Note: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti, TeleRead’s e-book editor, teaches a graduate-level course in editing.
Line editing is a dying art in the modern book world. This much is a sad fact and one we must accept if we are to succeed as writers of e- or p-books.
No longer can an editor find the time to hold an author’s hand and, line by line, make careful or substantive changes to a submitted manuscript. “Due to the pressures of time and business, in the 21st century, the art of line editing is all but dead,” says Evander Lomke, an editor at Continuum Books and an officer of The Genius Club, a small, private organization comprised of members of the intellectual community.
Press-ready books: Growing requirement at big houses
Large print houses like Random House and HarperCollins—and even many of the good smaller presses like Continuum—are under great pressure to get to the market, posthaste. It is now more than ever assumed that the book will arrive in a more complete form, press-ready, than before. Perhaps some of the smaller imprints have the luxury of true line-editing, but even this is rarer and rarer.
Of course, there are at least several types of editors—the developmental editor, the acquisitions editor and the copy editor. Each has his or her place in print publishing. Such editors do not exist in most of the e-book world, however, increasing the burden on the author.
Ready to fly
In the print world, the developmental editor seeks out a project and the right author or editor for the it. The acquisitions editor is expected to purchase a book that is ready to fly—not a book that requires any real hardcore editing. As noted, this is a dying art, and while some editing is certainly done, nowhere nearly as much as even ten years ago.
The copy editor is still around, but copy editors are most often off-site contractors, hired for individual projects to catch stylistic issues; here again, it is assumed that the author has done most of the work.
E-books a different beast
E-books, however, are an entirely different beast. The onus is entirely on the writer to entirely edit the book him or herself. There is absolutely no arbiter or objective observer of the prose to direct or guide the author in any direction at all, leaving all responsibility to the author to create a book that makes sense and is highly readable, logical and linear; a lean, mean machine of a book.
E-book writers typically—not always—do not even have the brief luxury of having a copy editor who will go through the text to catch those minor stylistic glitches such as grammatical and typographical errors, making sure that the content of the manuscript abides by certain standards as determined by a codified source, such as Words Into Type or The Chicago Manual of Style. The e-book writer must be writer, editor, designer and publisher. A one-stop shop.
That said, know that any good book can benefit from a good copy editor, and, of course, a good style guide can only be of benefit to any author. It seems important, then, for the e-book writer to copy-edit his or her own work carefully. Surely, if nothing else, it may help the book’s chance of becoming a p-book more should the author desire such publication. In this case, the manuscript would arrive as more of a finished product—a fact that perhaps p-book writers could and should take a lesson from e-book writers before rushing to submit their work to their agents and publishing houses.
The perils of counting on the editor
It seems that writers more comfortable with the p-book format have grown somewhat lazy, assuming that the editor will still, as in the old days, take it upon him or herself to whip the book into shape—a fact that at one time was perhaps true but can no longer be counted on. Make no mistake, the times, they are a changin’.
Added bonus for e-book writers moving into print world
In some ways, then, the e-book writer may have some advantage over the p-book writer with this new understanding—as the e-book author may be more savvy in the new publishing environment and take on more of the creative process, including layout and design of the book, as well as editing and copy editing.
For those e-book writers who wish to move into the p-book world, editors and publishers can only see this as an added bonus.
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Moderator’s note: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti is a former publicity director and editor for David R. Godine, Publisher, and has worked at Conde Nast Publications, The Atlantic Monthly and other publications. She has been widely published and now writes regularly for several publications including the famous Cleveland Blogcritics, Geek2Geek, Boston Globe Arts Section, and she has also written for Publisher’s Weekly, Independent Publisher and others. Visit her Web site.
Enjoy Sadi’s podcasts regularly by pasting the TeleRead audio feed into your podware. And remember, she welcomes feedback.
Detail: Sadi has jetted off to Paris and may or may not have access to e-mail. So don’t be discouraged if you write a note here and don’t get a prompt reply from her.
I’m grateful for Sadi’s readable, provocative essay. At the same time, this is exactly the kind of piece I dread running in the TeleBlog; there is no way that everything will be perfect, given the limits of time and of WordPress software, where the editing mode doesn’t present text in the most readable fashion. Sure enough, in the “first edition” of this article, I found that I’d used “graduate-levek course” in the introduction. Meanwhile you can blame me, not Sadi, for any errors that might have slipped through.
