Thought Piece: Some Thoughts On Editing (2012-01-31)

To be a writer is to be a person who attempts to convince somebody else to publish your writing, at least some of the time. This remains the case despite the advent of spell-checkers, e-books, and self-publishing options that don't make your work look as if it belongs on the news stands of half-deserted bus stations. If someone else is going to publish a piece of your writing, then inevitably you will need to work with an editor, maybe even two editors at least, if there is 'editing' and then 'copyediting.' These days I have my doubts about there being two stages of editing, especially considering the state of some of the books I have seen lately, let alone the advertisement pictured here. This billboard is a few blocks from my apartment building, and logically you would expect advertising copy to be checked as thoroughly as the text of a book for similar reasons: many, many eyes will potentially be reading this thing, and what they see reflects on the publisher as much as the writer. Working with an editor can be of significant benefit to a writer and the piece of work being edited. The "working with" part is not optional, however.

In the course of reading Alberto Manguel's essay "The Secret Sharer" in his latest book A Reader On Reading, I learned that editorial approaches vary in a broad way between countries. Perhaps this shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. Manguel discusses the dangers of what I would call the intrusive North American approach to editing, with the editor trying to bring out "the author's intention." "Intrusive," because this means far more than seeking out typos and highlighting areas where meaning is unclear or things have gotten out of order. It can mean extensive rewrites, additions, or restructuring that alter the manuscript significantly. Other writers may want this sort of attention, I certainly don't. The editor is welcome to write their own book, and they are welcome to reject the book because it isn't what the publisher wants to publish.

It can happen that a manuscript slips in that actually has no fit with the publisher's current catalogue, and no fit with where they want their catalogue to go. I found myself involved in an unwanted publishing debacle of just this kind, with the added problem that the publisher did not consider it necessary for author and editor to work together. It gradually became clear that no one had actually read the original sample chapters I had provided as per their submission guidelines. They were looking for simple romance novels that could be lengthy but not challenging reads, although that was not well expressed in their call out for samples. Still, that is the point of calling for samples in the first place. Evidently the selection process went awry in this case, but I think my experience shows that editors may not always be "searching for the author's intention."

At least for now, it seems that North American publishers have become deeply risk averse. This goes beyond taking only as much risk as you can afford, to demanding books that will be guaranteed to make money. Any books different from what already sells well are going to have a tough time getting published at all in that case, and I think its fair to say that the struggles of smaller bookstores and the contents of "book box" bookstores bear this out. An editor working for such a publisher will be under pressure to smooth out anything in a manuscript that is too far from the features of what already sells well. That can lead to quite significant editing, let alone rewriting, for a purpose that bears no relationship to finding the writer's intention, unless of course, the writer had writing for whatever "the market" in question is in the first place.

The North American focus on "the market" may also be encouraging a thinning of the editorial ranks, especially the under-appreciated copyeditors. Which leads to gaffs like the one on that bulletin board, or the numerous typos in at least the first edition of the Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures to pick a recent example I've seen.

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