A question is nibbling away at my focus needed to complete my work. I have joined this forum in order to understand the market and come across a few exalted individuals. I find a few individuals who like to help others out and have offered their support openly. I appreciate their nobility. There is no successful author without a brilliant editor, who will keep picking up the flaws in arguments and complexity of sentences. One just can't say enough about the need for a brilliant editor - an often unsung person who toils without tiring, one who is simultaneously supportive and critical. Do we have the honour of having among us an editor who has done one, if not several, book that has sold in the excess of ten thousand copies in the market? I would like to have the honour of knowing a few active in this forum. I would also like to know what inspires them to toil so hard for others' work. Some real insights directly from those brilliant, unsung individuals please... There are editors who do fiction exclusively, then there are some who do non-fiction. Is there a commonality between the two genre? Is being highly aware and knowledgeable in the field(s) which the work he/she will potentially be editing is based on, an absolute pre-requisite for him/her? Should these be ascertained before he/she is to be handed over the project? Your free/frank opinion is solicited.
Just bear in mind that editors aren't gods. They can't make a silk purse out of sow's ear. If the writer doesn't do their job, and do it pretty darn well, no editor in the world can make it sell.
sorry, rajib, but what your poll aims to show is not at all clear [to me, at least]... none of the choices are answers to any question, with some of them even being questions themselves... and the 'question' above the list of 'answer' choices isn't one at all, due to the wording... fyi, i am a professional editor, but i have not worked for professional novelists and have edited the text for only one major photographer whose gorgeous coffee table books routinely sell in the tens of thousands... [link removed] i prefer to help new writers who in most cases will be self-publishing their books and do not have the requisite level of skills to turn out a readable/marketable ms... most have been writers to whom english is not their birth tongue, and i specialize in correcting the grammar, et al., while not sacrificing the charm of their native 'voice'... to me, there is no difference between editing fiction and non-fiction... good writing is simply good writing, no matter what form it takes... i also edit poetry, screenplays, website copy, and anything else that takes words... i am currently sorting, cataloguing, digitizing and will eventually be editing and publishing the huge body of work that had been squirrelled away by a deceased american poet of incredible talent who sadly went unnoticed in life, while plying his trade as a second generation stone mason... as for your final two questions, my answer would have to be a qualified 'yes' to both, depending on the level of edit required... if only a basic 'technical' edit is needed, to correct typos, punctuation and minor grammar goofs and glitches, then no expertise beyond that is necessary... but if the author needs the substance of the text checked for sense-making in re the subject matter, then of course the editor must either be knowledgeable in the field, or capable of doing the requisite research in order to do a good job... i hope this is somewhat helpful... love and hugs, maia ps: sw is correct in that even the best editor in the world cannot guarantee that the edited [or rewritten or ghostwritten] work will ever be accepted by an agent or publisher...
This is absolutely not true. Most successful authors do their own editing. This is not to say the publisher does not do some editing as well, but that is generally minor, and only after the manuscript has been accepted. Publishers do not accept manuscripts that require extensive editing. But a writer who expects to succeed must himself or herself become a highly competent editor. Passing that task to someone else is prohibitively expensive, with absolutely no guarantee of gettng the manuscript accepted. Furthermore, unless the hired editor is intimately familiar with your writing style and able to preserve it, he or she may damage it more than improve it. I agree with Maia that your poll makes no sense.
I have to wonder if the rare bits of media that deal with the writer/editor relationship aren't to blame for this misconception. Wonder Boys comes to mind, and also Stranger Than Fiction.
I beg to differ. Many authors do their own editing and sometimes it's quite obvious. I have read books from big publishers that had more mistakes that I would dare leave on my own text messages. Some on the very first page! Unless the editor was too busy fixing another hot mess or simply missed a few mistakes himself, authors definitely do their own editing or such mistakes that I, as a reader, caught instantly would have been fixed before they were published.
Being a would-be writer in a socialist countries (like mine) was, to some degree, under ideal conditions, not unlike that. Basically, your life as a writer would start in primary school, at age of 8-10, when your teacher notices your talent. Then you'd progress by writing for the school magazine and wining some inter-schoo or national prizes for pupil writing (usually, those included eulogies for the national leader, national army, the Party, etc). Of course, being the top student and a praised member of the Communist Young is a must. As time goes by, by the time you are ready for the faculty (age 18-19) you have secretly started to rebel against the system listening to RnR and writing your personal stuff about, mostly, sex and history... You send a story or a poem to a magazine and it gets immediatelly noticed by the editor in chief (in socialist times, lit.magazines had as many editors as printed pages). The editor sends another, lower-level editor to meet with you as your first "serious" work is published. You send him a manuscript of your Great National Novel abot the War or Revolution - he takes time to read every word and notice every mistake. You rebel against his proofreading, but he has patience to help you understand the work and your corespondence and meetings finally produce a publisgable manuscript... The rest is history: you either live a happy life as a regime-friendly author, or you continue to rebel eventually growing into dissident and a samizdat (=self-published). This, of course, worked like this till late 1980s... since then, I can't imagine ot happen anywhere in the world
Thank you for giving me a movie to watch tonight. I think I'll enjoy Wonder Boys. I'll also put the novel on my list.
Like teh Bob Dylan song in Wonder Boys...must watch that again actually, must be ten years ago i seen it
