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How Words Get Good: The Story of Making a Book
Once upon a time, a writer had an idea. They wrote it down. But what happened next?
Join Rebecca Lee, professional word-improver, as she embarks on the fascinating journey to find out how a book gets from author's brain to finished copy. She'll learn the dark arts of ghostwriters, uncover the hidden beauty of typesetting and find out which words end up in books (and why). And along the way, her quest will be punctuated by a litany of little-known considerations that make a big impact: ellipses, indexes, hyphens, esoteric grammar and juicy errata slips. Whoops.
From foot-and-note disease to the town of Index, Missouri - turn the page to discover how books get made and words get good.
Or, at least, better.
Join Rebecca Lee, professional word-improver, as she embarks on the fascinating journey to find out how a book gets from author's brain to finished copy. She'll learn the dark arts of ghostwriters, uncover the hidden beauty of typesetting and find out which words end up in books (and why). And along the way, her quest will be punctuated by a litany of little-known considerations that make a big impact: ellipses, indexes, hyphens, esoteric grammar and juicy errata slips. Whoops.
From foot-and-note disease to the town of Index, Missouri - turn the page to discover how books get made and words get good.
Or, at least, better.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2022
45 people are currently reading
572 people want to read
About the author
Rebecca Lee
2 books6 followersRebecca Lee is an editorial manager at Penguin Random House. She's spent twenty years managing hundreds of high-profile books from delivery of manuscript to finished copies, signing off millions of words as fit to go to print with only the occasional regret.
Librarian's note: Multiple authors with same name, this author is entered with 2 spaces.
Librarian's note: Multiple authors with same name, this author is entered with 2 spaces.
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February 5, 2024Overview of publishing looking at it from multiple perspectives--editorial, printing, footnotes, cover copy, translations etc etc. Probably aimed more at people who don't already know this stuff, in that a lot of it is pretty straightforward info, but there are some terrific stories including one about a translation of Maigret that had me literally crying with laughter.
Rammed with jokes in footnotes, which just don't work in e, then includes a passage on how footnotes don't work in e. /side eye/
Strong +1 for the author's attitude towards UK/US difference in punctuation and the Oxford comma in particular, which is basically "just grow up and recognise there's a cultural difference instead of insisting you're right."
Rammed with jokes in footnotes, which just don't work in e, then includes a passage on how footnotes don't work in e. /side eye/
Strong +1 for the author's attitude towards UK/US difference in punctuation and the Oxford comma in particular, which is basically "just grow up and recognise there's a cultural difference instead of insisting you're right."
March 8, 2022
This was incredibly fascinating. As someone trained in Linguistics and studying Journalism, words have always been at the forefront of my mind. Lee unpacks everything we know about the basic building blocks of our language and explains it all from the beginning. From the first printing press to the future of eBooks and publishing, she leaves no stone unturned. While this was informative, it was also entertaining, which is a very fine line to balance. In between blocks of facts or quotes, Lee adds her own comments (usually through footnotes, which she admits she is an avid lover of), creating a reading experience that feels both fun and educational. This book works for a multitude of people, from Linguists to Journalists to Publishing hopefuls or to anyone just wanting to know more about the words we use every day. A brilliant read, clearly well researched and well written, an instant recommendation.
May 4, 2022
This has a bit too many bland generalities, instead of digging into the details, especially the human details. The best anecdotes are usually tucked away in footnotes. (Why?)
> on Georges Simenon, creator of the legendary sleuth Maigret and author of more than five hundred novels: ‘Simenon’s productivity is legendary: he wrote one chapter a day, without interruption, and if he had to stop working on a book for more than 48 hours, for example through illness, he threw it away. He completed most of his novels in ten or eleven days, editing them only to “cut, cut, cut” anything that he deemed too “literary”. It’s reported that Alfred Hitchcock once telephoned him only to be told that Simenon was incommunicado as he had just begun a new novel. “That’s all right,” said Hitchcock, “I’ll wait.”’
> John F. Kennedy won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1956 book Profiles in Courage, but the book was mostly written by Ted Sorensen, one of his speechwriters
> Although often styled as e e, The Chicago Manual of Style states that: ‘E. E. Cummings can be safely capitalized; it was one of his publishers, not he himself, who lowercased his name.’ Cummings legally changed his name to e e cummings (according to his biographer), but his widow claimed that the biographer was incorrect
> ‘Stet’ is what’s known as an obelism. That’s the word for annotating manuscripts with marks in the margin
> I don’t think there is a word in the English language for the bubble of satisfaction you get when you’re editing a book and are able to correct the spelling of the name of the cyclist who was the fourth British wearer of the yellow jersey in the Tour de France from ‘David Miller’ (INCORRECT) to ‘David Millar’ (CORRECT), but there should be one
> One of the heavyweight clashes between American and British punctuation is that in the UK most publishers and publications use ‘spaced’ en rules (i.e. there is space both before and after the dash – like that), whereas in the US ‘closed-up’ em rules are used.
> we all know that we should use the ! sparingly. In this, follow F. Scott Fitzgerald, who said: ‘Cut out all these exclamation points … An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.’ Someone has crunched the numbers on Fitzgerald’s use of ‘!’ for us. He used 356 per 100,000 words over the course of four novels. The most parsimonious user of the ‘!’ studied was Elmore Leonard – a mere 49 per 100,000 words in the course of forty-five novels. Just below him is Ernest Hemingway at 59 per 100,000 (over ten novels). Down at the other end James Joyce couldn’t get enough of exclaiming (as we’ll see later, it was one of the few punctuation marks he seemed able to tolerate), managing to use 1,105 per 100,000 words in just three novels. All this analysis was done by Ben Blatt in Nabokov’s Favorite Word is Mauve: The Literary Quirks and Oddities of Our Most-Loved Authors
> Until the 1970s, the exclamation mark didn’t even have its own key on a keyboard. To produce one, you had to type a period, backspace and then finally an apostrophe
> ‘I gave up quotation marks long ago. I found I didn’t need them, they were fly-specks on the page,’ wrote E. L. Doctorow. Another believer in a minimalist quote-mark style is Vladimir Putin. As two Brookings Institute scholars noted when they analyzed Putin’s dissertation for his advanced degree (awarded by the St Petersburg Mining Institute), there were sixteen plagiarized pages, no footnotes and no quotation marks. In 218 pages of text.
> The final chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses is more than 24,000 words long (roughly forty printed pages), yet contains just one comma and two full stops. In many ways this is the pinnacle of Joyce’s aversion to punctuation: he never used quotation marks in any of his books
> historically proofreaders marked corrections on proofs in red or blue pen. A red correction meant that the typesetter had introduced the error as part of the setting process, and a blue correction meant that the suggested correction was one that perhaps should have been picked up at an earlier stage (i.e. by the copy-editor and author) and was therefore not the responsibility of the typesetter. The distinction was important as red corrections could be charged back to the typesetter, whereas blue ones could not.
