologies, Choke Box would be her debut novel, which make March the perfect time for its release. Plus, although it’s a little early, Choke Box would be on the shelves in time for professors updating their required reading lists for the summer and even fall semesters. Milletti, being an Associate Professor of English, would be able to assign it for her classes, too. If the edits, following tradition, are to be done seven months earlier, they would take place in August, which, although it isn’t the best time for a professor, it would still be at the beginning of the fall semester before any larger, time-consuming project need to be graded.

 

            April: Something Less Fragile Than Love by a debut female author

April is definitely the month to release Something Less Fragile Than Love for two reasons. First, the poems follow two women, E and M, and their unstable lives, and, although April isn’t Women’s History Month, Dzanc could still take advantage of the timing by publishing this title right after March. April is, however, National Poetry Month as well as National Poetry Writing Month. Therefore, this collection will be able to profit off the best of both worlds. Seeing as how about two-thirds of the collection have been previously published, it’s fair to say that this title will do well in sales.

 

            The Penitent Man by a debut male author

The Penitent Man belongs in the spring season, and more specifically April, because it is both a collection of poems, and the poems are quite experimental. Each poem was inspired by a prominent work of fiction, and the poems are written over the shoulders of the protagonists. Because April is National Poetry Month, the sales of this collection will already be boosted, but this debut author does a wonderful job to copy the original style from which the poem was inspired and would appeal to lovers of a wide range of classic fiction.

 

            May: Murder Your Darlings by David J. Fleming

As a work of literary fiction, Murder Your Darlings would benefit from a May release date because May is Mental Health Awareness Month. What better way to explore the mind and its shadowy corners than a novel following the rich characters of a group of ambitious MFA students trying to make a name for themselves in the literary world. Because literary fiction is character-driven and therefore has to delve into what and why characters make decisions, this title fits with a May release despite lacking a homicidal maniac or anxiety-ridden protagonist. This novel also explores the darker side of literary fiction and the writing process as a whole, which will attract readers who enjoy unconventional stories and characters.

 

            Crazy Mountain by Elise Atchison

Crazy Mountain fits Mental Health Awareness Month to a T. The short story collection is a great way to kick off one’s summer vacation. Each short focuses on one character who has lived on Crazy Mountain, one of the mountains in Montana. They take place between 1970 and 2015 and paint an interesting and extended portrait of the community of people who live in such a remote area. Atchison, who also lives off the grid in Montana, has had other stories and book excerpts published in varying journals and anthologies, and Crazy Mountain has already received an artist grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for work in progress.

 

            June: For What It’s Worth by Thorsten Nagelschmidt, translated by Time DeMarco

For What It’s Worth is the perfect novel for the summer traveling season. Following the traveling journey of a bartender, Nagelschmidt beautifully paints the world around the main character. It’s the perfect book for anyone with wanderlust or anyone currently traveling to fulfill it. This title has been translated from its original German, and Nagelschmidt has three published novels and a fourth coming out in February 2018, so it is obvious that he can sell. Anyone who enjoys reading about other cultures or self-discovery will love this book.

 

            July: I Carry a Map the Falls in Love with the World by Patrick Lawler

Lawler’s collection of short stories is another perfect title to close out the summer travel season. The shorts are light-hearted yet substantial, so they’re easy to read in a plane, car, airport, or just lounging by the poolside. Lawler does a great job of mixing humor with prevalent social and political issues in a way that gives readers a fun yet meaningful experience. Lawler is a returning author with a novel, other short stories, and four books of poetry previously published. Releasing this collection in July would also give professors time to include it into their reading lists for the upcoming fall semester.

FALL, WINTER, AND SPRING CATALOGUES

   My final project for my Dzanc internship was to create a mock list of catalogues for the fall, winter, and spring seasons based on the list of elevator pitches and author bios given to me by my supervisor. This list included the manuscripts that were evaluated this semester as well as a few titles on Dzanc's waiting list.

   To compile these catalogues, I had to evaluate each of the twenty titles given to me and first separate them by season and then by month. Each season has their own advantages and disadvantages for different types of works, and so I had to back up each catalogue with the logic I used to place them. To separate titles by month within a season, I had to determine different ways the work could be marketed and once again explain my logic and convince my editor-in-chief why they would sell well where they'd been placed.

   In the end, I would have a year list of about sixteen books and my explanations for their placement.

Dzanc Internship Final Project

Final Letter of Evaluation

A final letter of evaluation from my internship site supervisor has been sent directly to Dr. Hand.

Evaluation

This is a great place to tell your story and give people more insight into who you are, what you do, and why it’s all about you.

SELF-

     As a Creative Writing major, I am not required to do an internship, but I had planned to do one anyway since my freshman year at Florida State University. I waited until the end of my college career because I hadn’t felt like I was ready to enter the cutthroat world of publishing, but I was also waiting for an internship opportunity with a house rather than with a magazine or newspaper because I do not enjoy reading or writing articles. Therefore, I was very excited to finally see Dzanc Books on the list of internships linked with FSU.

