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My name is Tanya, how may I assist you today?

Chris: Hi, Tanya: I’m trying to cancel my hotel reservation in London as my flight has been canceled due to the volcano.

Tanya: Hi Chris.

Tanya: How may I help you.

Chris: Hi, Tanya: I’m trying to cancel my hotel reservation in London as my flight has been canceled due to the volcano.

Tanya: Okay let me check that for you.

Tanya: For security purposes, may I have the billing zip code on the account please?

Chris: REDACTED

Tanya: Thank you for that.

Tanya: Is this the reservation to London 4/17/10?

Chris: Yes

Tanya: Thank you.

Tanya: Please give me a few minutes as I check that for you.

Chris: Here’s the phone number for the hotel REDACTED

Chris: You can also email them at REDACTED

Tanya: Thank you for that so. give me 2-3 minutes to check with them.

Tanya: Thank you for waiting.

Tanya: I try to call the hotel for you, the line was busy, what I can advise you can chat back with us after an hour or you can try to call our customer service department 888 656 4546 / 001-312-416-0018 to assist you better.

Chris: I can’t get through to your service department on the phone and I don’t understand why you can’t talk with the hotel. Are you dialing the proper country code for London, England? I need this situation resolved and would like your help.

Tanya: Yes I am dialing the correct number 3x but the line is so very busy.

Chris: I’ll try it now.

Tanya: Okay.

Tanya: Is there anything else that I may assist you with today?

Chris: Yes, call again. I just got through to the hotel so their number is not that busy.

Tanya: Okay let me try it here.

Tanya: Thank you for waiting, I try to call the hotel right now for 5 times and the phoen was still busy.

Chris: Interesting. Please email them then at REDACTED and tell them I am canceling my reservation or allow me to cancel it myself.

Tanya: As much as I wanted to try to help you with this you have to call our customer service so that they can help and assist you better 001-312-416-0018

Chris: That doesn’t answer my question and doesn’t help me resolve this situation. Again, please email the hotel and tell them I am canceling my reservation. Thanks.

Tanya: You are welcome, kindly call our customer service department so that they can assist you better.

Chris: Who’s on first.

At which point I cried and laughed and then went and sat silently in the corner for a while. Meanwhile, my hotel reservation is still not canceled.

Would someone PLEASE chuck a virgin in the volcano already! My flight to London tonight has been canceled and my entire trip is off. To say I’m disappointed is, well, accurate. Now I’m on hold to cancel my hotel, and all my meetings…sigh.

So I am supposed to fly out to London tomorrow night from JFK for the London Book Fair…yeah, I could use all the good luck you can spare. All of today’s flights were canceled and I see that my airline is now offering refunds and changes to travel dates at no charge through April 22nd which doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence that tomorrow’s flights will be taking of. I was really looking forward to this trip.

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Eddie Vedder’s Rise http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXVpjjpwNss

Bénédicte is my editor in France and happily we’ll be meeting for the first time next week at the London Book Fair. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to travel to France several times in my life so it was a huge thrill when Bénédicte emailed me with the news that she was publishing the Iron Elves in France. After publishing studies in Paris, Bénédicte found a position as an assistant in a small publishing house, Editions Joëlle Losfeld. General fiction mostly. She worked there for 8 years and in 2003 had the opportunity to replace one the most famous SF/fantasy editor in France who retired. Bénédicte grabbed it with a crazy excitement and is now in charge of the Pocket and Fleuve Noir lines. She’s always loved all the genre literatures and science fiction especially. As if that wasn’t enough to keep her busy, Bénédicte also works as an editorial adviser/consultant for two other imprints of the Editis group (Presses de la Cité and Pré-aux-Clercs).

1. Why did you choose publishing for a career?

I’d like to sound original but I’m afraid to say I chose publishing for my passion of literature. That’s not a bad reason after all. As a kid, I wanted to be an astrophysicist but I missed the path to a scientific career. But with SF books somehow I’m still looking at the stars. At first I was interested in selling rights abroad but during a job meeting, someone told me I had no real capacity for commercial fights. And eventually I knew I was into editorial matters, contacts with writers and reading all day long.

2. What’s the future look like for book publishing?

I’m optimistic about books. I’m not into e-books I’m afraid. I don’t really like to have to read on a screen. I understand, though, that this new way of reading appeals to many people, especially young readers very familiar with new technologies. Of course it’s very convenient when you’re a publisher to read books and manuscripts on e-readers. Nowadays, we receive books by email up to 80% of the time. Anyway, I guess books will always be part of our life and our culture. When you love books, you like the objects, too. A solid and sensual piece of paper, its smell, its cover… And whatever form books take, you’ll always need publishers to do the job. Maybe that’s one of the trades where no robots would be able to replace us. I hope so…

3. What advice would you give someone looking to follow in your footsteps?

First, passion.
Second, be a polymath and learn how a publishing house operates. It’s very useful to know how the people around you work: publicity, sales, marketing, press, bookselling, manufacturing…
Third, forget about your weekend!

4. What author or publishing insider living or dead would you like to meet and why?

I met Michael Moorcock and Stephen Baxter, so I’m happy now! But here are a few others whose work gave me shocks: Sylvia Plath, Angela Carter, Howard Fast, James Purdy, Horacio Quiroga.
There’s one French publisher, very famous in France, Eric Losfeld. I worked 8 years with his daughter, Joelle, a publisher too, who became my dearest friend. And it would have been an honor to meet her dad. He was free, open-minded, brilliant, funny, and transmitted the whole thing to his daughter.

5. If stranded on a desert island without the cast of Lost (or the S.S. Minnow,) what five books would you want to have with you?

Awful choice. A perfect anthology of 8000 pages with all my favorites! And can I also have the last episode of Lost?

6. Why do books matter?

I guess they can change you, they can change your way of looking at the world around you. And of course they entertain and sometimes give you the feeling that you’re getting smarter!

Merci, Bénédicte!