SFFWRTCHT: A Chat With Editor John Klima

May 05, 2011 12:01


Originally published at Grasping for the Wind. Please leave any comments there.


Hugo award winning Editor John Klima is the founder and editor of Electric Velocipede, a former print zine now transitioning to electronic format. He’s also edited numerous anthologies, such as Logorrhea and the forthcoming Happily Ever After. A former book editor/slush reader, he has worked for Tor, Dell Magazines, and Prime Books and been a panelist at several cons. Active on Twitter, John can be found online at  www.electricvelocipede.com and blog.electricvelocipede.com.

SFFWRTCHT: John, how did you come to start Electric Velocipede? Where did the idea originate? And how did you decide to become an editor?


John Klima: I interned with Jim Frenkel (of Tor Books) in Madison, WI while I was in college and cut my editorial teeth there, that was 1993-4. After graduating from UW-Madison with degrees in English & Philosophy, I moved out East to work in New York publishing. At Frenkel’s we did all sorts of things from shelving books to filing to writing copy to editing, etc. I worked at a number of places and ended up at Dell Magazines working for Asimov’s/Analog. Shortly after starting that job, my old college buddy/former co-intern Jim Minz (now with Baen) told me there was an opening at Tor.

While at Tor, I worked on about 100 books/year (new, reprints, mass-market editions of hardcovers, etc.). I loved my job, loved working with authors, loved making great books, loved going to conventions and meeting fellow fans. At Tor I worked mostly as editorial assistant, so I made sure all the pieces of the book came together for the depts to make a final product that could be anything from photocopying a copyedited manuscript to mailing out ARCs to writing flap copy and eventually co-editing. But the pay in publishing isn’t so great, so I left Tor in 1999/2000 to become a computer programmer.

Unfortunately, in 2000 the computer programming market collapsed but I got a job with a company that made software for publishers. While the pay was much better in the computer world, I missed working with authors and making books. It was at a fateful Readercon in Boston where I met Gavin Grant of Small Beer Press/LCRW, who had a panel on making zines. Gavin’s contention (and I agree) was that every person in the room could make zine and should. That seeded the idea for me. From that panel we got Electric Velocipede, Trunk Stories, Rabid Transit, Say…, and Full Unit Hookup (most of us gone now alas). I knew a whole bunch of authors, I knew a whole bunch of publishing, I knew about making books, it seemed like a good idea,  you know? Making a zine was going to be the road to riches. Gavin Grant is a very good motivational speaker.

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publishers, interviews, john klima, electric velocipede, publishing

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