June 20, 2008 at 08:10:44

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The Broken Contract Lies Upon My Office Floor, Part 3 with Richard Hayes Phillips

By Joan Brunwasser (about the author)     Page 2 of 3 page(s)

opednews.com     Permalink

Five days later, on July 22, 2007, forty days before deadline, I submitted the first half of the manuscript, with charts and tables embedded within. I submitted no photographs, as these were forensic evidence intended for the second half of the book.

Three days later, on July 25, 2007, the Director agreed, at my suggestion, to include with the book a CD containing hundreds of images of forensic evidence, in addition to the photographs embedded in the text. We felt that this was innovative, and preferable to making evidence available on a piecemeal basis in response to skeptics and critics.

On August 1, 2007, thirty days before deadline, I submitted 95% of the manuscript. I had not yet finished analyzing the forensic evidence from Warren County; the numbers would be revised for Delaware County; and the Glossary and Index were still to be written.

On August 31, 2007, right on deadline, I submitted a complete draft of the manuscript, and fifty photographs, with captions, to choose from. As the CD was not part of the contract, it was not subject to this deadline. I received this response: “Everything arrived. Thanks for meeting the deadline with such a flourish!”

They advised me that I would not be hearing from them until everyone at Kent State University Press was done with their respective roles in the editing process, that this would take at least a month, and that I should retreat to the Adirondack woods and grow a beard.

The next thing I received from Kent State University Press was a letter of rejection, breaking the contract. The letter, in the form of an e-mail, contains so many false statements that I have no way of knowing the real reasons why they broke the contract. The letter is dated October 29, 2007, four days after the first public announcement of the book’s impending publication appeared as a banner headline article on page one of my local newspaper.

The text I had submitted was “twice as long” as they expected, or so they said. They did require a double-spaced printout, which is the only way their statement could be true. The record shows that I submitted, by e-mail attachment, an Annotated Table of Contents, complete with page numbers, on July 1, 2007. They knew how long the book would be.

The letter stated that “a publication date of 2008 (any time, much less early summer, in time for party conventions, the election, etc.) is out of the question.” This would be a direct breach of contract, as Kent State University Press had committed to publishing the book in 2008.

They now demanded that I “make the heart of the book the investigation, not simply the statistical results of the audit.” Note that they had contracted to publish a book with this subtitle: “A Citizens’ Audit of an American Election.” They wanted “more on the people involved, the character of the places, the extraordinary situation you found yourself in -- the story behind the facts and figures.” This would alter the very intent of the book. In my view, what we experienced during the investigation is not the story. The rigged presidential election is the story. One does not tell the story behind the story without first telling the story.

They complained of having “only a few sample chapters in August, rather than the complete (or near-complete) draft” that had been requested. The record shows that they received two chapters on June 19, two more chapters on July 3, half of the manuscript on July 22, and 95% of the manuscript on August 1. Allow me to offer some free advice: It is always best to tell the truth or to keep your mouth shut. But if you are going to lie about something, be sure that your lies are firmly grounded in rumor. Never tell lies that are contradicted by the record.

My meticulous audit was now dismissed as “a disorganized display of tables and numbers that more often than not aren’t interpreted and provide no reflection or context.” I will let my readers decide for themselves if my tables of data are presented without explanation.

“Quite simply, there’s no manuscript here,” the letter concluded, as if to suggest that I had failed to fulfill the contract. They had been “prepared for a major editing job” based upon “the few sample papers” I had provided. But “we don’t even know where to begin,” they said, thus admitting that they had made no attempt at copy editing during this entire two-month period. My advice would be the same as that of Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland: “Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

Unbeknownst to Kent State, I had “Plan B” all arranged before I ever sent out my letters of inquiry. Knowing that controversial books are often censored or suppressed, I had already located a printer and a bookbinder very near to my home. Two days later, on October 31, 2007, I called them up and began arranging for them to publish my book.

There are real advantages to self-publishing. The book comes out the way you want it, and it stays in print. And you keep all the profits. But there are also disadvantages. You have to come up with the working capital, and you have to do your own promotion and distribution.

Some of the better suggestions from Kent State were incorporated into my book: the Glossary (sometimes achingly precise, sometimes satirical); the Annotated Table of Contents (telling the reader, for each chapter, what I’m going to tell them); the hub for the CD on the inside cover (cheaper and more permanent than a pocket envelope); and the linen cloth cover with gold foil stamp lettering (in the style of history books that have already withstood the test of time).

I did all the typesetting, the most difficult part of which was getting the numbers in the tables properly aligned while working with a proportionally-spaced font that is pleasing to the eye. I did all the formatting, reducing the original standard-sized pages to 6” x 9” so that the book would fit onto bookshelves. Troy Seman, no doubt my most loyal compatriot, designed fourteen drafts of the dust jacket until we finally got it right. His father, John Seman, became my copy editor, reviewing the entire manuscript twice, from beginning to end, from a substantive standpoint, and telling me what to leave out, and what additional research was necessary, to close off potential attack vectors. We managed to shape the final manuscript into 448 pages, a multiple of 32, as recommended by the printer. And I selected the 1200 photographs for the CD from more than 30,000 images in our digital archives, arranged them into folders with captions, and burned the CDs, one at a time, affixed the labels, one at a time, and attached them to the hubs on the inside covers, one at a time.

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