> some writers take exception to proofreaders – especially Mark Twain. ‘Yesterday [my publisher] wrote that the printer’s proof-reader was improving my punctuation for me, & I telegraphed orders to have him shot without giving him time to pray.’
> ‘atomic typos’ – the ‘atomic’ in the name comes about because these typos are very small mistakes that lead to very big differences in meaning. ‘Pubic’ and ‘public’, ‘dairy’ and ‘diary’, ‘fight’ and ‘eight’.
> 2005. ‘The Sudanese government had a nasty shock this week, when it read on a US Congress website that the Americans had conducted nuclear tests in the country,’ the piece continued. More prosaically, what had actually happened was that Ellen Tauscher, a Democratic member of the House of Representatives from California, had used the Sedan explosion as an example of a nuclear test that led to excessive radiation fallout. The name ‘Sedan’ was incorrectly transcribed in the Congressional Record as ‘Sudan’.
> ‘I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don’t seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings’
> after writing La Disparition in 1969, Perec then wrote a novella in 1972 called Les revenentes, where the only vowel used was the letter ‘e’. La Disparition is a lipogram, which comes from ancient Greek and means ‘leaving out a letter’. Les revenentes, on the other hand, is antilipogrammatic (what a word!) – which describes constrained writing that only uses a single vowel. These types of ‘constrained’ writings are known as Oulipo.
> In 1989 the James Bond film Licence to Kill also suffered a US-induced title change. It had originally been called Licence Revoked (which describes the film’s plot – M revokes Bond’s licence to kill, making him a rogue agent), but the name was changed during post-production. Apparently, American audiences thought it referred to Bond’s driving licence. Sorry, license. In the US you can use the one word for both noun and verb.
> on Georges Simenon, creator of the legendary sleuth Maigret and author of more than five hundred novels: ‘Simenon’s productivity is legendary: he wrote one chapter a day, without interruption, and if he had to stop working on a book for more than 48 hours, for example through illness, he threw it away. He completed most of his novels in ten or eleven days, editing them only to “cut, cut, cut” anything that he deemed too “literary”. It’s reported that Alfred Hitchcock once telephoned him only to be told that Simenon was incommunicado as he had just begun a new novel. “That’s all right,” said Hitchcock, “I’ll wait.”’
> John F. Kennedy won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1956 book Profiles in Courage, but the book was mostly written by Ted Sorensen, one of his speechwriters
> Although often styled as e e, The Chicago Manual of Style states that: ‘E. E. Cummings can be safely capitalized; it was one of his publishers, not he himself, who lowercased his name.’ Cummings legally changed his name to e e cummings (according to his biographer), but his widow claimed that the biographer was incorrect
> ‘Stet’ is what’s known as an obelism. That’s the word for annotating manuscripts with marks in the margin
> I don’t think there is a word in the English language for the bubble of satisfaction you get when you’re editing a book and are able to correct the spelling of the name of the cyclist who was the fourth British wearer of the yellow jersey in the Tour de France from ‘David Miller’ (INCORRECT) to ‘David Millar’ (CORRECT), but there should be one
> One of the heavyweight clashes between American and British punctuation is that in the UK most publishers and publications use ‘spaced’ en rules (i.e. there is space both before and after the dash – like that), whereas in the US ‘closed-up’ em rules are used.
> we all know that we should use the ! sparingly. In this, follow F. Scott Fitzgerald, who said: ‘Cut out all these exclamation points … An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.’ Someone has crunched the numbers on Fitzgerald’s use of ‘!’ for us. He used 356 per 100,000 words over the course of four novels. The most parsimonious user of the ‘!’ studied was Elmore Leonard – a mere 49 per 100,000 words in the course of forty-five novels. Just below him is Ernest Hemingway at 59 per 100,000 (over ten novels). Down at the other end James Joyce couldn’t get enough of exclaiming (as we’ll see later, it was one of the few punctuation marks he seemed able to tolerate), managing to use 1,105 per 100,000 words in just three novels. All this analysis was done by Ben Blatt in Nabokov’s Favorite Word is Mauve: The Literary Quirks and Oddities of Our Most-Loved Authors
> Until the 1970s, the exclamation mark didn’t even have its own key on a keyboard. To produce one, you had to type a period, backspace and then finally an apostrophe
> ‘I gave up quotation marks long ago. I found I didn’t need them, they were fly-specks on the page,’ wrote E. L. Doctorow. Another believer in a minimalist quote-mark style is Vladimir Putin. As two Brookings Institute scholars noted when they analyzed Putin’s dissertation for his advanced degree (awarded by the St Petersburg Mining Institute), there were sixteen plagiarized pages, no footnotes and no quotation marks. In 218 pages of text.
> The final chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses is more than 24,000 words long (roughly forty printed pages), yet contains just one comma and two full stops. In many ways this is the pinnacle of Joyce’s aversion to punctuation: he never used quotation marks in any of his books
> historically proofreaders marked corrections on proofs in red or blue pen. A red correction meant that the typesetter had introduced the error as part of the setting process, and a blue correction meant that the suggested correction was one that perhaps should have been picked up at an earlier stage (i.e. by the copy-editor and author) and was therefore not the responsibility of the typesetter. The distinction was important as red corrections could be charged back to the typesetter, whereas blue ones could not.
> some writers take exception to proofreaders – especially Mark Twain. ‘Yesterday [my publisher] wrote that the printer’s proof-reader was improving my punctuation for me, & I telegraphed orders to have him shot without giving him time to pray.’
> ‘atomic typos’ – the ‘atomic’ in the name comes about because these typos are very small mistakes that lead to very big differences in meaning. ‘Pubic’ and ‘public’, ‘dairy’ and ‘diary’, ‘fight’ and ‘eight’.
> 2005. ‘The Sudanese government had a nasty shock this week, when it read on a US Congress website that the Americans had conducted nuclear tests in the country,’ the piece continued. More prosaically, what had actually happened was that Ellen Tauscher, a Democratic member of the House of Representatives from California, had used the Sedan explosion as an example of a nuclear test that led to excessive radiation fallout. The name ‘Sedan’ was incorrectly transcribed in the Congressional Record as ‘Sudan’.
> ‘I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don’t seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings’
> after writing La Disparition in 1969, Perec then wrote a novella in 1972 called Les revenentes, where the only vowel used was the letter ‘e’. La Disparition is a lipogram, which comes from ancient Greek and means ‘leaving out a letter’. Les revenentes, on the other hand, is antilipogrammatic (what a word!) – which describes constrained writing that only uses a single vowel. These types of ‘constrained’ writings are known as Oulipo.
> In 1989 the James Bond film Licence to Kill also suffered a US-induced title change. It had originally been called Licence Revoked (which describes the film’s plot – M revokes Bond’s licence to kill, making him a rogue agent), but the name was changed during post-production. Apparently, American audiences thought it referred to Bond’s driving licence. Sorry, license. In the US you can use the one word for both noun and verb.
