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Nancy Flight

40 Years: An Editor’s Perspective

Forty-six years ago, when I embarked on my editing career, my first assignment was to edit a 500-page novel, which the publisher plunked onto my desk along with a copy of The Chicago Manual of Style and a dictionary. “Here, edit this,” he said. That was my instruction in its …

Close up of a section of bookshelf lined with books, spines facing in. The “exposed” pages are facing out and an old letterpress ampersand sits on top of the books, facing the viewer, as if to ask the question, “And….?”

Are Book Editors an Endangered Species?

In  December 2012, the world was supposed to end, the U.S. was expected to fall off the so-called fiscal cliff, and some commentators had already pronounced Canadian publishing dead or nearly so. As we know, the world did not end, and the U.S. has avoided plunging over the fiscal cliff, …