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Book Editors – What to Expect (and how to get the best results)

What goes on inside an editor's brain? Here's the low-down...

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What goes on inSIDE an editor’s brain?

By Andrew Chapman, Prepare to Publish Ltd

OK, I admit it up front: editors are a strange breed. On the one hand they can be forensically pedantic, which requires a certain sort of intellectual confidence; on the other, they are typically shy and would prefer not to attract attention.

And in fact that’s what good editing is all about: not attracting attention. The ultimate goal of a good editor is for their presence in a book to be undetectable, invisible. (You can also say the same of a good typesetter – the aim is not to ‘snag’ the reader’s eye.)

Nobody really notices when a book has been well edited – all they see is the clever, engaging prose of the author, and that’s how it should be. But people sure as heck notice when a book has been badly edited, or not really edited at all. In fact, it’s one of the most common reasons for a book being given a bad review on Amazon. Sometimes the reviewer makes that explicit – ‘the book is riddled with typos and grammatical mistakes,’ they grumble. Sometimes it’s more subtle: ‘This book doesn’t make any sense.’ Or even: ‘It started well but the middle was too dull to make me want to read to the end.’ All of these criticisms reflect badly on the author, and their sales figures – but in most cases they could be avoided with good editing.

 

 

What is editing?

There isn’t actually one answer to this – if you’re serious about getting a great book published, you should know that there are different types of editing. Most traditional publishers actually put a book (and its weary author) through three stages, and there’s no reason why self-publishers committed to Getting It Right shouldn’t do the same.

First is development editing, also known as structural editing. This the process of taking an author’s completed manuscript and looking at what makes the story tick, or what makes it stick. What if it’s non-fiction? That’s not necessarily different: a memoir, a history or a biography, for example, is still a narrative, and the reader will get much more out of being taken on a journey. Even a ‘how to’ book has a rhythm to it, and will have some potential structures that make more sense than others.

Does a book have too many different points of view? Are there too many scene breaks, or not enough? Does the author spend too much time ‘telling’ rather than ‘showing’ their story? All of these considerations come at the structural stage.

Sometimes the ‘dev edit’ involves tearing a book into chunks and rearranging them. Sometimes surprisingly subtle tweaks here and here can make a book sing in tune when it seemed tone deaf before. It might mean simplifying the story, or conversely elaborating it. In one novel I edited, there was just something not working right in the middle – in the end, the blockage was removed simply by swapping two chapters around, and suddenly it flowed from start to finish. The author was too close to the text to see it – but could totally see the improvement afterwards.

 

 

The second stage is the copy edit (also known as line editing). This is where the grumpy pedant is let out of their cage to maul the manuscript. More specifically, this typically means three things:

  1. Issues of style. Does the author string sentences nicely together, or do they get their words in a tangle? Most authors have their own tics – phrases they overuse, clichés they reach for, bad habits they may have got into. In one historical thriller I copy edited, the author had a habit of using passive constructions in his action scenes – ‘the barrel of the gun was charged and pointed at my assailant’, that sort of thing. Turning these around to make the protagonist the person in charge – ‘I rammed the ball into my musket and aimed it at Sir Willoughby’ (it’s OK, this isn’t the real text) – brought the action properly to the fore.

  2. Issues of consistency. This can affect a number of aspects of a piece of writing. It includes continuity errors – a character is wearing a red shirt in one scene and then a blue one in the next, or their age varies incorrectly – but also picky stuff like whether the author used ‘window-sill’ in one place, ‘window sill’ in another, and ‘windowsill’ in a third. There could also be changes in the consistency of tone – not deliberate changes of register, but cases where the writing is packed with action at one moment and then bloated with long descriptions the next (though this should be picked up at the development stage).

  3. Issue of accuracy. If the commas are in the wrong places, the meaning can get confused for the reader. People may not know grammatical terminology, but it’s often obvious when a sentences haven’t been constructed proper. And accuracy can affect the content, too. One novel I edited recently had lots of German names in it – some of them were wrong, and you can bet your schnitzel someone out there would notice. I don’t speak much German, but I sure as hell checked every single word, just to be sure. Another novel I tackled recently was well written and researched, set at a particular point of the late 1960s. The author had been amazingly meticulous in his research, but I checked every single detail, right down to the TV schedules in Britain on the night of the moon landings. So you can imagine my whoops of delight when I spotted he referred to a David Bowie album which at that precise point of history was in fact only a single. OK, maybe you can’t imagine that – but you never know when these little details might matter. This can be surprisingly rewarding from an editor’s point of view, in that you end up learning all sorts of things about a subject which might be new to you. It also makes editors quite good at pub quizzes.

