Throughout my career, I’ve been influenced by many mentors. When I was first hired right out of graduate school, Meredith, the experienced editor I was replacing, spent six weeks working alongside me introducing me to the principles, techniques and subtleties of editing both a scholarly journal and my first book …
Editors make decisions all the time as they edit, but the most important judgment call of all is how to work best with each individual author. No one-size-fits-all solution will do. Most commonly, editors make their corrections with track changes, write questions and comments for the author in the margins, …
Recently I was asked to speak at the memorial service for Francess Halpenny — a true powerhouse in Canadian publishing. In the course of her long life, she was head of the Editorial Department at University of Toronto Press (UTP) during its “golden years,” general editor of the Dictionary of …
Editors say they love words, with finding just the right phrase for the context, but, ironically, they can only fail with two terms critical to the world of publishing: “editor” and “author.” When someone says she’s an editor, you have no idea what she does. Is she the editor of …
Editors enjoy their careers for various reasons — the opportunity to work in the exciting literary world or the more lucrative realms of government or business, or to specialize in particular areas of expertise. For me the major attraction is the simple fact that every project is different — I …
The key to a successful freelance business is a steady supply of projects. First, decide how many hours a week you’d like to work — 20, 40 billable hours? — and then set out to achieve your goal. Your professional life and income will become almost predictable. Here are some …
We’ve all had them – those manuscripts that arrive on our desks that should not be published. They have little merit in either content or expression, and our initial impulse is to return them immediately. How do we deal with them? If the project comes from a trade publisher, the contract …
“Every word is gold,” my author said, “but I suppose you’ll have to shorten it.” Indeed I will: this book manuscript totals 180,000 words, and the trade publisher wants a 40 percent cut. That will be tough. Editors often need to reduce text. Newspapers, magazines, brochures, textbooks and reference materials …
What’s the best way to pass skills, experience and business smarts from one person to another? Mentoring tops the list. We humans have always known the value of one-on-one instruction: parents teach their trade or profession to their children, apprentices work for years with their masters and young hires look …
Years ago, we all became editors through a kind of apprentice system. Once you had the ticket — a university degree — you were hired by a publisher or a communications department. There, a senior person on staff whipped you into shape as you did your work, followed a manual …