{"id":6612,"date":"2025-02-17T03:37:34","date_gmt":"2025-02-17T03:37:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unewhavendh.org\/editing-and-publishing\/?p=6612"},"modified":"2025-04-22T13:22:27","modified_gmt":"2025-04-22T13:22:27","slug":"the-starless-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unewhavendh.org\/editing-and-publishing\/2025\/02\/17\/the-starless-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"The Starless Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The second novel by Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea<\/em>, is a book I fell in love with upon my first reading. The copy I have a has an extra special place in my heart. It was gifted to me by my childhood best friend as I was about to leave for the airport to start my first year of college. Though, I have my own appreciation for the stories within the book, I will also forever associate it with my friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Financial Structure<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Who invested in the creation of this publication? Was it an investment of money or labor? If labor, what kind of labor? (physical typesetting, digital programming\/encoding, creation of ideas\/story to be published, etc.). How were each of these investors compensated?
-Prompt for Assignment One<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The first, and possibly most significant, investment into The Starless Sea<\/em> was the labor Erin Morgenstern put into the writing process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the acknowledgements page, I was able to find the names of Erin Morgenstern’s literary agent and the people she worked with at her publishing house. Though all I had was a list if names, I was able to do some deep diving to figure out the influence each person would have had on The Starless Sea<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first name Morgenstern mentions is Richard Pine from InkWell Management. According to Morgenstern’s page on the InkWell Management website<\/a>, Pine also represented her first book The Night Circus<\/em>, and has remained her literary agent since then. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Morgenstern worked with Penguin Random House’s Knopf Doubleday across the publication of her first two novels. While I have not been able to find information yet on the specific structure of Morgenstern’s deal with Doubleday, if I had to guess, I would say she likely received a multi-book deal so the primary investment and gamble would have been put into The Night Circus<\/em> and not The Starless Sea<\/em>. I intend to keep looking for information about Erin Morgenstern’s specific book deal, but I am not sure if I’ll be able to find anything find about the finances behind The Starless Sea<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"The
Under the dust jacket of The Starless Sea<\/em>, photo taken by author<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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The copyright page for my edition of The Starless Sea<\/em> credits Dan Funderburgh for art and John Fontana for putting in the labor of creating the cover, dust jacket, and end pages. Though not explicitly stated, I must assume they were compensated monetarily for their work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Editorial Structure<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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How was this publication edited? Who were the editors and how did they interact with the author\/s?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-Prompt for Assignment One<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

From the beginning of her process with The Starless Sea<\/em>, Erin Morgenstern likely knew she would be publishing with Doubleday. It’s likely that Richard Pine would be present for discussions between Morgenstern and her team at Doubleday though he would not have needed to play as large of a role as would be necessary for her agent while working on her first novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the acknowledgements page, I found the names of Morgenstern’s team at Doubleday. Jenny Jackson, according to Doubleday’s website<\/a>, is the executive editor who worked on The Starless Sea<\/em>. Also gathered from the website, deputy publisher Todd Doughty and executive director of publishing Suzanne Herz were also working on The Starless Sea<\/em>. According to one editor at Doubleday<\/a>, Bill Thomas, the publisher and editor in chief, made the conversations between himself and editors about which books to buy a romantic process rather than a cynical one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In an interview with Morgenstern<\/a>, she describes how she was stubborn through the editing process with what she knew she wanted to include in The Starless Sea<\/em>. She was clearly comfortable pushing back against her editor if she knew something needed to be included in the final draft.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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