All of this, it should be said, is a collaborative process – it’s not just a grumpy editor issuing edicts from their throne to the cowering author. We work together to make your book a better one – though it will take work on both sides!

 

 

The third stage of the usual editorial process is proofreading, which traditionally occurs only after a book has been typeset, in order to pick up new mistakes which have been introduced by the formatting (‘widows and orphans’ – short lines stranded at the top or bottom of a page, which just look wrong – being the classic example), and have a final sweep for any last textual errors. It’s all-too easy for a book to reach this stage and still have the occasional word missing, or a sneaky typo, or repeated words like ‘the the’ (unless referring to the British post-punk band, obviously).

In my business, we usually appoint different people as the structural and copy editors, largely because these types of editing are quite different themselves, and editors tend to excel at one or the other. ‘Dev eds’ are often writers themselves, too, with professional experience in storytelling. I often also choose a different person as the proofreader, simply on the basis that the more ‘pairs of eyes’ a book has on it, the better it will be. But it’s true that the boundaries can blur, and it’s quite common for copy editing and proofreading to be rolled into one process, for example.

My business partner has a nice way of describing all this with a metaphor: imagine your words being passed through finer and finer sieves. The structural edits pick out the biggest lumps; the copy editor picks out the medium lumps; and then at the end the proofreader finds the tiniest remaining ones.

 

 

Make an editor your friend

So we’ve seen some of the things that go through an editor’s head: ‘What would make this book flow better?’, ‘Why does this author use the word “desperately” 57 times in this book?’, ‘When did Bowie release that on an album?’, ‘Why don’t I have any friends?’

But what happens in the pedant’s cranium at that first point of contact with the author? This bit is very much up to you! Here are three common reactions from the editor when a new manuscript plops into their inbox:

  1. Excitement: ‘fantastic, I love spy thrillers, bring it on’
  2. Confusion: ‘why didn’t the author actually finish the book before sending it to me?’
  3. Dread: ‘why is all the dialogue incorrectly punctuated?’

And of course sometimes it’s a mixture of all three. Here, though, are a few pointers to help keep it nearer to No 1:

  • Don’t just come to us (or a publisher, an agent, a marketer or anyone else, in fact) with an idea. Ideas are easy to come by, it’s the hard graft that goes into embodying them in book form that matters.
  • And don’t come to an editor with half a book, either: finish your first draft! We need to see a whole to see the holes. Planning your book carefully beforehand, as Nick Stephenson advises, will make all of this easier.
  • Don’t duck the donkey work: you should at least have taken the time to learn how to use punctuation properly and how to construct varied, interesting sentences. (One book I saw recently had to be copy edited before the structural edit simply to get it into readable English, and then go through the usual three-part process from scratch. You’ll be wasting your own money if you don’t at least take some care over the basics.)
  • But you don’t need to be perfect – everyone makes mistakes, and can learn more about their craft. Sometimes, in fact, a manuscript which shows great promise but has clear flaws can be the most rewarding type to work on. In the case of the historical novel alluded to earlier, the author was brilliantly open to learning, and to hard work. For me it ended up being hugely satisfying helping to ‘midwife’ a great story into a healthier piece of writing.
  • And don’t be afraid: editors don’t (usually) bite, and what we want most of all is to help your book fly. Ask us questions – and indeed disagree with us if you feel strongly about something.

 

 

I’m biased, naturally, but I think there’s no substitute for taking professional advice. Read Nick’s post here for his take on this. It’s all about investment, in both yourself and your book. If you treat your self-publishing project like a business, planning your book’s content, your route to publication (including editing!) and then your marketing, you’ve given yourself the best foundation you can.

And someone like me might just do a little bit better in their next pub quiz.

 

Andrew Chapman is the founder of Prepare to Publish, a growing network of freelancers which provides editing and typesetting services to numerous publishing companies, and to self-publishers. Readers of this blog can get a 10% discount on these services – if you have at least completed a first draft! – using this link: http://www.preparetopublish.com/10K

 

And now we want to hear from you: whats your process to get your drafts into “publication-ready mode”? What kind of editors do you use? Leave a comment!