June 21, 2023
This is a harsh review and I want to preface it by saying that lots of people clearly loved this book, my annoyance with it is entirely subjective and even just irrational at times. But nonetheless it annoyed me and I wanted to rant about it.
--
The book is boring and too general - there are not enough concrete examples of 'how words get good', or the making of a book (though there are plenty of strange obscure historical trivia tidbits in the copious footnotes, which the author clearly revels in - so much so that at times it reads like just a collection of 'fun facts'. The footnotes annoyed me, in case you can't already tell).
I was expecting this to be a broad overview of how the modern publishing industry works from a practical perspective (which to be fair isn't entirely absent), but instead we have whole chapters on infuriatingly finicky details like "Fight Letters From Charlotte Brontë: Spelling" and the riveting "Specks in your text: Grammar and punctuation" which extols the history and usage of a range of punctuation marks. Much of (what was to me) the 'filler' content of the book was this kind of mind-numbing history - on multiple different occasions whilst reading I wrote in my notes 'too much boring history' or a variation of that thought. There were occasionally some mildly interesting bits, but for me these were all but lost in a sea of tedium.
I got the sense of an inexplicable dislike or avoidance of computerised solutions on the part of the author - in the chapters on copyediting and spelling there are various comments that seem to be written as though intelligent spell-checking and automatic grammar assistants don't exist, despite this book having been first published just last year. The author also seemingly misuses a quote from Alan Turing (comparing the storage characteristics of tape with books) to somehow suggest that Turing recognised the inherent special and magical qualities of printed words over digitised words - this did not match my interpretation at all. In the same quote Turing even compares papyrus scrolls, another form of physically printed words, to tape in how relatively difficult it is to access different entries, and says books are better than both for this specific purpose (pp. 310-311).
At various points I couldn't help but wonder if this lack of understanding/underuse of technology is widespread in the publishing industry, for example after reading the section on indexing, where the author bemoans the fact that "you need the text to be anchored to the correct page numbers […] any edits that cause text reflow can mean that every carefully selected index entry is then incorrect [...] I have lost entire weeks of my working life dealing with 'minor' text reflow changes to an index" (p. 194). Surely in this era when humans can send probes to the outer reaches of the solar system and beyond, there are solutions that could intelligently link index entries to the words to which they refer, and help to adjust an index easily in the event the content of the book changes? Maybe this is just my own lack of knowledge talking but it seemed like something that shouldn't be so hard with the help of some clever software.
The other thing that irritated me was the general over-zealous tone used to deify all things books, like pieces of punctuation and indexes. To an extent I do get it, the role of books and printing is pivotal in the history of human civilisation and has shaped the human condition, and the author seems to be trying to impress the gravity of this on us, but after a certain amount of undue reverence I couldn't help but think: it's just not that deep lady. She also uses phrases that start out quirky and vaguely interesting but get old and start to sound silly quickly ('Gutenberg Galaxy' to describe the set of all existing collections of words, and 'setting words free' as a pretentious metaphor for... printing? the publishing process? I'm still not entirely sure what it means).
After a while it all just started to sound like someone indulging their interest in a boring subject by talking your ear off about it for hours. Throughout the book I felt the sense of being thoroughly excluded from the nerdery and viewing it entirely from the outside, which isn't something that happens to me all that often - the feeling of just not understanding how someone can be so interested in the details of a topic, which to be fair other people probably have about some of my interests.
Overall a disappointing read and loss of momentum in my reading streak this year. Maybe I should have dropped this part way through as soon as I started flagging, but the sunk cost feeling (and the weight of my expectations) was strong with this one. The best thing I can find about finishing this book is that now I can move on to another less tedious one.
--
The book is boring and too general - there are not enough concrete examples of 'how words get good', or the making of a book (though there are plenty of strange obscure historical trivia tidbits in the copious footnotes, which the author clearly revels in - so much so that at times it reads like just a collection of 'fun facts'. The footnotes annoyed me, in case you can't already tell).
I was expecting this to be a broad overview of how the modern publishing industry works from a practical perspective (which to be fair isn't entirely absent), but instead we have whole chapters on infuriatingly finicky details like "Fight Letters From Charlotte Brontë: Spelling" and the riveting "Specks in your text: Grammar and punctuation" which extols the history and usage of a range of punctuation marks. Much of (what was to me) the 'filler' content of the book was this kind of mind-numbing history - on multiple different occasions whilst reading I wrote in my notes 'too much boring history' or a variation of that thought. There were occasionally some mildly interesting bits, but for me these were all but lost in a sea of tedium.
I got the sense of an inexplicable dislike or avoidance of computerised solutions on the part of the author - in the chapters on copyediting and spelling there are various comments that seem to be written as though intelligent spell-checking and automatic grammar assistants don't exist, despite this book having been first published just last year. The author also seemingly misuses a quote from Alan Turing (comparing the storage characteristics of tape with books) to somehow suggest that Turing recognised the inherent special and magical qualities of printed words over digitised words - this did not match my interpretation at all. In the same quote Turing even compares papyrus scrolls, another form of physically printed words, to tape in how relatively difficult it is to access different entries, and says books are better than both for this specific purpose (pp. 310-311).
At various points I couldn't help but wonder if this lack of understanding/underuse of technology is widespread in the publishing industry, for example after reading the section on indexing, where the author bemoans the fact that "you need the text to be anchored to the correct page numbers […] any edits that cause text reflow can mean that every carefully selected index entry is then incorrect [...] I have lost entire weeks of my working life dealing with 'minor' text reflow changes to an index" (p. 194). Surely in this era when humans can send probes to the outer reaches of the solar system and beyond, there are solutions that could intelligently link index entries to the words to which they refer, and help to adjust an index easily in the event the content of the book changes? Maybe this is just my own lack of knowledge talking but it seemed like something that shouldn't be so hard with the help of some clever software.
The other thing that irritated me was the general over-zealous tone used to deify all things books, like pieces of punctuation and indexes. To an extent I do get it, the role of books and printing is pivotal in the history of human civilisation and has shaped the human condition, and the author seems to be trying to impress the gravity of this on us, but after a certain amount of undue reverence I couldn't help but think: it's just not that deep lady. She also uses phrases that start out quirky and vaguely interesting but get old and start to sound silly quickly ('Gutenberg Galaxy' to describe the set of all existing collections of words, and 'setting words free' as a pretentious metaphor for... printing? the publishing process? I'm still not entirely sure what it means).
After a while it all just started to sound like someone indulging their interest in a boring subject by talking your ear off about it for hours. Throughout the book I felt the sense of being thoroughly excluded from the nerdery and viewing it entirely from the outside, which isn't something that happens to me all that often - the feeling of just not understanding how someone can be so interested in the details of a topic, which to be fair other people probably have about some of my interests.
Overall a disappointing read and loss of momentum in my reading streak this year. Maybe I should have dropped this part way through as soon as I started flagging, but the sunk cost feeling (and the weight of my expectations) was strong with this one. The best thing I can find about finishing this book is that now I can move on to another less tedious one.
