The 411 on Editing

For those of you who joined me last week, I am on a journey to learn more about the publishing business as a whole. Last week I covered some tidbits I found on why you'd need an agent and this week, I'm covering editing.

The more I read about editing, the more I realized that it is a very broad definition. In very basic words (when applied to the world of books), it means to condense, organize and modify. Depending with whom you decide to sign your manuscript, you may work with one editor who does a variety of roles (small presses usually have editors who are pretty much jacks of all trades in the editing process) or you may work with several editors who each specialize in a particular part of the editing process—most likely at a big publishing house.

Just to give you an idea, here are a few of the editors or types of editing you may find:

Copy Editing: Corrects, spelling grammar and conform the manuscript to the style of the publishing house. Also may check to make sure different parts of the book aren't conflicting.
Acquisitions or Commissioning Editor: Obtains or recruits authors for a publishing house.
Sponsoring Editor:  Finding marketable ideas and presenting them to appropriate authors.
Editing:  In addition to the list above, editors also look for accuracy in your work and make sure the content is marketable and "in order". They insure a smooth production process which requires they have a hand in everything from design to content to marketing. Basically, they are the webs that hold the publishing of our great manuscripts together.

So this is pretty much a basic introduction to what editors do (there may be more duties that I haven't named here). When you start to see all that goes into the publication of a book, you can get a better understanding of why editors want clean manuscripts and why they there are so many guidelines to submissions. It also helps you understand why rejection is so much a part of this industry especially in this age of information where more and more manuscripts arrive on agents' and editors' desk.

The takeaways here are basically remembering to do your research in every aspect (conform your manuscript to the style of the house you're looking to publish with and make sure your content is accurate) and read through your manuscript carefully to correct those easily missed mistakes. It is something I have yet to try, but I've heard reading your manuscript backwards really helps in the grammatical area. That's all folks, happy writing and good luck!

Filed under: Toni Kelly, Writing Topics