40 Comments
  1. Ian says:

    I have finished a WORD 2016 narrative poem (12,400 words) in Scottish dialect and need a copy editor. How do I find one? Thanks!

    1. Caroline Walcot says:

      Hi Ian, one fruitful place to look for contacts for copy editors might be any Scotland-based Robert Burns Society. Many enthusiastic supporters of the Immortal Bard are also into Scottish dialect, and many of them may be qualified grammarians or teachers, and are keen to preserve the tradition. As a longish-standing member of the Church of Scotland in Brussels, I can tell you that the annual Burns Supper “enhances” the Scottishness of our ain true Scots-born.
      Wearing my professional hat, you should make clear to whomever you choose to edit your work the degree of correction that you seek and are willing to pay for. A “light” proofread will be no more than correcting spelling mistakes and erroneous punctuation. A “heavy proofread” will be the correction of errors (typos and factual errors) and suggestions for stylistic alternatives. A copy edit will include all of “heavy proofreading” plus suggestions for replacing phrases or switching chunks of text around to read more smoothly. As you have written a poem, I presume you would need to specify that any proposed changes must respect the metre and rhythm of the whole work. So specify this and ask for a close quote.

  2. Ian says:

    I have finished a WORD 2016 narrative poem (12,400 words) in Scottish dialect and need a copy editor. How do I find one? Thanks!

    1. Caroline Walcot says:

      Hi Ian, one fruitful place to look for contacts for copy editors might be any Scotland-based Robert Burns Society. Many enthusiastic supporters of the Immortal Bard are also into Scottish dialect, and many of them may be qualified grammarians or teachers, and are keen to preserve the tradition. As a longish-standing member of the Church of Scotland in Brussels, I can tell you that the annual Burns Supper “enhances” the Scottishness of our ain true Scots-born.
      Wearing my professional hat, you should make clear to whomever you choose to edit your work the degree of correction that you seek and are willing to pay for. A “light” proofread will be no more than correcting spelling mistakes and erroneous punctuation. A “heavy proofread” will be the correction of errors (typos and factual errors) and suggestions for stylistic alternatives. A copy edit will include all of “heavy proofreading” plus suggestions for replacing phrases or switching chunks of text around to read more smoothly. As you have written a poem, I presume you would need to specify that any proposed changes must respect the metre and rhythm of the whole work. So specify this and ask for a close quote.

  3. Andrew Chapman says:

    Hi Ian – for a specialist topic such as that I’d recommend the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), http://www.sfep.org.uk – I’m a member myself, though I’d suggest you search their directory for Scots experts!

  4. Andrew Chapman says:

    Hi Ian – for a specialist topic such as that I’d recommend the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), http://www.sfep.org.uk – I’m a member myself, though I’d suggest you search their directory for Scots experts!

  5. Kathleen Ambro says:

    Hi Andrew – Great blog on Editors! I finished my first biographical novel in July 2017 after nine years of research. Working with a professional editor made all the difference in the world. He used all three steps that you mentioned in your blog. His suggestions were spot on and I’ll be forever grateful to him for I truly believe he made me a better writer. My book is: Wealth, Sorrow, Redemption, by Kathleen Ambro available on Amazon.

    1. Andrew Chapman says:

      Ah, that’s great to hear, Kathleen!

  6. Kathleen Ambro says:

    Hi Andrew – Great blog on Editors! I finished my first biographical novel in July 2017 after nine years of research. Working with a professional editor made all the difference in the world. He used all three steps that you mentioned in your blog. His suggestions were spot on and I’ll be forever grateful to him for I truly believe he made me a better writer. My book is: Wealth, Sorrow, Redemption, by Kathleen Ambro available on Amazon.

  7. B. A. Mealer says:

    You know you are doing something right when your editor says they loved working with someone who knew the basics of grammar, punctuation and how to write a complete sentence. (It made me wonder at other writer’s quality until I read what appeared to be a published first draft of an idea passing for a novel) I was told to send as clean a copy as I could for editing.

    I do okay with the basic editing but can’t afford a structural editor as the prices I’ve seen are prohibitive for someone who is retired and spent all their money traveling. (Yep, spent the kids inheritance and enjoyed every minute of it.)

    My editor for my first book did give me a lot of great feedback and he did improve my writing. The second editor wasn’t so hot. She wanted to add words I had taken great pains to remove and was questionable on sentence structure. I’d love to be able to afford editing, but my books are >100K words which means close to $2K for editing.