February 16, 2023
A very informative book which highlights the different stages and the many ‘behind the scenes’ folk who work towards bringing an author’s initial manuscript to print. Some very interesting history of printing, publishing and writing itself.
April 18, 2022
A fascinating and thorough must-read for anyone involved in the publishing business. I loved the many references to other writers, about their writing process and experience with publishers, and also about the publishers themselves. I also loved exploring how a book that initially sold poorly was suddenly exploded on to another level thanks to word of mouth etc. Lee's passion for publishing is refreshing as she confirms that actual book sales have improved over the last few years which is also good news for second-hand booksellers. She steers clear of cynicism or negativity about the industry and each page of this book is an education in itself. Highly recommend it for writers, editors or anyone with even a passing interest in publishing.
July 8, 2022
A very interesting and detailed book about books - the conception, birth, nurturing and growth of a book. As well as a detailed but never boring narrative about the proposal, writing, editing, printing, distribution etc, it features numerous anecdotes about books, past present and even some future. And not only the physical processes - insights into style, layout, art, typeface, all manner of background to what happens before a book ends up on the bookseller's shelf. Very easy and informative reading.
November 11, 2022
- As a bookworm, I liked the premise of this book i.e. a behind-the-scenes at what's involved in getting a book created
- The earlier chapters were interesting but it eventually became a slog to read
- For me, there was a bit too much dwelling on recounting the whole history. I think I would've preferred a bit more focus on present day processes
- Way too many footnotes
- The earlier chapters were interesting but it eventually became a slog to read
- For me, there was a bit too much dwelling on recounting the whole history. I think I would've preferred a bit more focus on present day processes
- Way too many footnotes
April 19, 2022
A quick and enjoyable peek into the publishing business and the function of various roles within.
August 16, 2024
Interesting - some top tips for the Content team.
April 18, 2022
A fab book to read if you’re looking to gain insight into the history of books and the publishing process.
I’ll admit there were some chapters that I thought were a bit boring (such as the one about indexing) but that’s just me – others might find that chapter really interesting.
I would definitely recommend this to anyone thinking about a career in publishing, especially if you’re interested in the editorial side of things.
Also, this is a pretty good book to read if you’re an aspiring writer who’s potentially looking to get their work published in the future (*cough* like me *cough*). You might find some of the anecdotes and points made in this book quite inspiring.
I’ll admit there were some chapters that I thought were a bit boring (such as the one about indexing) but that’s just me – others might find that chapter really interesting.
I would definitely recommend this to anyone thinking about a career in publishing, especially if you’re interested in the editorial side of things.
Also, this is a pretty good book to read if you’re an aspiring writer who’s potentially looking to get their work published in the future (*cough* like me *cough*). You might find some of the anecdotes and points made in this book quite inspiring.
October 31, 2023
Fascinating read that is definitely worth investing the time it. It took me much longer than normal to read this book, not because I didn’t enjoy it but because it was very dense with information. It is probably the only book where I read each and every footnote. In fact, it gave me a new appreciation for the footnote.
April 10, 2023
I have always been fascinated by the written word and the magic that goes behind books. I really loved and appreciated seeing all steps in the publishing process as well as learning the amazing history of books and the words that have made them for so so long.
September 28, 2022
Absorbing!
April 16, 2023
An enjoyable must-read for any book geek.
July 4, 2022
Well worth a read if you have any interest in what goes into making a book. Many interesting anecdotes make this book a fascinating insight into what happens behind the scenes.
January 27, 2023
Worth the wait. Yummy
June 9, 2022
Fun and interesting if, like me, you are interested in the making of books as well as the words. From now on I'll be slightly more tolerant of typos.
August 4, 2023
Should be titled "how a book gets made".
January 28, 2023
When I first picked up How Words Get Good, I'd thought it was a book about editing but it really is about the entire process of how the words that we read on a page come to be. From the creative process and the different modes of production - whether it is a solo author, a ghostwriter or "literary factory farming" - to the role of intermediaries like agents, editors, proofreaders and translators. But this isn't just about the process of writing and publishing and the roles of the various players in the publishing ecosystem. Lee also discusses all the things you see on the page and in the book and how they come together to make the reading experience a pleasurable one (or not) - spelling, punctuation, footnotes, indices, blurbs, layout, typography. Lee herself admits this:
"Ok, not everyone involved in getting words good actually technically rewrites them. But, be they editors, agents, indexers, typographers, printers or designers, there is a whole behind-the-scenes army of people involved in making words good, and then better. Their mission will be, in the end, never noticed by the reader who consumes the words they have turned their attention to. That hidden human factor is what makes words - gives them sense and meaning to be enjoyed by readers."
If what you're expecting from How Words Get Good a work firmly focussed on how content and words are developed and refined before being released out into the world, you might find this a frustrating and meandering read. But treat it as an assemblage of facts on the English language and on publication and you might just enjoy the ride.
Take the whole -ize vs -ise controversy for example. Lee explains:
"The '-ize' ending for words like organize and realize comes directly from the Greek root '-izo', whereas '-ise' endings come from the French suffix ('-iser') - and that variant was not in use until almost a century later. The King James Bible and Shakespeare use '-ize' spellings throughout, and using '-ize' is part of what is known as Oxford spelling, since it is used by Oxford University Press, and the Oxford English Dictionary. But it's no wonder that there is permanent confusion about which is and isn't correct - and really, it depends on where you are and who you are writing for. Oxford spelling is generally used by NATO, the WHO, UNESCO, the United Nations, the Encyclopedia Britannica, Cambridge University Press and Nature. But most British newspapers use '-ise' - perhaps because that is what their readers expect, given the widespread belief that '-ize' is an Americanism."
Lee also explains how the whole schism between British and American spelling came about. Noah Webster (of Webster's Dictionary fame) believed that phonetic spellings were easier for children to learn and began to change the spellings in his popular speller (e.g. centre to center, colour to color). Some were less successful in being adopted e.g. soup to soop, sponge to spunge and ache to ake. Fascinating.
And this hilarious excerpt on F Scott Fitzgerald and This Side of Paradise. Apparently the literary critic Edmund Wilson described the novel as "one of the most illiterate books of any merit ever published". "Much has been said about F Scott Fitzgerald's illiteracy and This Side of Paradise has been singled out for notice as the worst offender. Fitzgerald's inattentive years at Princeton and his vagarious reading produced an only partially educated young writer. Though he came to perfect his ear for English, throughout his career he remained a wretched speller."
My favourite sections of the book were on the roles of the different players in the publishing eco-system, and their behind the scenes role in creating a pleasurable and engaging reading experience. Having read Emily Henry's Book Lovers, which featured a literary agent and an editor, not too long ago, I devoured the chapters on the role of agents and editors. One agent that Lee spoke to described her role as "to keep [bad] words away from editors and only let them see the good ones". The role demands "time management. You have to be very disciplined. You need to carve out thinking time, and time to read and edit as well as everything else - you have to learn not to be available 24/7, while still providing client care when it is needed. And the work is changing. For example there are some that don't deal with the printed word at all - they specialise in taking on clients who write podcasts or are only writing for audio. And increasingly agents also need to be able to deal with digital marketing, metadata, and occasionally become experts in IT". Being an agent is not about rewriting proposals. A proposal should be an honest reflection of an author's style. You should never sell what you - well, the author - can't deliver. A lot of pp think they have an idea for a book, but a proposal should reflect that they can maintain that idea over 80,000 words."
