Publishing, Independence, and Original Intent

I kept trying not to write this post. It started as blurb in the newsletter about acquiring the rights to Handwoven Home and releasing a new digital edition, but then I kept thinking about the wonders of publishing and ran out of room to wax poetic. I’m still not sure this subject is post worthy, but it has been a minute since I’ve posted and I feel the urge. Perhaps this is also an act of creative procrastination.

What set all this off was, not re-releasing Handwoven Home, but a surprise request to pop into the Long Thread Media Podcast to talk about A Weaver’s Guide to Yarn. When I first started to create content for weavers, I shared what I had learned from strictly a discovery point of view. This is what I learned, let me tell you about it. Then the questions came pouring in. The more I wove and wrote, the more questions you asked. I learned by listening, responding, then repeating the cycle. The Yarn Guide is a result of answering your questions, which I’m grateful you asked.

Beginnings

I was enamored with the craft of publishing from an early age. I read the imprint page of books, magazines, and liner notes with great fascination. My first journal included an imprint page. Rather than listing myself as the “author”, I somehow thought “editor” was more appropriate. I was already into the revision before I even placed the copy on the page.

Stumbling into the world of publishing was perhaps the best happenstance of my life. I am an extremely unlikely editorial material. My strengths run more towards the gift of gab and leaping into the deep end to see what happens.

There are all kinds of editors—acquisition, developmental, managing, assessment, copy, technical, line, etc. I spent most of my career as the sheepdog of editors, which in Interweave’s world meant “managing.”  Good pages need teams.

I’m only able to write because I’ve spent so much time reading, and growing up I was surrounded by people who read. (I’m currently reading, or rather listening, to Ann Patchett’s Whistler, which speaks to the way we edit our lives. The writing is solid and there are meta references to publishing.)

Point of View

I’m interested in the history of people, places, and things, often letting my gaze fall behind me rather than in front. I have never been on trend and that, perhaps, leans in my favor.

As I continued to write about weaving, I still veered towards the aspects of weaving that interested me, thinking that was what interested everyone. The more I studied the craft, the more I saw the material from the reader’s point of view. You can’t write for everyone. If you pay attention, you learn who your readers are and if you are actually interested in writing for them. I would say that my readers are deeply curious people about the “why”, but only to the extent that it allows them to get past their roadblocks and “keep weaving”. Like me, many hold a deep respect for the craft that extends beyond their loom. They want practical information that speaks with wonder and respect of making cloth by hand.

When Melissa of Yarn Barn of Kansas introduced her selection of A Weaver’s Guide to Yarn as one of her books off the beaten path, I have never heard someone reflect back to me my intent. “I think the thing I love about this book is that it follows the mental process I go through when I am selecting yarn. When I picture selecting yarn from literally thousands of options here at the Yarn Barn, this book gives them [weavers] the tools to eliminate things that aren’t going to give them a great experience.” What I heard was my intent of creating a book that walked the uninitiated through the maze of information that is yarn without making them afraid of it. That it took in your point of view.

Becoming an Author

My first book was born of a practical problem. Interweave needed a book that brought people into the craft through the rigid-heddle loom. A book that didn’t necessarily have breadth, but encouraged you to stick your toe into the water and want more. They already had on their backlist Betty Davenport’s, Hands On Rigid Heddle Weaving, which was published in the 80s. It was a book that had breadth and depth. Betty’s two books—once self published and one by Interweave—were a result of her Certificate of Excellence from the Handweaver’s Guild of America and a testament to what the rigid-heddle loom could do. We tried to get Betty to update the book, but she wasn’t interested in going back. She was onto many other joyous pursuits.

The need was still there, Jane Patrick, who edited Betty’s book with Interweave, picked up the rigid-heddle mantle and carried it forward. Jane would write The Weaver’s Idea Book, in all its breadth-y glory, and I would be given the opportunity to give weavers a way into the craft with as few barriers as possible. The result was Weaving Made Easy. (Not my choice for a title, but that is the collaborative nature of publishing.) I’ve been doing this work ever since.

During my tenure at Interweave, I was offered the opportunity to do a lot of television work. Yes, television—HGTV, DIY network, PBS—not online streaming. I pursued a certificate in video production and got half a masters in adult education. It was this trifecta—publishing, video production, and adult education—along with the nearly ten years of publishing expereince that set me up for the rest of my career.

After moving on from getting my paycheck from publishing, I found myself in a new state and working as a full-time weaving teacher, which involved a lot of writing and travel. Deciding I need a personal focus, I set out to weave something for every room in my house. That turned into Handwoven Home the book, which made its way through many publishers’ hands through acquisition, finally landing at Random House along with Weaving Made Easy.

