If you haven’t seen today’s PW Children’s Bookshelf, go take a look at more coverage of Operation Teen Book Drop. (Scroll down to “In Brief.”)

see more crazy cat pics

This week I’ve been up to my ears in the duties that most people outside of the writing/publishing world think that an editor spends all her time at: proofreading and copyediting. The truth is that the copyeditor and proofreader are different people from the editor, and that I as the editor do a lot of what might be termed managerial duties at this stage–sending the manuscript out and receiving it back in, accepting and rejecting changes, and then keeping an eye out as I’m going through those changes for anything the author, copyeditor, proofreader, and I might have missed in previous passes.

It’s actually kind of fun, but in a much different way than earlier on in the life of a manuscript. This step in the process really brings in my detail-oriented side. Comparing details and thinking about minutiae perhaps might not be as exciting as the developmental stage, but it’s an important step in the life of a book. The extra eyes of the copyeditor and proofreader are vital to making sure that I haven’t missed typos, grammatical problems, blue eyes here and green eyes there on the same character, and other mistakes–mistakes that readers will always catch. 

The thing about being an editor is that you’re looking at different versions of the same text four, sometimes five or more times. When I’m first editing, I’m not looking for grammatical problems because if a character isn’t working, the text might change dramatically. Not to mention that typos can be introduced in the course of even small revisions, so it’s best to leave the detail work until the big picture is taken care of. 

Perhaps likening this to the installation of a new bathtub will help: you don’t caulk the seals of the old tub and then rip everything out and put in the new tub, because you’ll just have to recaulk (can you tell I just learned how to caulk a tub last weekend?). So leaving the details until the third or fourth pass is necessary. 

But that means that by the fourth time I’m reading it, the eye can easily elide over mistakes, even very obvious ones. This is why another pair of eyes is crucial to catch those last few errors. And then it comes back to me, the one who knows the project best (on the publisher’s side–it also goes back to the author for one last look), to be sure that it all comes together.

So that’s what I’m doing this week–working on bringing it all together for a couple
books in various stages.

One link I forgot about earlier today: Editorial Anonymous has a great post today on the heroic journey of the requested manuscript. As I’ve just  finally found a few moments for finishing off a few partials and manuscripts this afternoon and gotten caught up on a huge stack of the pile, this rings home for me today!

I’m on the mend, health-wise, I think. I still have a horrendous cough and practically no appetite, but at least the chills are gone. I think I’ll sleep all weekend.

In author and book news,

cynleitichsmith

 is giving away a copy of Magic in the Mirrorstone and By Venom’s Sweet Sting. Note that the deadline is fast approaching! Cynthia interviews Magic in the Mirrorstone editor Steve Berman here.

N
ext week we’ve got a couple fun events approaching. Support Teen Literature Day is next Thursday, April 17. As part of that, YALSA and the Readergirlz divas are hosting Operation Teen Book Drop, a charitable event where publishers, authors, and whoever else wants to get involved will be donating books to numerous children’s hospitals. I’ll be heading over to one here in Seattle–check out the wiki for ideas on how you can get involved in your neighborhood. If you’re on Facebook, let the Readergirlz know that you’ll be Rocking the Drop!

I’m opening mail right now, and paused for this public service announcement.

If you, like my cousin Cindy wrapping a Christmas present, feel like you need to tape every crevice of your submission envelope just in case, please take a step back and imagine you’re an editor with a letter opener that can’t find any purchase.

If it takes me more than 30 seconds to open your letter–and if I have to navigate multiple taped-up layers–you’re doing something wrong. Cease and desist with the tape, already! A neatly sealed envelope will do. If you feel you need to tape it to make sure it’ll stay closed, then leave a little hole where my letter opener can get in. You certainly don’t need to tape up every corner, including the corners of the part of the envelope that the manufacturer sealed. 

That’s just overkill.

Rest assured, you don’t want to be remembered as the person whose submission took me five minutes to open.

ETA: Can I also just go on the record with my enduring love for the self-sealing envel
ope?