From Lee, I learned the difference between commissioning editors, who check that the broad arc of the manuscript makes sense, and copy editors who go through the words meticulously to make sure that there are no gaping holes in the structure and logic of the story (e.g. chronological inconsistencies, factual errors, timeline impossibilities, plot error internal inconsistencies). I learned about the 4Cs of copyediting - Correctness, Clarity, Coherence, Consistency (e.g. in spelling, style) - and will try to apply this framework when vetting writing.
And there is a fifth C, Concision, though that lies outside the domain of copyediting but is essential to good writing. Lee quotes GK Chesterton: "Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame. Inexperienced writers tend to fill up space for its own sake but "one of the most important things to recognise is that in the world of words, concision is generosity." Blurb writers similarly have to be concise. In addition, writers have to remember to "'show, don't tell'…to nudge the reader into experiencing the story through action, words, thoughts and feelings, rather than exposition or description." For the writer, Anton Chekhov wrote that it might mean saying that "on the mill dam a piece of glass from a broken bottle littered like a bright little star", rather than saying it was a moonlit light. For a blurb writer, it means using choice of vocabulary and sentence structure to tell readers that a book is tense or scary or dramatic, rather than saying it in those precise words.
Then there are the proofreaders whose role originated with the task of checking the work of the typesetter, i.e. typo hunters. It takes a particular type, I think, to be a proofreader by profession, particularly one who proofreads against copy (as opposed to proofreading blind - that's another new term I learned from Lee).
And it must take an even more particular type to be a professional indexer. I developed a newfound appreciation for the work of the indexer after reading this book. It requires a deep understanding of the text - not just picking out names of people and places and referencing them in the index, but considering what are the themes and issues arising from the text, what readers are likely to want to search for, and pulling these out in the index. And it requires conscientiousness and meticulousness - any insertions and deletions in the text will likely have implications on index entries.
Lee disabuses us of the notion that when something arrives as a book, it must have gone through a more rigorous fact checking process than a magazine or a newspaper or a website. "The process of printing itself lends an authority to each word, fact or argument on the page. If it has made it into print, we feel, it must be right." But she argues that "that's simply not the case" and readers have to realise that they are the ultimate arbiters of the quality of the text.
If writers, agents, editors, proofreaders are the ones who help get words good, then printers, publishers, translators and blurb writers are the ones who help words get free. Lee explains:
"Movable type and the invention of the printing press liberated words from the constraints of being painstakingly transcribed by monks copy by copy. The mass printing of words truly freed them - and changed everything. That freedom to finally reach a readership can also happen through translation, which allows words to cross borders, continents and cultures, and through persuasion - the art of the blurb writer, which encourages the potential reader to complete the circle of how words get good, by picking up a book and committing to buying it."
Lee's chapter on translation gives one a deeper appreciation for the art. One interviewee described translators as falling into two camps: "roundheads [who] like to play it straight, and translate as literally as possible to match the forms of expression used in the original text" and "cavaliers [who] set as their main aim the achievement of a translated text that sounds as if it were originally written in English, even if it means finding different idioms and forms of expression to the original text". While the former approach might lead to awkward and stilted reading in the translated language, roundheads would argue that the text is foreign by definition; their approach to translation preserves this sense of the foreign. The latter approach avoids stilted and awkward phrasings but critics charge that cavaliers "can sometimes interpolate too much of a style and voice that is nothing to do with the author's choice of expression".
Lee highlights the complex choices involved in translation. If you want to render the text in a natural sounding English voice, which type of English voice do you use and how to do decide whether it is an appropriate equivalent of the voice of the author or narrator of the original text (e.g. Edwardian style of prose, Victorian or a more contemporary style)? Do you choose a style that sounds more natural to the modern ear or one that is contemporary with the author? And if you choose the former, how much is the translated text a work in its own right and in its own voice? Just because the translator is working with a set text doesn't mean they have an easier task than the author who birthed those words; Lee observes that the French translation of Finnegans Wake took 30 years to complete, while the Japanese version required three separate translators after the first disappeared and the second went mad.
We also learn from Lee that translation doesn't always entail shifting between two languages. Although maybe the anecdote Lee shares suggests that American and British English are effectively two different languages. When JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published for the American market, Arthur Levine, the head of Scholastic "noted that he needed a title that said 'magic' more overtly to American readers". The title was therefore changed to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. While the title change might have said "magic" more overtly, it also lost the reference to alchemy implied by the British title. Levine also went on to "translate the text for an American readership….[a]s well as the title change, vocabulary changes in the book include 'Quidditch pitch', which becomes 'Quidditch field'; 'mum' becomes 'mom'; 'jelly' becomes 'Jell-O; 'jumper' becomes 'sweater'". But Philip Nel explains that changing 'pitch' to 'field' divorces Quidditch from cricket, which means that the many jokes about how long Quidditch matches can last become meaningless (although most Americans would be unfamiliar with the sport anyway). More importantly perhaps, it destroyed the rhyme of the English phrase. And while JK Rowling is careful to create a world that reflects the cultural diversity of England through a diverse cast of characters (e.g. Parvati Patil and Cho Chang) and the use of dialect, changing instances of 'mum' and Seamus Finnegan's 'mam' to the generic 'mom', strips the text of these cultural subtleties. Puns were also lost when the British Sellotape was changed to the American Scotch tape, eliminating the pun between "Sellotape" and "Spellotape". Such acts of "translation" for texts between two markets that speak the same language, Lee points out, not only change meaning and introduce distortion, but also "deprives readers of the opportunity to learn about linguistic difference."
Then there are the text designers. They are the ones who construct the page, not only making the text ornamental, but also clear so that "a reader would find it easy to approach and engage with [the text], even with other ways of communicating competing for attention". Words need to be organised in certain ways to make them approachable and useful - and in turn, readable.
Lee notes:
"The conventions of text design are used to help the reader know exactly what a section of text is: hence chapter titles look different from the main body of the text, and subtitles, quoted material, verses, footnotes, and other text ornaments can be instantly signposted for the reader by using appropriate typefaces, emphasis and positioning….This organisational approach to text design began in antiquity: some scrolls could reach up to 30m in length, so it was vital that a reader could quickly and easily orient themselves."
Lee makes the distinction between readability and legibility: "readability is about how easily your readers can understand what you're trying to say. Legibility is about how readers can decode the symbols you use to say it - the ability to distinguish one letter from another in a typeface, for example….serif typefaces are easier to read than sans serif". Text designers are the ones whose choices shape the legibility of a text.