     A former roommate of mine did an internship with Dzanc Books in the summer of 2017, and she was the one who helped me get a spot as an intern for the fall semester. I was automatically weary going into the internship because I’ve often found myself in classes and seminars involving writing or editing that have not lived up to my expectations. My former roommate also warned me that Dzanc published books that were not similar to the kind of books we both enjoyed reading. Dzanc specializes in the nontraditional, experimental stories. Still, I knew I’d be reading novel-length fiction that had been submitted to an actual publishing house, so I decided to go through with the internship anyway. If anything, I’d get experience out of it.

     My responsibilities as an intern were similar to what I’d imagined. I was an acquisitions editor, which means I was the editor that read the manuscripts that had been sent in for the first time. I was expected to read the first one hundred pages of each manuscript, and I’m not sure if that was because of Dzanc’s own policy or because I was an intern, but, from what I’d learned in my editing classes at FSU, acquisition editors read, at most, thirty pages, but usually not more than ten. The job of the author is to hook the acquisition editor within those first few pages, and part of me felt like reading such a large chunk of the manuscript colored my evaluations. By one hundred pages, I would be invested in it—even if it was only because of the time I’d put into it already. I also would have found bits and pieces that I loved even if they were a few handful of diamonds buried in the mud. I understand that manuscripts have the potential of getting better and that only reading the first dozen pages might mean you’d turned away a future best-seller, but, more often than not, the manuscripts simply weren’t ready for publishing. After reading one hundred pages, however, it made it harder to say that. The publishing world is cutthroat, though, and I feel like reading such a large chunk of a manuscript wastes not only the acquisition editor’s time, but the entire house’s as well if a less-than-stellar title makes it through the first round when it’s not ready.

     This past fall, Dzanc also held multiple contests for varying types of fiction including novels, short stories, and poetry. In the end, most of my time as an intern was spent reading and evaluating contest submissions. For these, I was to read only thirty to fifty pages and give a brief evaluation as well as vote thumbs up or down. I appreciated the shorter reading requirement; it meant I could get through more submissions more quickly, but I also felt like it was easier to evaluate them because I wasn’t trying to review a huge chunk of unedited prose. And, although I’d signed up for novel-length fiction, I found myself reading a lot of short story collections. Short stories have never been my favorite reading material, but I found the ones I had been assigned mostly interesting and engaging.

     My final project was to draft up a year list of titles for the fall, winter, and spring seasons. This was my favorite assignment of the internship because it required a lot of logical thinking and marketing analysis. I had to separate titles based on what kind of fiction they were, what they were about, who the authors were, whether they had work previously published, and what jobs they had. All of this metadata I’d compiled then had to be organized and sorted. Each season has certain advantages and disadvantages for different kinds of fiction. For example, the fall season is the season where best-selling authors and amazing debuts should be released because it’s right before the holiday season. I also had to separate the titles by month within each season, so I had to do research on every month in the year. A short story collection about female empowerment should be released in March because the spring season is a great season for short stories, and March is Women’s History Month, which adds a possible avenue of advertising. An author’s job was also important because a professor getting their book published would have to do their own revisions about seven months prior to the release date, and if the revisions happened to fall within a busy school month, a missed deadline could possibly impact the editing process. It was interesting to see how complicated the process of compiling seasons is, and it was fun trying to predict how and when a book would sell best.

     Every Monday, I was required to attend a Skype conference call with my supervisor and a handful of other interns. In those calls, we received our instructions for that week’s assignment, but, more importantly, my supervisor would give us a lecture on different aspects of the publishing industry. My favorite topics were the descriptions of each type of editor. There are so many, and depending on what type of house you go into, each type can be responsible for different things. I learned about acquisition editors, developmental editors, copyeditors, and proofreaders. I learned the process each manuscript has to go through, from submission to shelf. I learned how small houses operate compared to big houses. I learned about the other aspects of publishing—marketing, graphic design, legal, agents, contracts, payrates, and networking. I learned so much more about the industry than I have in all of my editing classes at FSU combined.

     Most importantly, I learned that I do not want to be an acquisitions editor. The manuscripts are often too rough right out of the gate. I’d rather work with the authors directly as a developmental editor, fuel my grammar-obsessed brain as a copyeditor, or exercise my eye for detail as a proofreader. Most of all, I learned the importance of finding the right house for me. Dzanc Books was a great first internship, but in the future, I will be looking for internships that deal with the genres of fiction that I love reading.

SELF-EVALUATION

Contest Evaluations Total Word Count: 2,142

Manuscript Evaluations Total Word Count: 1,760

Final Project Total Word Count: 2,132

Overall Total Word Count: 6,034

RESUME
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