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m going to be at BYU’s Writing for Young Readers conference June 16-20. Their website is now live, so if you’re interested in a workshop that will really delve into your writing, this is for you. I’ve never attended, but I hear really great things about it. Each track has faculty assigned, and they’ll look at the first chapter or two of your book and really workshop it. 

I’ll be speaking there and then just generally participating, networking, etc. The title of my talk is “Passion or Practicality—Writing for Love or the Market.” 

So go check it out, and sign up if it sounds like just the thing you’ve been looking for.

But you’ll just have to settle for a straightforward entry from me today. Here’s something for the “did you know?” column.

One of the things an editor must sometimes do that isn’t editing is to write copy–catalog copy, cover copy, and even sometimes ad copy and discussion guide copy. After all, the editor is the champion of the book in the publishing house and they tend to know the book best, so sometimes coming up with a summary or a teaser is best done by that person.

I’ve heard that this varies from house to house–sometimes your editor writes that copy, and sometimes someone in marketing or an editorial assistant might write the copy.

But as you can imagine, for the catalog to be interesting to the buyers (book buyers at both independent bookstores and chains, and mass market buyers too), the catalog copy needs to really give a great sense of what the book is about and why that buyer would want this book. They need to get a sense of the atmosphere and to know what the plot is all about, who would be reading it.

It can be quite a challenge, which uses an entirely different part of the brain than editing. In fact, I like it, exactly because of that. Sometimes it’s nice to have the change of pace. It brings back some of my earlier days in newspaper and trade magazines, in fact. I’ve never considered myself good at titles and headings, so to come up with one tagline to describe a book can be mind-racking. Yet at the same time, the brainstorming process–listing words and key phrases which might be combined to interesting effect–is quite fun. 

I think this process might actually help writers as they write cover letters and queries in the submissions process. Pretend you’re writing cover copy for your book. What does the reader need to know to want to pick up this book? A good rule of thumb is “less is more” in cover letters–boil it down to one or two sentences. In Hollywood I think they call it “high concept.” (Not that your story should be high concept, but that you can boil down your plot and characters to a few sentences for such purposes.)

An example of catalog copy from a previous season might help you know what I’m getting at. Here’s what we had for Red Dragon Codex in our Spring 2008 catalog:

Mudd
lives a peaceful life in his small town, tinkering with the mill and any mechanical devices that he can find. But his peaceful life soon changes when, out of nowhere, a red dragon attacks, burning the town and kidnapping Shemnara, the village seer. Only one clue is left behind—a cryptic note telling Mudd, “Seek the silver dragon.” In this first Dragon Codex, R.D. Henham spins a fantastic adventure where dragons take center stage.

Now, obviously, you wouldn’t praise your own writing the way marketing copy might praise the writer’s writing. But the point is the same: your cover letter or query is marketing copy. You are marketing your writing to an editor or agent. So briefness and the big concepts are what matter here. It gives the editor the hook and doesn’t ramble on.

Just a quick post to say I had a great time at World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City. It was really a whirlwind! I met tons of people at pitch sessions and in the hallways, was able to be on two panels, went to dinner with so many people–see Agent Kristin’s blog for a report of our discussion at dinner!–interviewed a couple-three authors for Wizards’ Discoveries line, and even got to sit down with old friends Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells for their Writing Excuses podcast, which will air in a few weeks (they’re on Episode 8, I think, and we recorded 12 or so). Also worked on a for-now super-secret project with Rebecca Shelley, assistant to R.D. Henham of Red Dragon Codex fame.

So it was a very full, very exhausting weekend! It was fun to stay with a friend and catch up and play with her two-year-old daughter, too, and to see so many good friends, and sad that I didn’t have enough time to catch up with everyone. I had a great time, and thanks to the con organizers who invited me!

I’m off tonight to the World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City. I’m not sure if I’ll be on any panels or not, but I am taking pitches there. So if you’ll be there, say hi! If not, see you next week. I might blog from there, but it’s looking to be a very busy weekend.