Some of the little nuggets I picked up from the chapter on text design:
- A typeface is a family of fonts so Helvetica is a typeface and Helvetica Bold, Helvetica Italic, Helvetica Regular, etc are fonts.
- Upper case and lower case letters are so named because when printing with metal type, the capital letters were stored on a case above the rest of the letters.
- A widow is a short line (often only one word) at the end of a paragraph or column that falls at the beginning of the following page or column. An orphan is a paragraph opener that has been separated from the rest of its family by, say, the bottom of the page. "How do you remember the difference? An orphan starts alone, a widow ends alone".
Overall, How Words Get Good is a fascinating read and will leave you with a newfound appreciation for what goes on behind the scenes to produce the book in your hand (and perhaps more forgiving if you spot any errors). Not to mention a whole load of interesting facts and anecdotes, like:
- Examples of "literary factory farming" include Edward Stratemeyer, who was responsible for The Rover Boys, and also dreamt up the Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, Baseball Joe, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and The Dana Girls. He realised that he couldn't keep up with the limitless demand he had identified and developed a system. He would think up a new series, then for each volume would develop an outline that was passed on to a contracted writer, who would turn it into a 200 page nook. James Patterson, a prolific author, sustains his output by working with a stable of co-authors.
- The difference between En and Em dashes: The En dash is so called because it was traditionally the width of a capital letter N and known in printers' slang as a 'nut'. This is quite fitting as it can be used to bolt together two ends of a range of numbers (e.g. pp45-8; 1979-82) or to demonstrate a relationship between two things (mother-daughter alliance; Chinese-Soviet aggression). It is also used instead of brackets or pairs of commas to mark off a 'nested' clause or phrase. It's easy for writers to mistakenly use a hyphen when an en rule - such as these ones - should be used; a copy-editor's bread-and-butter is to fix this kind of common error. The em dash looks like this: ---. And yes, it is traditionally based on the width of the letter M and It is apparently historically known as a 'mutton'.
- The straight quote marks are actually known as dumb quote marks; the curly ones are known as smart or typographer's quote marks. The typewriter only used straight quotes to save a couple of keys, and some modern keyboards have followed suit. Straight quotes were adopted by typewriter manufacturers as the same character could be used at the beginning and end of the sentence, thus saving one key. They are the default online as they are safe (coding issues across platforms mean that they can survive in a copy-and-paste worlds better than their more glamourous curled cousins)
"Ok, not everyone involved in getting words good actually technically rewrites them. But, be they editors, agents, indexers, typographers, printers or designers, there is a whole behind-the-scenes army of people involved in making words good, and then better. Their mission will be, in the end, never noticed by the reader who consumes the words they have turned their attention to. That hidden human factor is what makes words - gives them sense and meaning to be enjoyed by readers."
If what you're expecting from How Words Get Good a work firmly focussed on how content and words are developed and refined before being released out into the world, you might find this a frustrating and meandering read. But treat it as an assemblage of facts on the English language and on publication and you might just enjoy the ride.
Take the whole -ize vs -ise controversy for example. Lee explains:
"The '-ize' ending for words like organize and realize comes directly from the Greek root '-izo', whereas '-ise' endings come from the French suffix ('-iser') - and that variant was not in use until almost a century later. The King James Bible and Shakespeare use '-ize' spellings throughout, and using '-ize' is part of what is known as Oxford spelling, since it is used by Oxford University Press, and the Oxford English Dictionary. But it's no wonder that there is permanent confusion about which is and isn't correct - and really, it depends on where you are and who you are writing for. Oxford spelling is generally used by NATO, the WHO, UNESCO, the United Nations, the Encyclopedia Britannica, Cambridge University Press and Nature. But most British newspapers use '-ise' - perhaps because that is what their readers expect, given the widespread belief that '-ize' is an Americanism."
Lee also explains how the whole schism between British and American spelling came about. Noah Webster (of Webster's Dictionary fame) believed that phonetic spellings were easier for children to learn and began to change the spellings in his popular speller (e.g. centre to center, colour to color). Some were less successful in being adopted e.g. soup to soop, sponge to spunge and ache to ake. Fascinating.
And this hilarious excerpt on F Scott Fitzgerald and This Side of Paradise. Apparently the literary critic Edmund Wilson described the novel as "one of the most illiterate books of any merit ever published". "Much has been said about F Scott Fitzgerald's illiteracy and This Side of Paradise has been singled out for notice as the worst offender. Fitzgerald's inattentive years at Princeton and his vagarious reading produced an only partially educated young writer. Though he came to perfect his ear for English, throughout his career he remained a wretched speller."
My favourite sections of the book were on the roles of the different players in the publishing eco-system, and their behind the scenes role in creating a pleasurable and engaging reading experience. Having read Emily Henry's Book Lovers, which featured a literary agent and an editor, not too long ago, I devoured the chapters on the role of agents and editors. One agent that Lee spoke to described her role as "to keep [bad] words away from editors and only let them see the good ones". The role demands "time management. You have to be very disciplined. You need to carve out thinking time, and time to read and edit as well as everything else - you have to learn not to be available 24/7, while still providing client care when it is needed. And the work is changing. For example there are some that don't deal with the printed word at all - they specialise in taking on clients who write podcasts or are only writing for audio. And increasingly agents also need to be able to deal with digital marketing, metadata, and occasionally become experts in IT". Being an agent is not about rewriting proposals. A proposal should be an honest reflection of an author's style. You should never sell what you - well, the author - can't deliver. A lot of pp think they have an idea for a book, but a proposal should reflect that they can maintain that idea over 80,000 words."
From Lee, I learned the difference between commissioning editors, who check that the broad arc of the manuscript makes sense, and copy editors who go through the words meticulously to make sure that there are no gaping holes in the structure and logic of the story (e.g. chronological inconsistencies, factual errors, timeline impossibilities, plot error internal inconsistencies). I learned about the 4Cs of copyediting - Correctness, Clarity, Coherence, Consistency (e.g. in spelling, style) - and will try to apply this framework when vetting writing.
And there is a fifth C, Concision, though that lies outside the domain of copyediting but is essential to good writing. Lee quotes GK Chesterton: "Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame. Inexperienced writers tend to fill up space for its own sake but "one of the most important things to recognise is that in the world of words, concision is generosity." Blurb writers similarly have to be concise. In addition, writers have to remember to "'show, don't tell'…to nudge the reader into experiencing the story through action, words, thoughts and feelings, rather than exposition or description." For the writer, Anton Chekhov wrote that it might mean saying that "on the mill dam a piece of glass from a broken bottle littered like a bright little star", rather than saying it was a moonlit light. For a blurb writer, it means using choice of vocabulary and sentence structure to tell readers that a book is tense or scary or dramatic, rather than saying it in those precise words.
Then there are the proofreaders whose role originated with the task of checking the work of the typesetter, i.e. typo hunters. It takes a particular type, I think, to be a proofreader by profession, particularly one who proofreads against copy (as opposed to proofreading blind - that's another new term I learned from Lee).
