Before you publish, take one more vital step: Invite a very important person to the party.

  • Before you publish, take one more vital step: Invite a very important person to the party.

    Guest Blogger Linda Jay writes about copyediting.

    In 2012, Joel Friedlander asked Linda Jay to offer readers of his popular blog, The Book Designer, advice at that time, on “one of the most important decisions a self-publisher makes: hiring a copyeditor.” Here’s her reply, still pertinent today:

    Agreed.  You’ve spent months (or possibly years) writing the manuscript that will one day be your book. You’ve distilled all those handwritten notes from pages or scraps of paper, those often-incoherent e-mails to yourself, and those ideas racing around in your brain, and typed every one of them into the computer, in some loosely organized format that vaguely resembles a book. Then one day… hooray… it occurs to you that… you’re done!

    Now you can’t wait to get your little gem “OUT THERE” for all the world to marvel at. You are indeed a writer (which nobody can deny, which nobody can deny)!

    Oh, yes, you’ve given a sneak peek at your masterpiece to a few people whose opinion you trust—relatives, longtime friends, business colleagues. And, sure, they may have spotted a few misspellings, or a weird sentence construction here or there, but what the hey—everybody makes mistakes.

    They’re just tickled that you’ve had the audacity, capacity and tenacity to write a book; a few glitches only show that you’re human. After all, who’s perfect?  It’s time to send your “baby” on its way to possible fame, and reap the glories of being a published author!

    Are You Serious?

    Oh, but wait… if you really want to be taken seriously as a writer, stop and listen to that little nagging voice in your head that keeps saying, “Shouldn’t you be running the manuscript past an experienced professional copyeditor before you send it out?”

    Yes, you’ve read that in order to make your book as good as it can possibly be, you must take that vital step of investing in the services of an editorial pro. And just think—in the twinkling of a well-trained eye, a topnotch editor could burnish your precious prose so it sparkles in the sunlight.

    But if you submit (interesting, the ramifications of that word “submission” when it refers to sending in a manuscript, isn’t it?) your pages to the hyper-scrutiny of a nitpicky copyeditor, won’t your authentic voice be changed or deleted or mangled beyond recognition?

    The answer is… no, not if you properly vet the copyeditor to make sure you can work together well, and if the copyeditor stipulates that one of his or her goals is to make your manuscript publisher-ready… but not change your unique voice.

    A good copyeditor will offer to edit a few pages of your work as a sample, to see if you two are, literally and figuratively, “on the same page.”  You can usually judge from his or her edits whether you would be able to work together happily or not. For example, if you question some of the edits and the editor responds in a haughty or rigid “only my way is right” tone, run as fast as you can toward another editor.

    If your manuscript is about the life and times of the artist Edward Gorey, and the editor you’re considering has never heard of Edward Gorey and, furthermore, has no interest in learning anything about Edward Gorey, bid farewell and turn quickly on your heels.

    6 Ways Copyeditors Make Your Book Better

    A good copyeditor brings so much to the party. He or she can:

    1. go over grammar, punctuation, spelling, and sentence structure with a fine-tooth comb;
    2. check for consistency of verb tense, tone, and mood;
    3. find instances where sentences or paragraphs could be moved to make more logical sense;
    4. ask questions about clarity of idea, or accuracy of fact;
    5. call attention to parts of the text that could be tightened, expanded, livened up or deleted;
    6. make suggestions — synonyms for overused words, deletions of redundant words or phrases.

    With a good copyeditor on your team, misplaced modifiers, dangling participles, its/it’s, to/too and other hair-raising/hare-raising errors will melt away. Skilled editors say that mistakes “leap off the page” at them. And potential readers of your book will not be distracted by sloppy copy.

    You can find professional book manuscript copyeditors through organizations such as BAIPA and the Bay Area Editors’ Forum (BAEF), through online editorial sites, through ads in magazines that are targeted toward writers, and through looking up “copyeditor” on search engines.

    A good copyeditor can make your book’s message shipshape—and that’s not just editorial spin!

    Originally published as “6 Ways Copyeditors Make Your Book Better,” a guest post on Joel Friedlander’s popular blog, The Book Designer, on May 25, 2012.

    Linda Jay is a manuscript copyeditor with decades of experience, specializes in business, novels, memoirs, spirituality, women’s issues, academic topics and fantasy (vampires, zombies).

    Linda Jay will be on a panel of editors at Writers Forum in Petaluma, California on May 21, 2015.

    Marlene C

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  • Self-editing and Wordsmithing

    Guest Blogger Linda Jay writes about self-editing and wordsmithing:

    I’ve noticed a topic popping up more and more in books, workshops and seminars, even those offered by Writer’s Digest. Targeted mostly toward indie authors (perhaps you’re in that category), these books, workshops and seminars encourage writers to self-edit their own work before they self-publish.

    Now, self-editing is fine. Going through your manuscript’s rough drafts several times over a period of weeks searching for errors and omissions, perhaps even reading the text aloud to catch awkward phrasing or redundancies or overcomplicated construction, is certainly not going to hurt—and possibly might even improve—your writing.

    But let’s face it, there’s only so much self-editing an author can do. Frankly, you as the author are too close to the subject matter to be objective, even if you take a break from the material and come back to it later.

    In my opinion—and I’m not just saying this because I happen to be an experienced book manuscript copyeditor—an author truly needs an editor’s fresh perspective to make his or her writing as excellent and polished as it can possibly be.

    Recently I made editorial suggestions to an author, pointing out missing information and details in her novel; of course, she hadn’t left out facts intentionally. But on the other hand, she hadn’t noticed that she needed to “fill in the blanks” in that particular section of text so that a reader could understand the characters in-depth.

    I also offered specific ideas for improving the text that the author hadn’t thought of, but was happy to implement immediately:

    • short titles summing up each chapter,
    • translations of Latin terms and phrases so that the reader will understand their meaning,
    • clarification and explanation of obscure historical points,
    • easily understood transitions between scenes.

    The Role of Traditional Publishers?

    Traditional publishers no longer pay for the routine editing of manuscripts, and self-publishers often believe that they cannot afford to hire a professional editor.

    If you as an author have done your best self-editing but are still convinced that you want a professional editor to work with you, ask the editor to work on just a few chapters at a time. That way, it’s within the realm of financial possibility.

    Far beyond being merely a spell-checker, a good copyeditor is essentially able to “hear” what an author has written, and sense how a piece of writing will be received by other readers. An experienced copyeditor will also notice if the writer has made unfounded assumptions about the subject matter or the intended audience.

    In other words, self-editing is indeed useful, but it will never take the place of the opinions and comments of a professional wordsmith.

    The two processes should be used in tandem.

    Originally posted in Joel Friedlander’s blog, The Book Designer, on October 5, 2012

    Linda Jay is a manuscript copyeditor with decades of experience, specializes in business, novels, memoirs, spirituality, women’s issues, academic topics and fantasy (vampires, zombies)

    Linda will be on a panel of editors at Writers Forum in Petaluma on May 21, 2015.

    Marlene C

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