Comments on: Queries and Copyediting

By: AtlantaNewbie

AtlantaNewbie — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 20:29:57 +0000

THANK YOU DO MUCH FOR THIS BLOG!!! I have just started to delve into the technical process and professional standards associated with Copyediting & Proofreading. I never thought of it as a career choice until a friend asked me to “edit” her manuscript. Up until now, critically reviewing my own work as well as the works of others was always been something I found myself doing either by request or civic duty. Needless to say, I especially enjoyed your article on queries — Sharing your experiences eased my dismay (a little) when hardly any of my painstaking suggestions were actually applied to the final work. I was a lot closer to the first book I copyedited & proofread because the author was my husband who self-published his book of poetry. He’s a talented and imaginative writer on his own, however I can surely appreciate finding a body of people who understand what goes into polishing an author’s work so that their intended message shines through –without being clouded with grammatical, spelling and other structural issues (like the horrific run-on sentence I just wrote). Anyway, this isn’t a manuscript, just my unstructured rantings and praises :) Anyway, thank you for your professional insights and perspectives. I was sure there was a lot to know, I just didn’t know how to find out! You definitely have a new blog-fan! (Hmmm – the word “Blog” is not in my MS Word dictionary … My how much has changed since 2002!)

By: deannahoak

deannahoak — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 02:35:41 +0000

Yeah, other houses want everything on a query.

I often do suggest changes, but I’m more likely to do so on the query than on the manuscript, unless I think there’s only one clear way to fix the sentence.

It depends on a lot of factors, though: how well I know the author and editor and so on. Some of them are familiar enough with me that they really prefer for me just to fix everything, and that’s what I do then.

By: readwrite

readwrite — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 23:13:15 +0000

I often check the final book to see if my suggestions were taken. These include major glitches uncaught until the proof stage. I was pleased when [very big name author] took my suggestion that no one in Latin America would have the names he used, and why. And I was pleased that I managed to keep [science fiction writer] from embarrassing himself over a glaring factual error. But even in the proofreading stage, you don’t know that the errors you mark, even obvious typos, will get corrected properly. That’s why there’s the second (or more) pass to be “slugged,” to catch missed corrections.

I think it’s generally a good idea to at least suggest a change, even if the author does it another way. Some houses ask you to do that.

By: dancingwriter

dancingwriter — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 08:01:47 +0000

I have a close and longstanding relationship with one editor, who has me copy editing and proofreading probably about half her list, and often I do end up proofreading books I’ve copy edited (because these are all juvenile series nonfiction, there are actually sensible reasons for this). Well, there was one book about the Roman Republic for which I was hired as copy editor and fact checker, at about the same time that I was working on my own Life in the Roman Empire series–so the topic was something I knew a good bit about (and I’d already had a previous book published on ancient Rome), as the editor knew (hence her wanting me to fact check as well as copy edit), although the author didn’t (or else she just didn’t care). The religion section of this book included several paragraphs on the Mithras cult (although of course one cannot use the word “cult” in this sense in juvenile nonfiction), so I gently pointed out that Mithras worship was most likely introduced to Rome by Pompey at almost the end of the Republic and really didn’t become a major phenomenon for several decades, well into the Empire. Another part of the book was an assemblage of literary selections, and the author had a piece by Martial (*not* a writer of the Republican period), and nothing from Cicero (*the* major writer of the Republican period). So of course that got a tactfully phrased query flag, too. Well, down the line I ended up proofreading this book. Martial was out and Cicero was in, thankfully–but Mithras was still there, too, as were many other anachronisms and inaccuracies that I had flagged. I shouldn’t have taken it personally, but I was upset for days. It was worse than the time I’m been hired to edit and fact-check a book on Renaissance Italy (again, one of my own areas of interest and publication) and the author wrote back saying, “Oh, thanks, but I’m really done with this book and I don’t feel like making any of those changes.” Grrr…. I especially hate this kind of attitude in nonfiction, and especially juvenile nonfiction–that might be the only book about ancient Rome or Renaissance Italy that a kid ever reads, so it ought to be the best possible book with the most accurate (and interesting) information possible. It’s my job, anyway, to make sure that it is; I just don’t understand why some of the authors of these books don’t feel the same….

Whoa, sorry to go on like this in your comments section! I guess I wanted a sympathetic ear. :-) Anyway, the point I think I was trying to make is that sometimes it’s better (for one’s blood pressure and mental health) not to know what happens to the manuscripts we copy edit. Fortunately, to balance all this, I’ve also had the pleasure of seeing books I’ve worked on get awards and starred reviews and other well-deserved praise, and it’s most satisfying to feel that I’ve contributed in some way to a book’s excellence and success.

By: deannahoak

deannahoak — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 02:04:01 +0000

What a nice comment! Thank you!

Mike and Kathy Gear request me for all their Tor/Forge titles, so I am on the Tor freelancer list. You can always ask. :-)

By: affinity8

affinity8 — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 18:57:32 +0000

A thousand queries!! That’s amazing. The more I read your posts, the more impressed I am with how difficult the job is, and what passion you and others bring to it.

I wish you were *my* copyeditor!

By: gadarene

gadarene — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 18:08:42 +0000

plagiarism

By: gadarene

gadarene — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 18:08:04 +0000

I’ve caught a bit of plaigiarism in a few books, but I’ve never checked back to see if anything was done about it. Now I’m wondering! . . .

By: safewrite

safewrite — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 17:02:00 +0000

Marvelous post, Deanna. I for one appreciate a look into the world of copyediting. Thanks for letting us be a fly on your wall while still maintaining the privacy of your clients.