And it must take an even more particular type to be a professional indexer. I developed a newfound appreciation for the work of the indexer after reading this book. It requires a deep understanding of the text - not just picking out names of people and places and referencing them in the index, but considering what are the themes and issues arising from the text, what readers are likely to want to search for, and pulling these out in the index. And it requires conscientiousness and meticulousness - any insertions and deletions in the text will likely have implications on index entries.
Lee disabuses us of the notion that when something arrives as a book, it must have gone through a more rigorous fact checking process than a magazine or a newspaper or a website. "The process of printing itself lends an authority to each word, fact or argument on the page. If it has made it into print, we feel, it must be right." But she argues that "that's simply not the case" and readers have to realise that they are the ultimate arbiters of the quality of the text.
If writers, agents, editors, proofreaders are the ones who help get words good, then printers, publishers, translators and blurb writers are the ones who help words get free. Lee explains:
"Movable type and the invention of the printing press liberated words from the constraints of being painstakingly transcribed by monks copy by copy. The mass printing of words truly freed them - and changed everything. That freedom to finally reach a readership can also happen through translation, which allows words to cross borders, continents and cultures, and through persuasion - the art of the blurb writer, which encourages the potential reader to complete the circle of how words get good, by picking up a book and committing to buying it."
Lee's chapter on translation gives one a deeper appreciation for the art. One interviewee described translators as falling into two camps: "roundheads [who] like to play it straight, and translate as literally as possible to match the forms of expression used in the original text" and "cavaliers [who] set as their main aim the achievement of a translated text that sounds as if it were originally written in English, even if it means finding different idioms and forms of expression to the original text". While the former approach might lead to awkward and stilted reading in the translated language, roundheads would argue that the text is foreign by definition; their approach to translation preserves this sense of the foreign. The latter approach avoids stilted and awkward phrasings but critics charge that cavaliers "can sometimes interpolate too much of a style and voice that is nothing to do with the author's choice of expression".
Lee highlights the complex choices involved in translation. If you want to render the text in a natural sounding English voice, which type of English voice do you use and how to do decide whether it is an appropriate equivalent of the voice of the author or narrator of the original text (e.g. Edwardian style of prose, Victorian or a more contemporary style)? Do you choose a style that sounds more natural to the modern ear or one that is contemporary with the author? And if you choose the former, how much is the translated text a work in its own right and in its own voice? Just because the translator is working with a set text doesn't mean they have an easier task than the author who birthed those words; Lee observes that the French translation of Finnegans Wake took 30 years to complete, while the Japanese version required three separate translators after the first disappeared and the second went mad.
We also learn from Lee that translation doesn't always entail shifting between two languages. Although maybe the anecdote Lee shares suggests that American and British English are effectively two different languages. When JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published for the American market, Arthur Levine, the head of Scholastic "noted that he needed a title that said 'magic' more overtly to American readers". The title was therefore changed to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. While the title change might have said "magic" more overtly, it also lost the reference to alchemy implied by the British title. Levine also went on to "translate the text for an American readership….[a]s well as the title change, vocabulary changes in the book include 'Quidditch pitch', which becomes 'Quidditch field'; 'mum' becomes 'mom'; 'jelly' becomes 'Jell-O; 'jumper' becomes 'sweater'". But Philip Nel explains that changing 'pitch' to 'field' divorces Quidditch from cricket, which means that the many jokes about how long Quidditch matches can last become meaningless (although most Americans would be unfamiliar with the sport anyway). More importantly perhaps, it destroyed the rhyme of the English phrase. And while JK Rowling is careful to create a world that reflects the cultural diversity of England through a diverse cast of characters (e.g. Parvati Patil and Cho Chang) and the use of dialect, changing instances of 'mum' and Seamus Finnegan's 'mam' to the generic 'mom', strips the text of these cultural subtleties. Puns were also lost when the British Sellotape was changed to the American Scotch tape, eliminating the pun between "Sellotape" and "Spellotape". Such acts of "translation" for texts between two markets that speak the same language, Lee points out, not only change meaning and introduce distortion, but also "deprives readers of the opportunity to learn about linguistic difference."
Then there are the text designers. They are the ones who construct the page, not only making the text ornamental, but also clear so that "a reader would find it easy to approach and engage with [the text], even with other ways of communicating competing for attention". Words need to be organised in certain ways to make them approachable and useful - and in turn, readable.
Lee notes:
"The conventions of text design are used to help the reader know exactly what a section of text is: hence chapter titles look different from the main body of the text, and subtitles, quoted material, verses, footnotes, and other text ornaments can be instantly signposted for the reader by using appropriate typefaces, emphasis and positioning….This organisational approach to text design began in antiquity: some scrolls could reach up to 30m in length, so it was vital that a reader could quickly and easily orient themselves."
Lee makes the distinction between readability and legibility: "readability is about how easily your readers can understand what you're trying to say. Legibility is about how readers can decode the symbols you use to say it - the ability to distinguish one letter from another in a typeface, for example….serif typefaces are easier to read than sans serif". Text designers are the ones whose choices shape the legibility of a text.
Some of the little nuggets I picked up from the chapter on text design:
- A typeface is a family of fonts so Helvetica is a typeface and Helvetica Bold, Helvetica Italic, Helvetica Regular, etc are fonts.
- Upper case and lower case letters are so named because when printing with metal type, the capital letters were stored on a case above the rest of the letters.
- A widow is a short line (often only one word) at the end of a paragraph or column that falls at the beginning of the following page or column. An orphan is a paragraph opener that has been separated from the rest of its family by, say, the bottom of the page. "How do you remember the difference? An orphan starts alone, a widow ends alone".
Overall, How Words Get Good is a fascinating read and will leave you with a newfound appreciation for what goes on behind the scenes to produce the book in your hand (and perhaps more forgiving if you spot any errors). Not to mention a whole load of interesting facts and anecdotes, like:
- Examples of "literary factory farming" include Edward Stratemeyer, who was responsible for The Rover Boys, and also dreamt up the Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, Baseball Joe, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and The Dana Girls. He realised that he couldn't keep up with the limitless demand he had identified and developed a system. He would think up a new series, then for each volume would develop an outline that was passed on to a contracted writer, who would turn it into a 200 page nook. James Patterson, a prolific author, sustains his output by working with a stable of co-authors.
- The difference between En and Em dashes: The En dash is so called because it was traditionally the width of a capital letter N and known in printers' slang as a 'nut'. This is quite fitting as it can be used to bolt together two ends of a range of numbers (e.g. pp45-8; 1979-82) or to demonstrate a relationship between two things (mother-daughter alliance; Chinese-Soviet aggression). It is also used instead of brackets or pairs of commas to mark off a 'nested' clause or phrase. It's easy for writers to mistakenly use a hyphen when an en rule - such as these ones - should be used; a copy-editor's bread-and-butter is to fix this kind of common error. The em dash looks like this: ---. And yes, it is traditionally based on the width of the letter M and It is apparently historically known as a 'mutton'.