Copyright, Author’s Right, and Publishing Agreements

Copyright law was designed to give creators temporary legal control over their work as a way to encourage authors to share their work with the public. Article I section 8, clause 8, of the Constitution speaks specifically to the value of originators retaining the right to their work. Publishing houses saw an early commercial opportunity to allow individuals to do more with their work than they could, perhaps, do alone. This was particularly true when printing a book or journal meant the huge expense of printing in the 1700s. There are many worthy works that would either not have seen the light of day or would not be the works they are without the assistance of a good editor. For those who are interested, I found this short essay on the history of publishing on the Independent Publisher’s website, formerly Small Press magazine.

Copyright favors the works that are written down. According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office:

“To be eligible for protection under the Copyright Act, a work must be fixed in a ‘tangible medium of expression.’ A literary work, for example, can be fixed in a book or on the back of an envelope. A musical work can be fixed in sheet music, on tape, or in a digital file. A work of visual art can be fixed on a canvas, and a sculptural work in stone.

Copyright protection does not extend to ideas, procedures, processes, systems, methods of operation, concepts, principles, or discoveries. Copyright protects only the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. This principle, sometimes called the ‘idea-expression dichotomy,’ ensures that protection will extend only to the original elements that the author has contributed to a work, not to the work’s underlying ideas, which remain freely available to the public.”

In the weaving world, this means that my written pages are eligible for copyright, but my actual weaving may not be. Unlike a sculpture wrought from stone, weaving is based on hundreds, if not thousands, of years of documented structures, claiming originality for any structure is a strech. The exclusion of “process” also plays a role in the eligibility of woven cloth for protection. The written documentation including section of yarns, sett, color, layout, applied process, beat, finishing, photography, illustration, etc. does quality for copyright status.

Who owns what and what is original can be a great source of angst, confusion, and misunderstandings. There are a whole lot of interwoven laws regarding work for hire vs. side projects. If you work for a publisher, they could lay claim to the work you produce, even if you create it when you are not at work. This relates more to copyright than patents. (This conundrum is often encountered in the world of tech and code writing.) If you enter into an agreement with a publisher, then your shared rights are governed by a contract. If you are releasing content on your own platform, you retain all rights automatically—read the agreement between you and any digital platforms you may use, there may be language in there about what rights they may have to share your work. Individuals can strengthen their rights by adding the copyright notice to the work. If you are really serious about defending your rights, you can also register the work. Even if you own the rights, you still have to be able to defend them. In the world of AI, all of this is being challenged.

Books written with publishers are collaborations. They have needs and you have needs. Together you are creating a work with shared rights. When a book written in collaboration with a publisher is declared out of print, the publisher can release the rights to the original manuscript to the author, but they can also retain the rights to the photography and edited text. Some publishers will drag their heels on this declaration because they want to hold onto the property “just in case”. Random House, in an extremely author-forward move, allowed me to buy the photography, illustrations, edited text, and the digital design files for a very reasonable price. I only needed to update the imprint page and the fonts to ones I have the right to use.

As an inheritor of rights, I’ve been assisting with a volume of my mother’s posthumous essays. Life’s a Wander, published by Cove River Press, is a glorious story of micropublishing in itself. In managing these inherited rights, the same graciousness I found at Random House was found via the New York Times, NPR, and Albemarle magazine.

Mom’s chosen editor, Erica Cavanagh, is a professor of creative nonfiction, which seems like an oxymoron, but is indeed a world I have accidentally found myself in. Writing about weaving takes a point of view, and although it can be highly technical, the crafting of sentences is what also makes it approachable, digestible, and motivational.

Digital tools have turned the industry on its head, in good ways and bad. I certainly could not do what I do without the digital tools available to me. Desktop publishing has allowed more voices to be heard. Heck the “blog”, this quaint old medium, replaced by newer forms such as Substack, brought so much information to the fore. I value the editorial hand, and by its very nature publishing, is a form of gatekeeping, in good ways and bad. (I’m sidestepping the siloed world we find ourselves in. There is value in society reacting to a couple dozen sources instead of thousands of sources.)

All this is to say, I’m grateful to have these pages back, for the opportunity to work in the world of crafting content the slow way, and that my intent was seen by at least one person. Pounding out pages, revising, reflecting, sending them on for feedback, then releasing them into the world, is pure alchemy. To be a part of it is a gift that keeps giving.

Structure Guide

I can’t leave without giving an update on the Structure Guide. This post gives me a chance to frame one of the reasons this book has been so challenging and slow to make it to the surface. It is not just the technical nature of the book, but how to tell it. What is the right way into such a vast topic as “structure”. I have found one way in, certainly not the way in.

The marvelous Marjorie Clay stepped in to copyright and index the book this summer. Grateful is not deep enough of a word.  She is a champion of the Yarnworker world, a weaver, and a deeply thoughtful editor of copy. I have the last 40 pages of her feedback to review. This summer has been a doozy of a travel year, which already interrupts the flow. I’m hopeful that it will go into final production soon, although just this moment I was answering a weaver’s question in-between revisions and I discovered that I left off the straight draw on the rigid-heddle friendly sequences section—forest, trees.

Heddles Up!

Liz