On Copyediting--Professional Spotlight

For my money, Copy Editor is one of the most important jobs in the industry and excellent Copy Editors have saved my butt on more than one occasion, so I'm incredibly glad to have here today Chandra Wohleber, Copy Editor Extraordinaire, to tell us a bit about her job. It's a great interview, if I do say so myself, chocked full of good information for writers, and if you're looking to become a Copy Editor, you'll get a glimpse of the skill and talent needed for the job and find as Chandra does that it is a rewarding publishing career path. So...without further ado...



Would you give us an overview of what a copy editor does and your career path? How does one become a freelance copy editor?


A copy editor cleans up and makes consistent the nuts and bolts of a ms. (manuscript), as well as keeps an eye out for any substantive issues that the editor may have overlooked or had to let go (sometimes the same question coming to the author from a new source gets a new answer—you know: when a parent gives you advice you don’t want to take it, but maybe if an aunt or uncle gives you the same advice suddenly it’s a great idea). By “nuts and bolts” I mean spelling and grammar and style and word usage, but also consistency in the use of treatments such as caps and italics; formatting suggestions about extracts, headings, and lists; fact-checking (anything from dates to brand names to movie titles and release dates to song lyrics to details of historical figures and scientific principles, etc.); keeping a chronology; making a list of character names and descriptions and ensuring that the descriptions are consistent throughout the ms.; making a list of word/spelling choices and hyphenation; calling out any material that might need permission clearance; thinking about the overall logic and clarity of the prose.


There are a number of different ways to become a freelance copy editor but I started by working in-house, first as a personal assistant/production assistant/sort-of proofreader at Overlook Press in 1999. (Also, three years before that I was editorial assistant at McGill University’s alumni magazine for a year; maybe that set me on the publishing path…) Then it was my four years at FSG that helped me realize this was the direction I wanted to go in: I knew I liked editorial but I also knew I didn’t have the kind of drive and networking skills and ability to recognize what would sell, to be an acquiring editor. It was also at FSG that I was generously mentored in this work by several incredible people—I’m eternally grateful to them. I started my work in this area by reading blues (the proofs the printer sends for an absolutely last check before the presses start rolling) at FSG, and then by doing the occasional cold read for a couple of clients. Little by little I learned more (including from taking Elaine Chubb’s copyediting class) and clients began to give me more in-depth work. From 2002 onward I was always doing some freelancing on the side while working full-time in-house. Since leaving FSG in 2004, I’ve worked at five other companies in-house (including Putnam, where I had some more great mentoring), slowly gaining clients through those companies and through references. Finally, in September 2012 I went to full-time freelancing and so far I love it!


What are your favorite kinds of books to work on?


That’s really difficult to say because one of the things I love most about my work is the variety. Say I have a run of YA fantasy novels; just when I’m starting to feel a bit tired of them, along comes some adult nonfiction or a biography or a book of poetry or a mystery. I do have a soft spot for a certain kind of sweet but funny middle-grade novel, but honestly, I can’t identify a favorite. Each new project feels exciting because it’s different from the previous one! Mind you, sometimes the excitement doesn’t last very long, but that’s another a story. ;)


What are the books you've worked on that really stand out?


I hate to single out a few to the exclusion of so many wonderful others, but here goes (note: some of these were copyedits, some proofreads): Bringing It All Back Home, an oral history about the experiences New York City Vietnam vets had when they returned to the U.S.; Green Metropolis, about how city living can be more environmentally efficient than country life; The Food of a Younger Land, a fascinating work pulled out of the WPA archives, looking at regional dishes from across the U.S.; Between You and Me, a YA love/friendship/identity story; Unremembered, a YA novel about a girl who wakes up in the middle of the ocean with no memory of who she is; How They Croaked, hilarious but informative middle-grade nonfiction about how famous people in history really died; and High-Water Mark, funny, bold, and honest short stories about young women trying to figure out the boundaries of love and friendship.



Do you form relationships with authors and work with them again and again?


Sometimes—more so in my work for Canadian companies, where the copy editor and author are usually in direct contact, and where the copy editor often does the final clean-up after the author has reviewed the copyedit. With U.S. companies, I do work on multiple books by the same author but generally the relationship is more neutral because it’s filtered through the in-house editor or editorial assistant as well as the production editor and/or managing editor. Again, I like the variety: sometimes it’s nice to simply hand over the copyedit and no longer be involved; other times it’s really satisfying to see an author’s responses (even when he or she is annoyed!) and to “complete” the ms. Of course when I’m in direct contact with an author, there’s always a need to figure out—and given that the communication is almost exclusively by e-mail it can be tricky—who has a sense of humor (or not); who will enjoy getting into a lively debate over a point (and who will not); whose feathers mustn’t be ruffled, etc. Some authors prefer quick casual messages; others want formal in-depth correspondence. In fact, even when I’m not in direct contact, I try to pick up the author’s tone from the ms., and then to match that in my own tone when making suggestions and querying. If you can win over authors by adopting a tone that they like you’re going to go much further with getting them to consider your changes and suggestions. The nice thing about a new ms. by an author you “know” is that you have a sense of what kinds of questions to ask.


