Book Editing

HOW EDITING IS DONE FOR ME



For me, I have a team who helps. I have a couple of people who, once I complete a chapter and have edited it, I send it to my personal assistant and a close friend. My friend reads mostly for content, but she’ll make notes along the way and perhaps catch a few errors and she sends that back to me. But, my personal assistant will do things like look up details from previous books and insert that in there for me. I write series and I can’t possibly remember what every person’s house looked like and things like that, so she looks it up and lets me know. She also has to look for any and all problems. Then she sends me notes. I get all that back and I go through it and do the edits. Once that’s completed I’ll then start to read the book from page one to the end just reading it like a normal book to make sure I feel that the story itself flows well and I can enjoy it. At this point, if I feel anything is wrong or could be better I’ll make changes to it at this time.

Then, the book goes to my editor. So I have an editor and a copy editor, so two people go over the book again and then they send it back to me. I have my personal assistant, Domini, go through it again and then she brings it to me and we go through it together and that’s where any inconsistencies are picked up. Once that’s done it goes back to my editor, Cindy, and the copy editor once more. And they go through it one more time. We get one final look through it and Domini and I go through that together, send it back and we’re done.


MISTAKES STILL HAPPEN

With all the editing that happens to a book mistakes inevitably get through. I have people write to me and say I need better copy editors, or I should hire them to do the editing, but I do have to say that I have never had one of those letters without finding errors in the letter.
People don’t realize that even the software that’s used for editing or formatting can bring in typos. I mean, there was one that automatically changed Gregori’s name to Oregon. Oregon? How can that happen? That was in the final edits, too! I’ll get the book and see these mistakes and wonder what the heck happened? I go back to that final manuscript that I turned in and that mistake isn’t there, but it’s in the book now. It happens. It does. And you have to learn to be okay with that.

MY OWN MISTAKES

It’s not the typos that get to me. What gets me are the mistakes I make when I’m researching. Like when I’m researching the Amazon River and put it on the wrong continent! That’s a major mistake and if all of us don’t catch it, which we didn’t, that’s a problem, but I get even one letter about that? Nope. Not one person pointed it out, when they will point out a small typo. I found it when I re-read the book and I became unglued and who made the mistake? Me.
Sometimes I’m researching ahead to the next book and I let that information seep into what I’m doing in the current book and that can be a problem. Any mistakes that happen like that are all on me.

FIXING MISTAKES

If we find mistakes we can sometimes get those fixed. It’s all according to circumstances. If I find it in one of my new books that will rollover (go into re-print later or hardback to paperback) I can usually get it fixed.

Not every company will fix mistakes. I’m lucky that the publisher I’m with now will. But, it’s costly to go in and make those changes, so sometimes you just have to live with it.

So it’s important to have so many eyes on that book, editing, making sure everything is consistent and correct, as possible.