Tag: publishing

Filed under:

Chantelle Behrens

An Interview with Jen Campbell, Editors Canada Conference Keynote Speaker

May 17, 2022 by Chantelle Behrens | Leave a Comment

Jen Campbell is a bestselling author, award-winning poet and disability advocate. She has written 10 books for children and adults, spanning nonfiction, poetry, short stories and picture books. She reviews books on BBC Radio, is the books editor for TOAST Magazine, has an iTunes top 100 podcast called BOOKS WITH JEN and runs a YouTube […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Aerin Caley

An Interview with Lorina Stephens, Editors Canada Conference Keynote Speaker

May 3, 2022 by Aerin Caley | Leave a Comment

Lorina Stephens didn’t start her career in writing and publishing. She has been a manager and bookkeeper for companies as diverse as a civil engineering firm, Faberge of Canada, and her own custom glass installation company. She has also created and sold historically accurate clothing patterns and has explored other arts such as sculpture, printmaking […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Adebe DeRango-Adem

One Year Later, Much Work Yet to Be Done: Questions to Guide Next Steps in Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

May 25, 2021 by Adebe DeRango-Adem | Leave a Comment

Just over a decade ago, when I was an intern with Colorlines magazine (now Race Forward), my main task was to help build the framework for “Drop the I-Word” — a campaign to change journalistic copy-editing conventions across the U.S. We sought to have The Associated Press (AP) and news outlets cease using the word […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Heidi Waechtler

On Resolving to Publish: Book Publishing in 2021 and Beyond

January 12, 2021 by Heidi Waechtler | 4 Comments on On Resolving to Publish: Book Publishing in 2021 and Beyond

I’ve worked in publishing for about 15 years, but every year I’m caught off guard by the January phenomenon of aspiring authors who’ve resolved that this is the year they’re publishing a book. Manuscript submissions and calls about the publishing process become more frequent, as do inquiries about how to get into the industry itself. […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Sue Archer

Diversity in Publishing: An Interview with Sangeeta Mehta

April 21, 2020 by Sue Archer | 2 Comments on Diversity in Publishing: An Interview with Sangeeta Mehta

This week, the Editors’ Weekly is holding a conversation with Sangeeta Mehta on the current state of diversity in publishing and how editors can be leaders in the fight for inclusion. About Sangeeta Sangeeta Mehta has worked in the book publishing field since the late 1990s. She has been an acquiring editor at both Little, […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Kate Johnson

No Perfection Unless You’re a Sunset

March 26, 2019 by Kate Johnson | 7 Comments on No Perfection Unless You’re a Sunset

Those who read are an exacting bunch. We grew up with professionally proofread books, back when publishers could still afford to pay someone to make sure no spelling mistake got by, no errant comma, sneaky typo, sloppy grammar or lazy punctuation. We had high expectations of our reading material. Now we tend to notice when […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Rosemary Shipton

Working With Authors

November 6, 2018 by Rosemary Shipton | 8 Comments on Working With Authors

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, and describe their overall approach […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Brendan O’Brien

Is It All About the Author?

August 21, 2018 by Brendan O'Brien | 23 Comments on Is It All About the Author?

The prevailing orthodoxy in online editors’ groups, I have noticed, is one of huge respect for, and empathy with, the author. The author is king/queen. We, as editors, primarily serve the author’s vision, the author’s voice. However, in my own work (both in-house and freelance, primarily as a copyeditor of non-fiction), the emphasis has generally […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Sue Archer

Review: Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing By and About Indigenous Peoples by Gregory Younging

May 29, 2018 by Sue Archer | 3 Comments on Review: Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing By and About Indigenous Peoples by Gregory Younging

When I heard an Indigenous style guide was being published this year, I was excited by the opportunity to learn a framework for approaching the works of Indigenous authors. I am a non-Indigenous editor — a settler — and in recent years I have become very aware of my long-standing ignorance regarding the perspectives of […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Rosemary Shipton

An Academic Rock Star’s Advice for Editors

April 17, 2018 by Rosemary Shipton | 12 Comments on An Academic Rock Star’s Advice for Editors

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 Canadian Biography, dean of the […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Rosemary Shipton

Those Unpublishable Manuscripts

October 11, 2016 by Rosemary Shipton | 25 Comments on Those Unpublishable Manuscripts

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 with the author was probably […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Virginia Durksen

Myth: It Takes a Certain Personality to Become an Editor

March 25, 2014 by Virginia Durksen | 4 Comments on Myth: It Takes a Certain Personality to Become an Editor

Any profession draws certain personality types to it more readily than others. But just as there’s no single lawyer or doctor or teacher type, there’s more than one editor type. Editors come in all sorts. Editors can be achievers, caretakers, managers, control freaks, idea generators, intellectuals, entrepreneurs — and are often a bit of everything […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