What is the most memorable copyediting error you've caught?

I can’t think of a specific one but I’d say some of the most important are straight-up errors in facts: incorrect dates, anachronisms, misspelled names of famous people. If a book has errors of that kind, its credibility is undermined, even if it’s fiction. Another problem that comes up a lot in fiction is wild amounts of activity crammed into what is technically, say, one evening between 8:00 and midnight. Timelines usually have to be very carefully kept track of.


Do you take on any and all projects that come your way or are you more selective? If the latter, how do you choose your projects?


I take absolutely everything unless I’m too booked up to manage it! Partly because I want to stay on clients’ radar and partly because you never know when suddenly the work will dry up and you’ll wish you’d taken that last project and partly because books can surprise you. A literary novel that I thought I’d love might turn out to be as dry as toast while an in-depth look at communications law in Canada might sound like a real slog but then be fascinating and charming and really well written. And after a while clients get a sense of where your strengths lie: no one sends me books on pro sports or hard economics. Then again, in trade nonfiction, sometimes it’s good for the CE to know nothing at all about the topic because gaps in clarity will jump out at him or her. (Sorry, I think I went a little off topic there…)


What should authors know about the copyediting process?


Probably the most important thing I always hope for is that they know not to take anything as a personal attack, and then I hope that they will go through the pages carefully enough to answer all queries clearly and to accept or reject all changes. Having also worked in-house as a PE, I know how frustrating it can be to get a ms. back and only half the queries have been addressed or yes and no answers have been given to questions that can’t be answered with yes or no.


What would surprise authors about the copyediting process?


Probably how long it takes, and that copy editors really, truly do not set out to annoy authors. When we seem finicky and obsessive, it’s not to make authors go insane but rather to try not to overlook anything that might be quite important, even in the tiniest way (if that isn’t a contradiction in terms). Better that the irritating CE points it out in the ms. than that a critic or a “heckler” notices it in the galley or final book!


Can you ever read for pleasure? Or when you read do you find yourself continually noting errors that no one caught?


Oh, yes, no problem there! I do notice typos and grammatical errors, but if the book is really amazing it doesn’t bother me too much—I know how the process works and that as careful as everyone may have been, a typo can still sneak in, especially given that a book may have been on a crash schedule. But factual errors or sloppy details or lack of authenticity in tone bug me and I usually give up on books with any of those issues.


How has technology affected the way you do your job?


Really, not that much. From the beginning for me, I’ve had the Internet for fact-checking so I can’t call that a change (but it’s great!). Then, on the one hand, I absolutely see more on paper than I do on-screen (and Scientific American, in a 2013 article called “Why the Brain Prefers Paper,” says I’m not making that up!) so now even when I’m sent an electronic ms. or pdf proofs, I always print out the material (a con: that’s at my own expense in terms of paper and toner) and do a first read or at least a skim on paper; then, transferring edits from paper to screen always takes longer than I expect so I lose some time there. On the other hand, it’s so quick and easy to e-mail back a ms. in Word or proofs in a pdf! No legging it to the UPS Store with only minutes to spare before the final pick-up of the day, no crossing fingers in hopes that UPS doesn’t lose or delay the package, no jiffy envelopes to buy. A huge disadvantage of Track Changes, though, is the fact that when a manuscript has been copyedited on-screen, proofreaders can’t see what the editor, copy editor, and author have “discussed” because those comments will have been accepted and cleared.


So (1) the proofreader doesn’t know which queries have already been addressed and what kind of responses the author makes, and (2) proofreaders who are just starting out lose what used to be a really valuable way of learning the ropes: seeing the queries and changes the copy editor (and editor) made. Even having been a copy editor for quite a few years now, I still love doing an old-fashioned proofread in which I get proofs with a hard-copy marked-up ms. because there’s always something to learn by seeing how another copy editor handled various situations in the ms.


Do you freelance for authors who intend to self-publish? If so, what percentage of your freelance work is for authors who will self-publish? Is the experience different from working for a house?


I’ve done work for only a couple of authors who are self-publishing, so the percentage is almost nil. The experience is different in that the author probably doesn’t know much at all about the publishing process so at times it can be tough to convince him or her that certain advice really is good advice; and you don’t have the backup of other experts (sales and marketing or publicity people, an editor, an agent) who might also encourage an author to add or cut x or y. Generally I’m not too interested in that field, though, because there’s always a risk you won’t get paid but at the same time you can’t ask to be paid up front because similarly the author could worry about paying you and then the work not being done. The only non-company authors I work for are either friends or friends of friends … so I know where they live! ;) Which leads me to mention that I do occasionally edit and copyedit for writers who are preparing a ms. to submit to agents and publishers, or to journals. The work itself is really the same, though, as when working for a house.