    1. Andrew Chapman says:

      Hi – yes, certainly, the cleaner the copy, the better. It will always cost more if the editor is spending long hours trying to get the text to a basic standard before even looking at issues of structure, consistency and so on. It’s always difficult if money is tight, but this will help. And one should always think of editing – like other aspects of publishing, such as good cover design and marketing – as an investment in the project.

  8. B. A. Mealer says:

    You know you are doing something right when your editor says they loved working with someone who knew the basics of grammar, punctuation and how to write a complete sentence. (It made me wonder at other writer’s quality until I read what appeared to be a published first draft of an idea passing for a novel) I was told to send as clean a copy as I could for editing.

    I do okay with the basic editing but can’t afford a structural editor as the prices I’ve seen are prohibitive for someone who is retired and spent all their money traveling. (Yep, spent the kids inheritance and enjoyed every minute of it.)

    My editor for my first book did give me a lot of great feedback and he did improve my writing. The second editor wasn’t so hot. She wanted to add words I had taken great pains to remove and was questionable on sentence structure. I’d love to be able to afford editing, but my books are >100K words which means close to $2K for editing.

  9. Gayle Mullen Pace says:

    Great article. I love my editor. She’s extremely detail oriented, checks every fact, and catches my mistakes. We got into a discussion about which was correct–spoonsful or spoonfuls. I was taught to use spoonsful, but the spellchecker says it’s wrong. I try not to use semi-colons unless absolutely necessary, and despite the ongoing debate about the Oxford comma, I use it.

    1. Andrew Chapman says:

      Thanks Gayle! I love these discussions one gets into. Sometimes both people are right, and the disagreement is down to trends in language over time. There are a lot of issues which end up boiling down to ‘house style’ – each publisher will have theirs, and many authors too.

  10. Gayle Mullen Pace says:

    Great article. I love my editor. She’s extremely detail oriented, checks every fact, and catches my mistakes. We got into a discussion about which was correct–spoonsful or spoonfuls. I was taught to use spoonsful, but the spellchecker says it’s wrong. I try not to use semi-colons unless absolutely necessary, and despite the ongoing debate about the Oxford comma, I use it.

  11. Christa says:

    A sentences? 😉

    1. Andrew Chapman says:

      Ha, read that sentence again, Christa! It contains two deliberate errors. Just my feeble sense of humour 🙂

  12. Christa says:

    A sentences? 😉

  13. Roberta says:

    How about foreign writers for whom English is a second language? Do we need a different kind of editor? I speak a fluent English but writing is a different process, and I’m not always certain wether a sentence makes or does not make sense in English.

    1. Andrew Chapman says:

      Hi Roberta – that’s a slightly different kind of task, but any competent copy editor should be able to help. In this case they would be looking particularly for idioms and nuances used in English (which itself differs in this area a good deal between British and American English). It’s a subtle thing sometimes. Some translators, for example, use a British or American editor to check their translations, however good their own English might be (assuming they’re not a native speaker).

    2. Simply Linda says:

      Hi Roberta,
      I ghost-write for some very fluent English speakers. Quite often what is said is fine, but to a person whose first language is English it is ‘uncomfortable’. It feels awkward or contrived. I imagine it would be the same for someone in – say – Spain, reading a passage written by an English person.

      English spoken and written by a true native, differs greatly from that spoken by other English speaking countries (for example, America, Australia and Canada). But then there are also significant regional variations in the UK and Ireland too!

    3. Caroline Walcot says:

      For Roberta’s point – English being written by a non-native speaker – you do not need a different kind of editor, but you do need an editor with linguistic skills that include translation. In fact, many regular translators readily accept such proofreading/proofediting jobs for which the objective is to make the English text read as though it had been written by a native English speaker. The trick is to do this without removing the writer’s voice – you must respect the style and fluency of the original text presented for checking.
      If the editor is familiar with the writers’s native language, it becomes far easier to correct mistakes in both grammar and style as they can be checked back against the original language in which the writer was probably thinking, and then a suitable equivalent expression found – particularly necessary for idiomatic expressions and phrasal verbs.

  14. Roberta says:

    How about foreign writers for whom English is a second language? Do we need a different kind of editor? I speak a fluent English but writing is a different process, and I’m not always certain wether a sentence makes or does not make sense in English.