- The straight quote marks are actually known as dumb quote marks; the curly ones are known as smart or typographer's quote marks. The typewriter only used straight quotes to save a couple of keys, and some modern keyboards have followed suit. Straight quotes were adopted by typewriter manufacturers as the same character could be used at the beginning and end of the sentence, thus saving one key. They are the default online as they are safe (coding issues across platforms mean that they can survive in a copy-and-paste worlds better than their more glamourous curled cousins)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 5, 2023
What I most enjoyed while reading this book about books was the feeling it gave me, of talking to a friend who is knowledgeable about and well-versed in the publishing process. The language is free and informal; you get bits of history, anecdotes from the lives of books and their authors, and even advice for your own reading and writing life. Much of it comes from the horse’s mouth too, since Lee makes no secret that she has friends in high places. Almost every section in the book is backed by the work experience of copy-editors, translators, and ghostwriters. I can only say, I want the rest of the story too. You can’t confine publishing to 300 pages.
See full review here
https://leseriana.blog/2023/10/25/how...
See full review here
https://leseriana.blog/2023/10/25/how...
April 11, 2022
For those looking for a really interesting peep behind the curtains of how books came into being to be the conduit between writers and readers, and the full process of how words are helped to be set free in going through the various processes involved in managing books into publication, I highly recommend this one. Procrastination excuse for writers it may be, but it is nevertheless also an entertaining, insightful and really useful book to read for anyone, whether they are a writer, reader, or anything in bewteen. Enjoy.
April 12, 2022
An informative and entertaining look at the publishing process. A large section of the book is focused on editing and personally, I would have preferred a bit more about how commissioning editors make decisions about what to publish and the section on agents is rather thin. Self-publishing isn't addressed and there is nothing specifically about ebooks, so essentially this is about traditionally printed books. Still well worth reading for bibliophiles and writers.
January 1, 2024
I did enjoy this book but felt it needed better copy editing (not editing as I would have said before I read this book) to make it shorter. The quotes were too long, and so was the text. I drifted a bit in the middle but found enthusiasm for it towards the end.
The author mentioned second hand bookshops but not charity shops, which sell lots of books too.
I hate footnotes and endnotes, feeling that they distract from the flow of the book, but the author loves them. Unfortunately, BorrowBox, which I used to read this, doesn’t seem to support going back to where I came from in the text once I’d clicked on a link to go to an endnote. In the end, I just read these when I got to them, thereby not necessarily understanding them. Some fun facts in them, though.
Off upstairs to measure some books to see if they conform to Royal or Demy standard sizing. (And none of them did, interestingly)
The author mentioned second hand bookshops but not charity shops, which sell lots of books too.
I hate footnotes and endnotes, feeling that they distract from the flow of the book, but the author loves them. Unfortunately, BorrowBox, which I used to read this, doesn’t seem to support going back to where I came from in the text once I’d clicked on a link to go to an endnote. In the end, I just read these when I got to them, thereby not necessarily understanding them. Some fun facts in them, though.
Off upstairs to measure some books to see if they conform to Royal or Demy standard sizing. (And none of them did, interestingly)
May 6, 2024
[5 Apr 2022] This is a book about publishing written by an experienced publisher, illustrated with her experiences, which shines through. It contains a detailed description of the individual stages of the publication of a book. She has a easy, engaging style and as you would image her story is well illustrated with anecdotes and amusing asides. I thought it was very informative and enlightening on how an author's words are honed and crafted into a published book. The book industry is well described. It is a very enjoyable reading experience. My only comment and its a nit-picking sort of criticism is the number of footnotes - which I found slightly irritating, particularly those that go across pages. I'm not sure that in this informal type of book that they are required. Some people it would appear were slightly disappointed as they were it seems expecting a textbook-style guide, but as a piece of biographical experiences of a publisher peppered with antidotes of publishing, I found it really engaging, informative and engaging read.
February 1, 2023
This was a spontaneous buy at the bookshop. It's a great look at what goes into creating the actual book from notes to final copy, and who does it, editors and agents and people I've never heard of. Rather a lot of distracting footnotes though, even if they're interesting, after a while they seem like a diversion.
About halfway it seemed like reading a checklist of the sections of a book so I gave it a break. It was a successful strategy as it was re-invigorated on return with stories of printers, millions of books to be printed or not to be printed and the many possible lives of a book.
It has a long bibiography and index, perhaps because it needs to set an example after the book tells you all about them.
Overall it's a goodread and it will be kept as a reference for now, perhaps going over those skipped footnotes and the bibliography.
About halfway it seemed like reading a checklist of the sections of a book so I gave it a break. It was a successful strategy as it was re-invigorated on return with stories of printers, millions of books to be printed or not to be printed and the many possible lives of a book.
It has a long bibiography and index, perhaps because it needs to set an example after the book tells you all about them.
Overall it's a goodread and it will be kept as a reference for now, perhaps going over those skipped footnotes and the bibliography.
August 22, 2022
I've read several books about how to write. None of them have worked and I think that I've come to accept that where books are concerned, I'm a consumer and not a creator.
However, this one is different. Rebecca takes us from the idea in the head of the author to the lump of carboard and paper in an eye-catching display in your favourite book shop. Agents, editors in various flavours, proof readers, type setters, jacket designers and the people who create the index all have the spotlight turned on them in this fascinating journey.
I've read throughout my life and I spent the latter part part of my career working for a local authority library service, but every chapter revealed things I didn't know about books. I enjoyed every single word.
However, this one is different. Rebecca takes us from the idea in the head of the author to the lump of carboard and paper in an eye-catching display in your favourite book shop. Agents, editors in various flavours, proof readers, type setters, jacket designers and the people who create the index all have the spotlight turned on them in this fascinating journey.
I've read throughout my life and I spent the latter part part of my career working for a local authority library service, but every chapter revealed things I didn't know about books. I enjoyed every single word.
May 6, 2023
livros sobre livros... como resistir? este é fascinante do ponto de vista editorial (“onde as palavras se tornam boas”), desde o texto inicial até ao aparecimento do livro numa montra. repleto de referências a escritores, pequenas anedotas sobre falhas gramaticais, plágios, as inevitáveis gralhas, o mistério das notas de rodapé, passando pelo drama das traduções, até se chegar à concepção do produto final com a escolha de tipos gráficos e imagens para a capa, ao longo deste livro percebemos como ele nasceu e cresceu, num relato divertido e muitíssimo informativo.
January 21, 2025
An overview of the way books are printed and published; mainly of interest to bibliophiles or those with a vested interest. A good portion of the book consists of interviews with people involved with the specific area of printing and publishing under review. The numerous footnotes (almost every page) become irritating and because of the overlap of information between different chapters it's best use is perhaps as a reference text.
January 1, 2025
An enjoyable trip through the stages of book production with many twists and turns through side alleys. It leans heavily on quotes and notes from authors, editors, and others in the publishing industry to give a sense for the work that goes into making (primarily) books full of “good” words. It reads as a celebration of that laborious process, if not a guide.
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