Writers and Editors

• Links to organizations, resources, and tips for editors
• Books for editors
• Books on indexing
• Interesting examples of heavy editing in literature

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Editing is not just finding and correcting spelling and grammar errors and if you are looking to hire an editor you need to figure out which purpose you are hiring one for. There are different types and levels of editing, for which editors charge different kinds of rates, and which require different amounts of time and kinds of expertise (and eye, or ear).

Chapter 1 of the code of fair practices posted online by the Editorial Freelancers Association (see link below) provides a description of the various types of writing and editorial services (abstracting, copyediting or line editing, copyfitting and page makeup, desktop publishing, developmental editing, evaluating a manuscript, illustrating, indexing, project management, proofreading, researching, rewriting, substantive editing, technical writing, translating, typemarking, writing).

What an editor charges depends very much on what the local market will bear, but a proofreader will generally charge less than a copyeditor, who will typically charge less than a substantive editor, who will generally charge less than a writer. Book publisher tend to pay on the low side. Technical and marketing copy command higher rates than other copy, for different reasons (the technical writer must be able to make the meaning clear without changing it; the editor of marketing copy must aim for the best "selling" copy, which requires a different kind of flair. Experience and expertise count for a lot, so an editor with a law degree, for example, can expect to be paid more for more editing legal documents. Good judgment, common sense, and a deep and wide enough knowledge either to spot errors or to know when to check things out are important skills in an editor.

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BOOKS FOR EDITORS:

· AP Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law (style for magazines and newspapers, but not books)

• The Art of Literary Publishing: Editors on Their Craft by Bill Henderson

• Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future by Jason Epstein

· The Chicago Manual of Style by University of Chicago Press Staff (style for books, geared to professional and academic authors)

• Editing by Design by Jan V. White (well illustrated book on graphic design through which even wordsmiths can learn the value of white space etc.)

• Editing Fact and Fiction by Leslie T. Sharpe, Irene Gunther, and Richard Marek

• The Editor-in-Chief: A Management Guide for Magazine Editors by Benton Rain Patterson and Coleman E. P. Patterson (have not reviewed this one)

• Editors on Editing: What Writers Need to Know About What Editors Do, by Gerald C. Gross (what editors need to know, too)

• Edit Yourself, by Bruce Ross-Larson (a bible at the World Bank and similar institutions)

• The Fiction Editor, The Novel, and the Novelist, by Thomas McCormack

• The Fine Art of Copy Editing by Elsie Myers Stainton

· Garner's Modern American Usage by Bryan A. Garner

• Handbook of Writing for the Mathematical Sciences by Nicholas J. Higham

• Levels of Technical Editing, by David E. Nadziejka (Council of Biology Editors)

• Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing by Claire Kerhwald Cook (line by line examples of how copyeditors fix sentences)


• Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, by A. Scott Berg (who edited F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe, among others)

· The NY Times Manual of Style and Usage by Allan M. Siegal

• Selected Takes: Film Editors on Editing by Vincent LoBrutto

• Side by Side: Five Favorite Picture Book Teams Go to Work , by Leonard S. Marcus

• Stet: Tricks of the Trade for Writers and Editors by Bruce O. Boston (for Editorial Eye)

• Stet Again: More Tricks of the Trade for Publications People, from the Editorial Eye

• Style: Toward Clarity and Grace by Joseph M. Williams (deeply understand the structure of a sentence and paragraph)

• Technical Editing, by Carolyn D. Rude

• Technical Editing, by Judith A. Tarutz

· Words into Type(3rd Edition) by Marjorie E. Skillin

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Interesting examples of heavy editing in literature

Sometimes the editor helps create a piece, by carving away the flab and helping to find the artistic center within. Sometimes such heavy editing does not have such felicitous results. Among the most interesting examples of heavy editing in literature:

F. Scott Fitzgerald's heavy cutting of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises

Max Perkins' heavy editing and reorganizing of Thomas Wolfe's long, long novel manuscripts (including Look Homeward, Angel)

Ezra Pound's beautiful editing of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland (Eliot's title was He Do the Police in Different Voices

Gordon Lish's editing of Raymond Carver's short fiction (the subject of at least two fascinating magazine pieces, linked to below)