The Castle…of Oz?

© Jean Lefebvre 2013

Followers may remember that last year I also worked on a book with mathematical physicist-theologian John Polkinghorne, derived from a year’s conversations we had about his views on eschatology (i.e. nothing less than the life and death of humans, animals and the universe!). It took a long time to edit down the 60,000-word transcripts to a book of five chapters and 31,000 words, but John was pleased with the result and eager to find a publisher. Given John Polkinghorne’s high profile, I felt pretty sure this was going to be an easier ride than George Calderon: Edwardian Genius. However, John wanted to observe the etiquette of approaching publishers ‘seriatim’, i.e. one after the other, whereas I tackle them in fives, and this has prolonged things rather — but I don’t think there’s much doubt it will be published commercially at some time.

After well substantiated rejections from two of John’s previous publishers, I decided to tackle a publisher of short books on ‘spirituality’ and ‘progressive christianity’ that I had found on the Web and that looked very promising. I went to his website (the publishing firm bears his name), found the series in question, and was directed: ‘Please go to Author Inquiry and fill out the form.’ After living in Soviet Russia, I find the word ‘form’ somewhat depressive. The ‘form’ was actually only an eleven-item template. Nevertheless, in retrospect I find the choice of this word profoundly revealing of its author’s mindset.

There were only ten boxes to complete in the template, but some of them naturally demanded a hundred words or more, e.g. About the Author(s), Your Previous Books, Brief Description of Your Book, Any Endorsements. The most surprising feature, however, was that you were invited to ‘attach your manuscript’. I have never known this for an initial approach before. But our manuscript was ready, so I attached it (after a small problem: the programmer had not allowed for upper case file names, which were rejected).

The wall of words about ‘Submissions’ told me that ‘we’ would be ‘getting back to you within days’, and ‘they’ did, saying: ‘interested, need some more detail, which is the next stage, a Proposal, click here’. The words ‘next stage, a Proposal’ bemused me, because the information I had given, together with the entire manuscript, was a Proposal, or would be construed as such by every other publisher I know. However, I clicked the prompt and…a vast and wondrous world opened before me.

I was sent to a distinctly under-designed page of 17 chapters and Appendices, entitled ‘Publisher System Manual’, clicked on chapter 1, ‘The Proposal’, and a magnolia of eight sub-prompts bloomed, including ‘How to complete the proposal’, which was just ‘an invitation to provide us with a little more detail’. When I went to the template for that, it contained twenty bullet points, of which one particularly caught my eye: ‘Supply a minimum of 5000 words [‘a little more detail’!] describing what your book is about’ (but see above: Brief Description of Your Book). Incidentally, at one point the verbiage itself referred to the Author Inquiry as ‘your proposal’.

I had reached a ‘damping’ moment like the one I described in my previous post. Filling out this template and supplying 5000+ words written by John Polkinghorne and myself was going to take ages. I needed to go into mental training before tackling it.

In the meantime, a ‘Publisher at Large’ rang. This is a relatively recently evolved species. They are experts in their field, probably get paid very little, but they are far cheaper than employing editors and the honorific probably appeals to them. The trouble is, they have no power. They are merely middlemen between the author and the publisher, whom they themselves never see. This Publisher at Large was a very nice clerical chap and we had a conversation lasting nearly an hour about the book. He liked it and seemed to think the publisher’s readers he was going to find would like it. Terrific!

A few days later, he rang again. Not only did the readers like the book, but X, the Publisher, wanted to publish it. But there was a problem, the Publisher at Large told me. X said that I hadn’t ‘joined the database’, by which he meant signed up through the Proposal. Well no, I said, because evidently the Author Inquiry, with the whole manuscript, was enough for X to decide he wanted to publish, so it was now time for X to make John Polkinghorne and me a proposal. Ah, right, he would tell X that.

If readers have followed me this far, they may be feeling as I did by then, that this database you had to ‘join’ was as mysterious and impersonal as Kafka’s Castle (see above) and X himself as shadowy a figure as its owner, since it was impossible to communicate directly with him or any other servant of the Castle save the ‘Publisher at Large’… The whole experience was becoming surreal.

But perhaps I am just revealing my advanced Foginess again? Perhaps X is not a figure out of Kafka at all, but a benign little old fairground man who manipulates his intimidating, borderless database as the Wizard of Oz did his voice and image? Perhaps if I stopped ‘over-reacting’ about his cyber-castle, this wise old Wizard of Oz could teach me something I need to know to ‘bring me into the twenty-first century’?

Alas, no. The Publisher at Large came back with the reply from his master that I had to complete the Proposal (for a book already accepted), ‘join’ his database, collect my ID and password, and submit a ‘minimum of 5000 words describing what your book is about’. Since John Polkinghorne is eighty-eight, disabled, and no longer physically able to write, but his mind is as sharp as ever and he speaks brilliantly onto tape, which is then transcribed, he and I decided not to set off up this particular Yellow Brick Road…

Seriously, though, friends, what does this all amount to? Personally, I am amazed that after forty years of personal computers being in common use the websites of organisations like Nielsen UK ISBN and Publisher X are still so primitive. They seem to have been designed and programmed by sociopathic amateurs addicted to length and their own loquacity. These designer/programmers have never heard of Occam’s Razor (‘entities are not to be multiplied more than necessary’); on the contrary, they practise, one might say, Botcham’s Beardificator, producing hirsute fiorituras of luxuriating otiosity…

I call such creations ‘sociopathic’ because they display no evidence whatsoever that their designer/programmers have taken the user into consideration; that they care how difficult the average person may find interacting with them, or how much time he/she will expend on trying to use them. They have never asked themselves how their customers think, or how precious their customers’ time may be.

In fact, such websites are designed to make the customer do the work, rather than the organisation that is supposedly providing the ‘service’. Yet the websites are so inefficient that, presumably, large numbers of under-paid people have to be employed on their Help Desks (which is a benefit for them, but only up to a point). I find the relatively recent idea that profits should be maximised by making the customer do as much of the work as possible — if not torturing him/her to death — profoundly patronising.

A corollary of the fact that large areas of our economic life seem not to apply Occam’s Razor to design and verbal expression is that they have also lost track of Time. One could fritter away days wrestling with Nielsen UK ISBN or X Publisher. Paradoxically, it seems to be precisely the invention of computers that has led to this — at least, in the sense that so many businesses and institutions seem unable to use computers efficiently. Twenty years ago if I wrote to an official on Cambridge City Council I got a letter back within ten days. If I send such an official an email today, I never get a reply. Most institutions seem not to be able to cope with email.

The experiences I have meldrewed on about in this and my preceding post remind me of the ever-expanding, mind-destroying pretensions of current British and EU copyright law. There must be something wrong and vulnerable about a society that has lost its grip on words, regulation, time and cyber-space. The unfitness for purpose, the inanity and logorrhoea that we are exposed to in our attempts to communicate online actually undermine our viability as a society. They must, surely, be part of the elusive explanation for Britain’s notoriously low productivity. It occurs to me that the armed forces may be the only institution left that operates in real time (at least, I hope they do).