By PJ Parrish (still with one paw but typing better, thanks)
I’m not the first person to ask this question and won’t be the last: What has happened to editors? Did all the good ones get sucked up into the alien ship back in ’45 with the lost airmen of Flight 19? If so, are they ever coming back?
Back when I was part of traditional publishing, I used to dread the day when the galleys arrived. Back in the those dark ages, you would get a fat package in the mail of the actual type-set book. It was pretty, until you looked closely. The galleys were riddled with typos, mistakes, and weird formatting. Now, I knew some of this was my fault. But these were the days when there were whole staffs of copy editors at our disposal to help make us poor writers look better.
Jump to present times. Or maybe not. Things are even worse now. With mergers of major publishers, cutbacks of in-house staff and out-sourcing, and a general decline in editing skills of young folks coming into the business, errata is everywhere. And what about those of us who self-pub? Who can we rely on to make sure our stories emerge clean and readable?
This is on my mind for three reasons today. One, I just finished reading a major novel that had so many typos in it I got angry.
Second, a friend who is still pubbed by one of the major houses called me to vent about the evils of Track Changes. This is a function within Word wherein an outsider (usually an editor) makes mechanical notes in the margins of your manuscript. I hated Track Changes. The whole vivacious give-and-take between writer and editor was gone. Nuance was lost. Emotion subsumed. Sort of like what happened when we starting texting instead of calling each other.
The third reason is that I am editing one of backlist titles, An Unquiet Grave, to reissue via self-pubbing. I am appalled at the typos and mistakes I am finding. And this book already went through the Simon & Schuster prettification machine.
Geez. What an old crab I sound like today. Forgive me.
Let’s back up with this diatribe. I got into this novel racket back in 1979 as a writer of mainstream women’s fiction. That was the euphemism of the era for big fat books about sex, power and dysfunctional families. I had a terrific line editor, but even more impressive was the quality of the copy editing in those days. Through the four books I did for Ballantine/Fawcett I was blessed with the pickiest, most obsessive, anal-grammarians an author could ever wish for. They caught my misspellings, my lay-lie transgressions, my syntax sins.
My favorite copy editor was the one I had for my British editions. This woman — for some reason, I pictured her as a spinster sitting by the fire in some Devonshire outpost surrounded by cats — dripped blood-red pencil all over my pages. At one point, she scribbled in the margins next to my French phrases: “I don’t believe, based on the English errors uncovered thus far in this novel, that we should trust the author’s ability to write in another language.” She also took me to task for my “crutches”: “This author has an unfortunate propensity to use “stare” and “padded” (e.g. he padded toward the door). Would suggest striking every reference.”
I hated that woman. God, how I miss her now.
Every author has horror stories about bad editing. I had a copy editor who changed the color of key lime pie to green. Being in Manhattan, I guess she never saw a key lime — which is yellow. But shoot, I was the one who had to answer the boy-are-you-dumb emails from fellow Floridians. And then there is the infamous Patricia Cornwell gaffe — the back cover copy that talked about a grizzly murder — which set off a whole new sub-genre, the serial killer bear.
Like I said, I am not abdicating my responsibility. But when you spend eight months to a year writing a book, you get so close to it sometimes you can’t see the trees for the forest. You’re so intent on plot and character, you forget you’ve changed a character’s name halfway through. Or that it’s MackiNAW City but MackiNAC Island. Or that loons don’t stick around Michigan in winter…they migrate. One year I got so paranoid I hired a copy editor. She caught so many mistakes it made me even more paranoid about what still lay (lie? lain?) beneath.
So, now here I am, a retired writer who is still suffering from “galley” anxiety this week. Still dreading those typos, the errant error, the stupid mistakes. Do I hire another free lance editor? They don’t come cheap. But editing your own book is like trying to be your own lawyer — only fools do it.
I dread going into battle. Because these days, no one has my back.
Thanks for listening, friends.
Boy howdy, I’m right there with you, Kris. We have no training ground for great editors anymore. Forget the schools (how quaint that we used to have “grammar” schools). Forget the tough older editor putting the new kid through his or her paces.
Mrs. B is my first reader, and catches overused words, clunky sentences, inconsistencies (like eye color, etc.) and plot problems. She’s gold. And her rates are reasonable.
I may contact you for Mrs. B. (even her nom de plume sounds promising). Because I am dealing with mainly typos creating by formatting for the reissue, I should be good to go. But I have to force myself to go really slow. I am the world’s worst copy editor.
My friends and I say it all the time that somehow we have let the previous generations down. Our food, the way we dress, communicate, manners, all below what came before. Everything seems to take an extra step and when you do get good service it is astonishing.
So true re good service. We are now amazed when we find it. Was it ever the norm? I think so. Something precious has been lost in our quest for efficiency.
I’m with you all the way, although my writing career began in the digital age, so I got word documents and Track Changes, not galley proofs. I have stellar critique partners and I hire an editor, but nobody catches everything. My last step is to have the computer read the manuscript to me; it reads what’s on the page/screen, not what the eye/brain expects. But it can’t catch continuity errors.