David Antrobus

The Editor’s Fedora Part 4

March 13, 2014 by David Antrobus | 4 Comments on The Editor’s Fedora Part 4

In Part 3 we discussed how editors determine costs. And before you scoff at or otherwise leap to judgment of the rates, it’s probably pertinent to mention another facet of this — it’s a generally accepted rule that whatever hourly rate a freelancer settles on, you can estimate their annual salary by multiplying it by […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

David Antrobus

The Editor’s Fedora Part 3

March 10, 2014 by David Antrobus | 12 Comments on The Editor’s Fedora Part 3

Now we arrive at the crucial topic of cost, and the seemingly arbitrary variations in same. Some editors are so brilliant that they really can and do charge top dollar. I know someone who can quote $5,000 for editing an 80,000-word manuscript. Before you gag on that, bear in mind that editing at that rarefied […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

David Antrobus

The Editor’s Fedora Part 1

February 25, 2014 by David Antrobus | 2 Comments on The Editor’s Fedora Part 1

As an independent writer myself and a passionate believer in the indie ethic, I have to acknowledge one of its major downsides: a real or perceived shoddiness in the final product of self-published authors. Which is where I now switch hats and replace the bohemian beret of the writer with a more conservative form of […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Adrienne Montgomerie

This Book Contains Canadian Spelling

February 11, 2014 by Adrienne Montgomerie | 11 Comments on This Book Contains Canadian Spelling

Every publisher who has hoped for a large U.S. audience has asked me to edit to U.S. spelling standards. You know, drop the dipthongs (oe and ae), omit the u from ou pairs, use z instead of s, allow only one consonant before adding an ending… They seem to think Americans won’t buy a book […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Rosemary Shipton

What Should an Editor Be?

January 7, 2014 by Rosemary Shipton | 26 Comments on What Should an Editor Be?

We were nearing the end of a Stylistic Editing seminar — a group of about 30 people of varying ages and experience working in-house or freelance for book publishers, magazines, businesses or governments. A woman in the third row raised her hand: “In my work I’m the only editor,” she said, “so I don’t really […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Kate Icely

DISPATCHES 8: Looking Forward, Looking Back

November 13, 2013 by Kate Icely | 3 Comments on DISPATCHES 8: Looking Forward, Looking Back

I thought up this series while sitting in my cubicle at Random House of Canada just as I was starting my second internship. By this point I considered myself a pretty seasoned hand. I had seen a lot: the relentless hard work, the small embarrassments, the seemingly endless hours. But I had also enjoyed the […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Kate Icely

DISPATCHES 7: Finding Work in Unexpected Places

October 2, 2013 by Kate Icely | Leave a Comment

Getting an internship can lead to a job—but it might not be the job you were expecting. When I first started taking courses at Ryerson University, I didn’t have a clue about the variety of jobs available to me. I knew I could be an editorial assistant at a publishing company, but there were so […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Kate Icely

DISPATCHES 6: Are Interns Taken Advantage Of?

August 27, 2013 by Kate Icely | Leave a Comment

According to my recent articles, internships can be awesome. You get a ton of experience, and getting a job is a snap—all you have to do is follow the steps in my last post. But it’s not always like that. If it were, people wouldn’t complain about internships as much as they do. They’re a […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Kate Icely

DISPATCHES 5: How to Get a Job in Publishing

July 16, 2013 by Kate Icely | 4 Comments on DISPATCHES 5: How to Get a Job in Publishing

  Always, ALWAYS, be prepared to talk about what you’re reading. Despite the auspicious title of this article, I can’t actually tell you how to get a job in publishing. Fewer and fewer jobs are opening up in this industry every day, and young people are having to get pretty creative to snag the few […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Karen Virag

GETTABLE GRAMMAR: Taking issue with “issues”

July 11, 2013 by Karen Virag | 4 Comments on GETTABLE GRAMMAR: Taking issue with “issues”

I think I remember the first time I heard the word issues used as a synonym for problems. I was watching a long-forgotten television sitcom, and one character commented on another’s weird behaviour by saying, “She has issues.” She overenunciated the word issues and at the same time made little scratching gestures with her index […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Kate Icely

DISPATCHES 4: What’s an Intern Worth?

May 28, 2013 by Kate Icely | 2 Comments on DISPATCHES 4: What’s an Intern Worth?

So now that you know what editorial interns do and you have some tips to get you started, I’m sure you’re wondering how the editorial staff really feels about interns. This question was burning in my mind when I started at Random House Canada. With so many interns coming in (up to eight a year in […]

Read more »

Tagged

Filed under:

Lana Okerlund

What Do Editors Need To Know Now?

May 7, 2013 by Lana Okerlund | 2 Comments on What Do Editors Need To Know Now?

The volatile state of the publishing industry today—and, by extension, the editing profession—can sometimes feel pretty daunting. Digital disruptions to the book, magazine, and newspaper segments of the industry in particular are like an ongoing series of earthquake tremors beneath what previously felt like steady ground. Technological innovations have brought new forms of reading and […]

Read more »

Tagged