Jean Lant asked Lois McMaster Bujold:

Happy New Year Lois. My question is that I have recently published my first book (Redemption My Father's Story) and I used Covenant Books Publishing. The editing is terrible. It's distracting to the reader. I just am at a loss of how to handle this and could use some advice. I know that they sent it to me for approval and I regret that. I'm in no way an editor and I told them that. Any thoughts, please?

Lois McMaster Bujold I am going to throw this one open to the commenters, since I have no idea what sort of publisher, or scam, Covenant Books may be. Normal publishers allow the writer to make corrections at the line-edit, the copy-edit, and the page-proof stage. Which are up to the writer to make good. If you did not do so, the result is on you, not them.

(There are horror tales of messes occurring between page-proof approval and publication, which other published writers will have to supply; I've been mostly lucky. Except on a few reprints where, because they were setting from old files, I didn't think I'd need to read the page proofs again, wrong, sigh.)

Although I am not entirely sure whether you are referring to actual editing, where the line editor makes substantive suggestions to improve the work that the writer carries out (or elects not to, or comes up with alternate fixes), or copy-editing, where minor errata are addressed, or final page proofs, after final formatting and typesetting, to winkle out the last typos and similar glitches. (The next stop is Readers' Eyes, at which point it is Too Late.)

But, really, learning to edit your own material is one of the basic tasks and duties of a writer. Because you can't trust anyone else, even at a pro publisher. If you can't send in a manuscript as close to camera-ready as humanly possible... then you need to go over it again. Yourself. Though perhaps with help from friends or a crit group, or whatever online resources you can access for your specific weak issues.

Ta, L.

flag