Different types of editing of your book, how they work

moderntimes · Post by **moderntimes** » 03 Sep 2015, 20:59

For those involved in publishing a novel or other book, there are several types of edit that the book is put through. Now you may be performing the edit yourself for a self-published book, you may pay someone to edit if for you, or if your book is published professionally, the editing staff of the publisher perform the edit for you. In my case, I recently landed a nice contract with a conventional publisher for my 3 private detective novels and I'm setting up to work with the edit staff. But even if you're doing you own edit, you need to do the same sorts of editing.

Each type of edit is different and is for a specific purpose. And even if you're doing your own edit, you need to be familiar with these edits, so that you can be cognizant of each thing to look for. Or, if someone else performs the edit, you still need to be familiar with the terminology so you can communicate better with the editors.

If your edit is being performed by someone else, you'll likely communicate via MS-Word with "Track Changes" on. And it's absolutely necessary that you become reasonably familiar with Track Changes, because that's how 99% of electronic editing is done these days. Track Changes doesn't make the changes, but instead runs a line thru the deleted text and marks the new inserted text in either red or blue. On reviewing each change, you can either "accept" or "refuse" the change. And there's a comment area where you can enter a brief reason for the change. If it's something other than a simply typo, it's a good idea for saying why the change was made.

There are 3 normal types of edit: copy edit, line edit, and general or content edit. These 3 terms may be mixed or slightly differ in definition but they represent different aspects of what to look for.

Copy edit: This is the lowest level. This is a check for typos, misspelling, other grammatical or mechanical errors -- missing commas and other stuff. The material is also checked for legal problems, such as if you're quoting song lyrics that are copyright, or if you're slamming a real person or real place (restaurant, etc).

Line edit: This is a check for style on the simple level of using a word too many times, things like repeated "He said, She said" and other problems that aren't actual typos but are places where the style can be improved.

General edit: This is the highest level, where a senior editor at your publisher comments on your overall style and rhythm, and makes recommendations on how your story can be improved.

If someone else is performing the editing on your behalf, you'll likely go back and forth several times, tweaking the story for improving it. Each time the changes will be marked via MS-Word "Track Changes" and then, when all agree upon the final version, the changes are all either accepted or refused and the Word version is given a final cleanup.

After the manuscript is approved by you, the publisher sets up a "galley proof" which is the layout of how the published version will appear. This can either be a hard copy paperback or hardbound book or an e-book. You as the author must give final approval. And then the book goes to release. Of course, if you're the typographer, editor, and setup person yourself, you'll do all the "grunt" work but you still need to effect the same sort of editing process, even if you're working on your own.

Questions or comments?

zeldas_lullaby · Post by **zeldas_lullaby** » 04 Sep 2015, 19:19

Thanks for all that great info!

I am terrible at copy editing. I mean, I'm great at grammar, but I'm terrible at seeing typos and missing/extra words. I look right over them. I could stare at a sentence ten times and not see where I made a mistake. I've finally started outsourcing a bit just for proofreading purposes.

I've become an expert at line editing. I guess my brain's better wired for that.

I can add some helpful MS Word edits that I do. One is the search and replace function. I search for double spaces. (When I "wake up" my computer, I do it by hitting the space bar. This effects my top open document.) I replace any accidental double spaces with one space.

Search and find (the function) is your best friend for editing. For example, one of my recent proofreaders told me that "whoops" is spelled with an "h." That was news, as I thought it was spelled "woops."

Whoops.

So I did a search and find and found it twice in the document. Easy fix.

Here are some more tips that I've uncovered:

The number-one cause of a non-typo mistake is when you change part of a sentence and don't check the whole sentence before moving on.

Example:

I really didn't enjoy my time with you.
I decide to reword it to:
I really didn't enjoy the vacation I took with you.
But what if I didn't delete enough? See a problem below:
I really didn't enjoy the vacation my I took with you.

The solution here is that when you change part of a sentence--ANY part of a sentence--check the whole sentence before moving on. This is imperative for me, since I'm so weak in the area of copy editing. It could be called prevention.

moderntimes · Post by **moderntimes** » 04 Sep 2015, 19:47

Good hints all.

These days a writer has to be reasonably proficient with MS-Word and know the little tricks of the trade that help.

Editing for typos is very hard to all writers, because we wrote it and therefore the words that were intended to be there are in the writer's mind and they block the brain from finding a missing or extra word and so on. What has to be done is to develop a very rude and nasty mindset for your own writing -- that writer thought it was easy? I'll show him! You sort of have to set your writer's mind aside and put on the editor's hat. Hard to do of course.

zeldas_lullaby · Post by **zeldas_lullaby** » 04 Sep 2015, 20:05

It is hard, but you articulated the mental block exactly. What I've been doing is outsourcing, like I said, by paying friends $10 a book to read it and see what they catch. My dad does it for free, but he's not really very good at it. (He's helpful for storyline issues, though.)