Oh

Posted February 7th, 2009

Before launching the Life series it was as if I was a kid still living in my parents house. I’ve edited more than twenty books for the Prags but I was still living in their house and they were taking care of so many detail that I didn’t even know existed.

I’m not out on my own with this new series. The series will live in the Prag house. I suppose that explains the voice the in the back of my head that says “as long as you live in our house you’ll operate by our rules young man.” But actually, there aren’t a lot of rules—just a lot of details floating around that I’ve been oblivious to.

Do you remember when you were a kid and being an adult seemed pretty simple. Maybe you wanted to take on an after school job.

“And how are you going to get to this job?” my parents asked.

“Well,” you said, trying not to tip your hand that you’d thought this all through so carefully, “I can buy a car.”

“Buy a car?”

“Sure, I’ll be making $1.47 an hour and I saw a used Buick Century in the paper for $100.”

Let’s set aside how long ago this was that the local Burger Chef could legally pay its employees $1.47 an hour or that Burger Chef’s even existed (or full-size Buick Century’s for that matter). My calculations had been made without regard for most of the real-world constraints.

“You know,” my parents said, “you don’t get to keep all of that $1.47.”

“I know,” I said, “there are taxes.”

And even though I knew there were taxes, I’d had no idea how much.

“Also,” my parents said, “that car eats gas. And gas is seventy cents a gallon.”

I answered that and a slew of other questions until they asked …

“And what about insurance?”

Insurance. I hadn’t thought about that. Now my plan didn’t look so good. But these were my parents and they came up with other options that were less attractive to a teen ager but actually were much better. And so for the next couple of years I bicycled to work and got to keep the portion of the $1.47 that the government wasn’t taking.

And that’s how it is with the Life series. The difference is that the voices of my parents have been replaced with those of Dave and Andy. I’m still oversimplifying my assumptions but I can benefit from the experience of two people who have been through launching a new imprint and wrestling with printers and distributors and authors and editors and an online store …

The biggest difference is that I’m much more willing to listen to Dave and Andy now than I was willing to listen to my parents when I was a kid. The last few weeks have been a lesson in how many details I was missing—and there will be more.

Daniel Steinberg

Pragmatic Life, Series Editor

This post originally appeared in the Pragmatic Life blog.