  15. Roberta says:

    “whether”

  16. Roberta says:

    “whether”

  17. cathy says:

    You have an error in your Accuracy section. This seems to be common. I have checked on FIVE companies for editing services – all FIVE had either grammatical errors or typos in their cover letters…

  18. cathy says:

    You have an error in your Accuracy section. This seems to be common. I have checked on FIVE companies for editing services – all FIVE had either grammatical errors or typos in their cover letters…

  19. Caroline Walcot says:

    Cathy and Christa are happy to point out an obvious mistake in the “Accuracy” section of the main post – put there on purpose, as it turns out.
    But sadly both grammar poolice ladies missed an equally obvious error at the end of the same sentence – of course the adjective “proper” should have been the adverb “properly”. Bet Andrew has not yet finished laughing over that one.

  20. Caroline Walcot says:

    Cathy and Christa are happy to point out an obvious mistake in the “Accuracy” section of the main post – put there on purpose, as it turns out.
    But sadly both grammar poolice ladies missed an equally obvious error at the end of the same sentence – of course the adjective “proper” should have been the adverb “properly”. Bet Andrew has not yet finished laughing over that one.

  21. Caroline Walcot says:

    Need a new keyboard without keys that stick. Obviously, “police” not “poolice”, and I should have scattered commas to taste: “But, sadly, both….” Just shows that editing never ends.
    I endorse the need to find good structural editors. This is something I cannot do well, and I know it.

  22. Caroline Walcot says:

    Need a new keyboard without keys that stick. Obviously, “police” not “poolice”, and I should have scattered commas to taste: “But, sadly, both….” Just shows that editing never ends.
    I endorse the need to find good structural editors. This is something I cannot do well, and I know it.

  23. Andrew Chapman says:

    Ha! Thanks Caroline. I think I rather regret the attempt at irony (the deliberate mistakes being in the line ‘a sentences haven’t been constructed proper’) – it clearly confuses people!

  24. Andrew Chapman says:

    Ha! Thanks Caroline. I think I rather regret the attempt at irony (the deliberate mistakes being in the line ‘a sentences haven’t been constructed proper’) – it clearly confuses people!

  25. Patricia says:

    I have been trad published for years but am just now venturing into indie publishing (It’s a long story.) The editing is what I’ll really miss about trad publishing – not the marketing or the money obviously! I’ve had numerous editors: some were wonderful, some were daft. My manuscripts are usually quite clean although a structural editor usually makes my plotting better. My point in this is that you have to have at least one experienced editor read your work – ideally more than one. You never ever see all the mistakes and booboos you make. A good editor can make your writing so much better – and you learn to write better as a result.

  26. Andrea Glass says:

    As a professional editor, I think all this advice is great. I was just a bit surprised at the several errors I found such as:

    “People may not know grammatical terminology, but it’s often obvious when a sentences haven’t been constructed proper.”

    Obviously there should be no “a” before sentences and the word should be “properly.” rather than proper. It’s important for one giving advice on editing to make sure the article with the advice is well edited! 🙂

    1. Caroline Walcot says:

      Oh, Andrea Glass, seriously????
      Have you totally lost your sense of humour? (Sorry, “humor” for you Americans.)
      Do you have your brainium correctly oriented inside your cranium?
      THIS IS SATIRE, IRONY, A JOKE – call it what you will. It is “an old hat but nevertheless effective” way to draw attention to a writing fault. We editors do it all the time.
      And before you ask, yes I was the general manager of an international translation and copywriting agency for over a decade. A heck of a lot of proofreading landed on my plate. I gently LOL’d when reading the joke sentence.

      Then felt like throwing up on reading your comment, which misfires so badly you would do better to withdraw it.

  27. Robin Wirth says:

    Well, I know what went through mine on this thing I’m working on now…how did the dad he loves and misses after he died of cancer at the beginning of this story become an abusive father who left them at the end of it??? I didn’t see you specifically mention something quite that drastic so thought I would share!

  28. Lawrence Hebb says:

    Enjoyed some of the ‘deliberate’ mistakes. This was a fun read, but drove the point home about what each editor does, thank you for that.
    I haven’t had the funds for a professional editor, but have used beta readers, and found that even when I self edited (I know, not recommended😕) my working through the MS fell into those categories pretty much in that order.
    Thanks again.
    Lawrence

    1. Andrew Chapman says:

      Thanks Lawrence!

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