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    What Editors Do: The Art, Craft, and Business of Book Editing
    What Editors Do: The Art, Craft, and Business of Book Editing
    What Editors Do: The Art, Craft, and Business of Book Editing
    Audiobook12 hours

    What Editors Do: The Art, Craft, and Business of Book Editing

    Published by Tantor Media, Inc

    Narrated by Susan Hanfield and Charles Constant

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    About this audiobook

    Editing is an invisible art where the very best work goes undetected. Editors strive to create books that are enlightening, seamless, and pleasurable to read, all while giving credit to the author. This makes it all the more difficult to truly understand the range of roles they inhabit while shepherding a project from concept to publication.

    In What Editors Do, Peter Ginna gathers essays from twenty-seven leading figures in book publishing about their work. Representing both large houses and small, and encompassing trade, textbook, academic, and children's publishing, the contributors make the case for why editing remains a vital function to writers-and readers-everywhere.

    Ironically for an industry built on words, there has been a scarcity of written guidance on how to actually approach the work of editing. This book will serve as a compendium of professional advice and will be a resource both for those entering the profession (or already in it) and for those outside publishing who seek an understanding of it. It sheds light on how editors acquire books, what constitutes a strong author-editor relationship, and the editor's vital role at each stage of the publishing process-a role that extends far beyond marking up the author's text.

    This collection treats editing as both art and craft, and also as a career. It explores how editors balance passion against the economic realities of publishing. What Editors Do shows why, in the face of a rapidly changing publishing landscape, editors are more important than ever.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJun 30, 2018
    ISBN9781977385925

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    • 4/5
      Since the advent of Amazon and self-publishing via the Kindle, the business of writing has become much more complex. Many can put their own book out to the public directly through self-publishing, but professional editors can still prove their worth through focused skills. Though not wonder-workers, editors can bring a text from good to very good or from very good to great. Peter Ginna’s anthology highlights precisely these skillsets through dozens of guest writers who share their expertise in each chapter.Aspiring editors can benefit from learning more about their craft while writers can learn how to take advantage of the business better. I’m in the latter category. This book helped me understand the book industry – the changing book industry – better. When interacting with the literary industry, in-depth understandings of the acquisition process or knowing various code words used to convey a certain part can allow a writer to judge whether a particular editor is just what their work needs.This book certainly covers the proverbial shoreline very well. It discusses everything including smaller presses versus corporate publishers, working your way up in the industry’s hierarchy, and how academic presses differ from mainstream outfits. As an enterprise-wide survey, this comprehensive story brings insights from many points of view. In particular, although the effects of technological change lie behind every chapter, the final chapter discusses industry trends and how they might augment the future. Those invested in the book industry, whether by profession or hobby, can master the business of bettering writing and writers.