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A review by neilrcoulter
What Editors Do: The Art, Craft, and Business of Book Editing by Peter Ginna
5.0
What Editors Do is a collection of 26 chapters by 27 authors about all aspects of professional editing. Often multi-author volumes such as this have a lot of ups and downs: some chapters are excellent, other chapters less so. But this entire book is a fascinating read. I enjoyed every chapter and wouldn't single out any of them as "skippable."
As a freelance copyeditor and proofreader myself, it was enormous fun to read other people who understand that way of seeing the world. As Carol Fisher Saller (the Chicago Manual of Style's own "Subversive Copy Editor") writes, "It's important to examine your temperament and leanings when considering a copyediting career; if it strikes you as an exciting alternative to the monastery or tuna factory, you're on the right track" (113). Somewhat more wistfully, Erika Goldman says that "Being an editor is a lifelong apprenticeship: the books you read, the jobs you have, influence your approach to any given text. Yet in a sense I'm the same editor I was at the beginning of my career, an idealistic former literature student who took pleasure in books whose form and content I understood to be symbiotic, indivisible" (151). I understand all of that, and it's why I dream of being a full-time editor.
What Editors Do is an excellent way to get an overview of how many kinds of jobs editors may be responsible for. A lot of people might equate "editor" to "grammar police," a person who corrects all of the spellings, apostrophes, commas, and so forth. In fact, that seems to be the kind of work that many professional editors long to do but have little time for. More of their day-to-day work is the hectic social networking of building relationships with authors, agents, and the rest of their colleagues at the publisher. Actual line-by-line editing is, for many editors, the smallest part of their daily work, and a luxury they crave.
I recommend this book to anyone who loves books—it's a beautiful glimpse into how the books we love get to us. I especially recommend this to any writer, including self-publishing authors. Understanding the publication process is invaluable. Kudos to editor Peter Ginna for collecting these chapters and ensuring such high quality throughout. I'm also grateful for the long list of "Further Resources" in the back of the book—so many good books to check out!
As a freelance copyeditor and proofreader myself, it was enormous fun to read other people who understand that way of seeing the world. As Carol Fisher Saller (the Chicago Manual of Style's own "Subversive Copy Editor") writes, "It's important to examine your temperament and leanings when considering a copyediting career; if it strikes you as an exciting alternative to the monastery or tuna factory, you're on the right track" (113). Somewhat more wistfully, Erika Goldman says that "Being an editor is a lifelong apprenticeship: the books you read, the jobs you have, influence your approach to any given text. Yet in a sense I'm the same editor I was at the beginning of my career, an idealistic former literature student who took pleasure in books whose form and content I understood to be symbiotic, indivisible" (151). I understand all of that, and it's why I dream of being a full-time editor.
What Editors Do is an excellent way to get an overview of how many kinds of jobs editors may be responsible for. A lot of people might equate "editor" to "grammar police," a person who corrects all of the spellings, apostrophes, commas, and so forth. In fact, that seems to be the kind of work that many professional editors long to do but have little time for. More of their day-to-day work is the hectic social networking of building relationships with authors, agents, and the rest of their colleagues at the publisher. Actual line-by-line editing is, for many editors, the smallest part of their daily work, and a luxury they crave.
I recommend this book to anyone who loves books—it's a beautiful glimpse into how the books we love get to us. I especially recommend this to any writer, including self-publishing authors. Understanding the publication process is invaluable. Kudos to editor Peter Ginna for collecting these chapters and ensuring such high quality throughout. I'm also grateful for the long list of "Further Resources" in the back of the book—so many good books to check out!