I recently questioned a much-bigger-than-I author about some disturbing issues I’d noticed between books 1 and 2, and he said his publisher had recently started using new editing software. That horrified me. I’m sure there were human eyes in there somewhere along the line, but editing software? I use SmartEdit to catch things like repeats, but it’s a tool and I check everything it finds. It can’t make changes for me, only point things out.
Editing software??? God, I got out at the right time.
I feel blessed to have had two of the best editors I can imagine for more than 25 books at HarperCollins Christian Publishing. The substantive edits are like gold for me. My editor sees the tree and the forest when it comes to story arcs and internal arcs. She makes every book better. My line editor is fabulous for the overuse of words, grammatical errors, punctuation, the Chicago Manual of Style, lack of character descriptions, making sure factual references are actually factual, etc. HCCP then has copy editors and proofreaders work the manuscript all the way through the galleys. Which I still find errors in (my errors). Occasionally a reader points out an error even after all that. Which sucks, but at least now there’s an ability to immediately correct in digital copies. HCCP isn’t offering me a new contract, and it’s breaking my heart to lose Becky and Julee for their editing prowess, but also for their abiding love of books and good writing and for their friendship. Sorry, you hit a nerve with this topic. Sigh.
Oh dear. Sorry about losing your contract and editors, Kelly. But you were lucky to have them for such a good long run. Best to you.
Kris, glad you’re doing better!
My eighth grade English teacher Mrs. Shore drilled grammar, punctuation, and sentence diagramming into me. I give thanks to her every day b/c, between her and decades of critique groups, I’m a pretty solid editor of other people’s work. But I still need fresh eyes on my own.
Printing the document out in a different font style and size helps catch errors, as does rhe read aloud feature on Word. Irritating to listen to but it reads what’s actually on the page, not what you think you typed.
Do readers really care anymore? Do they even notice? They receive the same lousy education as newer editors.
But I know and I care. At least I want to make my own work the best it can be.
I think readers still notice. I got an email recently about one of our older reissued self-pubbed books and the writer gently told us of a couple typos she found. We were able to go back in and fix. The one clear beauty of Amazon publishing. 🙂
My friend, editor and mentor, the late Mary Rosenblum, told me once that even though her traditionally published books went through a thorough editing process by a team of editors at her NY publishers back in the 1990s, errors and typos still go through. Sadly it only seems to have gotten worse.
As a self-published author I put together my own team. Several of my beta readers, including my sharp eyed wife, give copy editing feedback. After another round of edits, I give the book to a copy editor and then implement her edits and do a final proofing pass. I’ve worked to up my copy editing game but of course an error or two can still creep past. Thankfully, it’s easy for me to upload a fixed version to the various platforms if need be.
It takes a village. 🙂
Glad to hear your wrist is healing, Kris.
I’m persnickety about my books. I aim for zero errors. (Yeah, I know that’s close to impossible, but it’s a good goal.) I have a developmental editor and a copy editor for my books, even the ones that will be traditionally published. They catch all kinds of mistakes. When they’re done, I run MS Text-to-speech, and I’ve found some errors even then.
The most memorable error was in a manuscript where I described a group of people as “died-in-the-wool Americans.” The manuscript had been reviewed by multiple editors, I had read it thousands (okay, a little hyperbole there) of times, and I had run text-to-speech on it. I caught the error in a last read-through before publishing it. When I told my son about it, he said I shouldn’t have worried. It could have just been people who were run over by a sheep. 🙂
Oh geez. The typo gaffes that make it in are always good for a chuckle. I’ve found readers are usually pretty forgiving.
Your son is a wise and funny man, Kay!
🤡🤡
Ram.
Preach, sister! If I were a name writer with a traditional press, I’d hire my own copyeditor before I sent my manuscript to the “real” editor so I wouldn’t be embarrassed.
I can’t tell you how many horrors I’ve found in books by major authors — grizzly crimes and laundry shoots for starters. THE BEAR WAS INNOCENT. AND NOBODY SHOOTS THEIR LAUNDRY. There. I feel better.
I am currently blessed to have a British editor at a British press, and she’s young and catless, last I heard. Good luck, Kris. I feel your pain.
LOLOL. Let’s not get into cat ladies. I should have edited that line out.
Good post, Kris.
I have a great, detail-oriented editor. But , I’m sure she makes mistakes, too. Bottom line? The buck stops here, on my laptop.
BTW, I love this: “But editing your own book is like trying to be your own lawyer — only fools do it.”
I might have to use that next time I’m talking to a fellow newbie. 😉
Have a great day!
I spent part of a day this past week trying to talk a newbie, who’s trying to self-pub a novel, into using an editor. No luck. He’s also having his nephew design his cover. Sigh.
😵💫😵💫
I never met an edit I didn’t like…eventually. I’ve been blessed with really great editors and proofreaders, and I read my manuscript umpteen times and mistakes still get through.
I think the one that embarrassed me the most was talking about my h/h boarding a small plane by climbing up on the wing and in the last chapter I for some reason unknown to me, had them in a plane that had a top wing…I knew better. Have no idea what I was thinking…and it got by everyone, including me until a reader emailed me. Thank goodness for ebooks that you can correct. The print book had to wait for another print run.