The Foreign Service Journal, April 2022

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL 2022 43 jobs. This is a measure of progress. But it’s also a measure of lack of progress, that in the year 2021 we still find it significant that we have female appointees in these important positions.” Yovanovitch served as ambassador three times, in Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and, finally, Ukraine. Her illustrious Foreign Service career culminated with the first impeachment hearing of Presi- dent Donald Trump, where she served as a witness and became somewhat more famous than she expected, or preferred. She says she would still recommend the career to young women, and to young people in general. “What we do is vital work. It’s fun, and it’s reward- ing, and it’s absolutely indispens- able to national security,” she says, but “here’s the thing: the Foreign Service is not for everybody. Chang- ing your job every couple of years? Hugely stressful. Changing living arrangements, countries—very stressful! It’s not something everyone wants to sign up for.” But if the pluses outweigh the minuses for you personally, she says, “you can really make a difference.” (See the review of her newmemoir, page 68. ) AFSA’s Best Outreach Tool Twenty-six years ago, just 5,000 copies of the first edition of Inside a U.S. Embassy were printed. The second edition far surpassed that figure, with “tens of thousands” of books sold, according to the book’s editor, Shawn Dorman, who is now edi- tor in chief of The Foreign Service Journal and AFSA publications director. “The State Department ordered 10,000 books initially, and every time we reprinted, they bought thousands more,” she says. “They gave a copy to every person who passed the writ- ten test—21,000 people used to take the test each year, so that added up.” In addition, military entities purchased copies by the hundreds. AFSA has published all three editions independently. For the third edition, says Dorman, “I shopped the book around to pub- lishers, and found strong interest.” Georgetown University Press, Cornell University Press, McGraw Hill and a couple others offered to publish it in a traditional publish- ing deal. Dorman did the math and consulted with AFSA leader- ship, determining that it made more financial sense for AFSA to publish the book independently. Acting as publisher, AFSA retains about 70 percent of sales revenue instead of the 10 to 14 percent that a typical publishing con- tract would offer. “So we turned them all down and created our own FS imprint, Foreign Service Books.” AFSA was able to manage the editing in house, and con- tracted out the design and cover work through Journal partners and others. They printed with a family-owned business in the region and signed a distribution agreement with Potomac Books, now under University of Nebraska Press, which still man- ages distribution today. Says Potomac Books’ publisher Samuel Dorrance, who helped structure the deal: “I met Shawn Dorman at Book Expo America during the first Obama administration. Shawn was looking for a new distribution partner for AFSA’s flagship pub- lication, Inside a U.S. Embassy . By coincidence, I had recently Students with copies of Inside a U.S. Embassy at a career event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., hosted by American Women for International Understanding, March 2015. The Chinese edition of the 2003 Inside a U.S. Embassy . Inset: FSO Steven Chang reads this edition in Hong Kong, 2013. COURTESYOFAFSA COURTESYOFAFSA