I believe that everyone needs an editor, and in fact, the first edition of The Great Gatsby was full of typos, even with Maxwell Perkins as editor. It’s a shame that “perfect and press ready” are musts for acquisitions editors—when some of the most brilliant books may be those very works deficient in the mechanics. Yes, spelling and grammar and well-crafted structure do count in a book; in fact, that’s my point. The old-fashioned paper world got this right—with a solid editorial infrastructure. I’d love to see the big houses slash the costs of the frills, such as Manhattan locations, and return to the basics, both in e-books and p-books.
Reading Sadi’s essay, I find that another issue comes to mind—one that Branko and I have been discussing. Just how much value do publishers add? And what share of the revenue, if any, should they claim? While Branko has been focused on scientific and scholarly publishing, the same concerns would apply to trade publishing, and Sadi’s essay would actually appear to reinforce his arguments. If nothing else, it would suggest that self-publishing could be the way for many writers to go. After all, if you must pay an editor to make your book press-ready, or must coax friends into doing so, assuming you know the right people, then you may think: “Why send this book to a publisher, now that it’s so fully deglitched? I might as well put it out myself.”
Then again, self-published books face major hurdles. In a recent Washington Post column, for example, ombudsman Deborah Howell noted that her newspaper’s book section does not even review self-published books, or at least not unless traditional publishers have picked them up.
No single model, however, as I see it, would or should exist for all books and all authors. Decide what’s best for you.
Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti said:
While I generally agree with Ms. Ranson-Polizzotti’s post, and strongly agree with the need for at least one extra set of eyes reviewing every e-book, I disagree with the notion that the onus is on the author to be the “editor, designer and publisher.”
Creating a book is analogous to building a house. A general contractor procures the raw materials and builds a home, which he then sells, typically through a real-estate agent. Some of the labor he performs with his own crew, but generally the labor is performed by sub-contractors.
Traditionally, a publisher is analogous to a general contractor. Some of the labor involved in creating a book may be performed by the publisher’s staff (e.g. editing) while other labor is performed by sub-contractors (e.g. printing). Which part of the labor is performed in-house and which part is out-sourced depends on relative costs associated with the labor and the expertise of the publisher’s staff.
A would-be home owner can cut out the general contractor by performing that role himself, and can save a substantial amount on the construction cost — and I did. Likewise, an author can potentially increase the income from a book by assuming the role of publisher. This does not mean that the author must perform all the labor typically handled by a publisher, merely that the author must either perform the labor herself or contract with others to do it for her.
This paradigm doesn’t change just because the end product is an e-book instead of a paper book, however some of the details might.
One of the changes occasioned by the nature of e-books is that in many cases the means of production are greatly reduced in price, making it possible for an author to produce the end product without having to invest large sums in capital equipement. For example, compare the price of a printing press to the price of word-processing software.
Yet another change is due to the fact that e-books are a “disruptive technology” (to understand what I mean by “disruptive technology” see The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen). E-books are fundamentally different from paper books, and many, if not most, traditional publishers do not understand the dynamics of e-book publishing any better than do most authors. Thus, there is less to be gained by an e-book author (“e-author”?) by allying herself with an existing publisher.
This does not mean, however, that an “e-author” must, or even should, shoulder all the burdens of being a self-publisher. Many “e-authors” will want to find an existing “e-publisher” who has the expertise to act as a “general contractor” for a new e-book. Many others will want to act as the “general” themselves, leaving much of the work to “sub-contractors.” I’m sure there are a number of e-publishers willing to work with authors to varying degrees just as there are a number of e-book “sub-contractors” that an author can use to self-publish an e-book.
A good resource for authors who choose to self-publish is Gropen Associates. For non-editorial assistance, I know that Rosetta Solutions and Blue Glass Publishing offer services to convert manuscripts to e-books.
What we need is a forum, a classified marketplace, if you will, where authors who are interested in self-publishing can interact and contract with e-book service providers, whether the services are editorial or production. There should be, could be, (and, I believe, will be) a middle ground between letting an e-publisher do it all for you or making an e-author do it all herself.