Words from a Book Editor (Part 1 of 2)

(This post comes from Vicki Crumpton.)

When I receive a proposal, I evaluate far more than the manuscript. I look at platform, professionalism, marketing angles, other books in our list, and a host of other things before I even get to the manuscript or sample chapters.

When I start working on a contracted manuscript, I look at the technical things, such as grammar, style, punctuation, and word count. Amazingly, authors occasionally miss that by as much as 20,000 words. That always concerns me.

This is where publishing gets fun: I love it when a manuscript comes in far better than I dreamed it would be when we contracted it. I love it when I get so involved in reading that I forget that I need to work on the manuscript. I love it when authors hit home runs.

A good author-editor relationship is like most other good relationships. There’s a common interest. There’s good communication. There’s respect. It often goes beyond just work, though, because we share things that are happening in our lives. Over the course of my career, most of my authors would say they also count me as a friend, as I do them.

Vicki Crumpton, Executive Editor for Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group, acquired a number of award finalists and winners, as well as several New York Times' bestsellers, including 90 Minutes in Heaven. She holds an M. Div. and Ph.D. from Southwestern.

How Editing Groups Work (Part 6 of 4)

Lisa asked me to show examples of how we edit a submission. You can do it several ways. If it's a face-to-face group, write on the paper itself. When you hand it back, it's easy for the writer to see what you've edited.

If it's online, I use different methods. I suggest the use of Comment boxes. (Two of the publishing houses I work with use only Comment boxes for their edits, so it's good to learn how to use them.)

Being Edited (Part 2 of 6)

Even though editors improve our manuscripts, they want to start with well-written articles and books. Everything we can do to make our work outstanding not only sells the material, but it makes editors' work easier.

Too many beginning writers seem to think that if they write their material, edit it twice, and send the manuscript through Spellchecker, it's ready to publish.

That's a good start, but not enough.

Perhaps that's obvious, but my wife, Shirley, edited a magazine and curriculum for 20 years. Occasionally, she received submissions with notes that said, "God gave this to me, so you won't have to edit it, you can publish it just as it is."

Not once was the quality of the writing good enough and was usually extremely bad. I didn't know any of the writers, and I never saw their manuscripts, but they were probably individuals who couldn't stand anyone to change their writing. Too bad. None of them got published.

Get editorial help before you submit a manuscript.
Accept help from the editor after you submit your manuscript.