Editorial Services and Your Virtual Assistant
Friday, July 16th, 2010
Editing services are a great addition to your writing team. Luckily, for a lot less than the usual rate of someone performing this service alone, often your Virtual Assistant can help you with this task.
In the past most editors were employed by publishing houses. Today, there is a wealth of enterprising editors who run their own editorial services businesses.
The services they offer run the full gamut of editing processes employed by the big publishing houses in the business. These include project development, manuscript consultation, copy editing and proofreading, among others.
In the olden days, when a publisher decided to publish what a writer had just written,
the writer simply handed the manuscript over to the publisher. This manuscript would
then follow the typical publishing route of procedures.
Line editors will check for grammar, punctuation and problems in format and other copy-editing concerns. The acquisition editors may help shape the general direction
of the work.
Developmental editors are sometimes hired by authors (and the publishers,
at times) to give shape to the work and make it marketable.
However, most editors will not bother to check the facts written in the manuscript.
Until recently, everybody assumed it was the job of the author.
Or, perhaps someone hired specifically to do that job.
The facts
Good editors will clean up all the sloppy details in the book (changing of names,
conflicting character traits, etc.) including misplaced adverbs and dangling participles.
However, he or she is not usually obligated to find out if airplanes were already around
in the 1800s. He or she assumes that the author knows that fact and the reason why
it is included in the story in the first place.
Who should be responsible for the checking of facts?
Fact-checkers
Aside from engaging the services of an editorial service group, an author must have his book quality-tested by an expert reader. This reader does nothing but double-check on supposed facts in the manuscript.
Fact checkers are hired to work on travel guide books, historical fiction and some other literary categories and genres. Travel books have hundreds of thousands of statistics
on sizes, hours, prices, and phone numbers.
Few travel publishers hire fact-checkers, relying on the authors for the authenticity
of all their entries.
Almanacs, dictionaries, atlas
Ideally, a writer must have some fact books in his library for references – encyclopedias, atlas maps, almanacs, dictionaries and many other guide books. This is especially true
if his work deals with some history or science or some other specific topics and professions.
Authors
After the fact-checker and the line editor have finished their jobs, the author must go over his work one more time. Of course, some unavoidable circumstances happen.
Phone numbers in travel books go out of kilter when area codes of places are changed, restaurants close down, and names of streets and airports are changed.
Disclaimers on the copyright page can sometimes help but if the authors had re-checked
one more time just before the book was printed, the error may have been averted.
Fortunately, the good news is that all of the editorial services groups today are more savvy than ever before with fact-checking and heading off other potential publishing disasters.
When I do editing for my clients, I proofread and fix any errors I find and often either reword unclear phrases or at least suggest changes to ease the reading and understanding of the work.
When asked to, I happily research names, places, facts, etc. as well.
Remember, I am a Virtual Assistant who LOVES to do editing, proofreading
and transcription assignments along with research, blog posts, article submissions
and social media maintenance!
Why not Schedule a Project now?
