The publishing process is a single continuous line of professionals working on your manuscript, passing the editorial baton from commissioning editor to desk editor, copy-editor and proofreader, via a typesetter and designer. By having style guides, a coherent, clear and consistent approach, there is efficiency and continuity that makes economic and practical sense and reminds each member of the editorial chain(gang) that they are not working in self-contained isolation.
Publishing a book successfully involves teamwork. Each person in the publishing house takes on temporary responsibility for your manuscript under the overall eagle management eye of your designated editor – usually the editor who will have commissioned and signed up your book in the first place or an editor who reports to her and who is your publishing champion within the publisher. With any luck they will be with you throughout the whole process from gestation to the birth of your book into the market, and your subsequent books too. Editors do move around a fair amount, but if there is a clear sense of what your book is about, who it is for and how it will look, and how it will be marketed and sold, and this is backed up by clear documentation and regular communication, then your experience of being published should be a positive one.
The Commissioning or Acquisitions Editor
The commissioning or acquisitions editor will take receipt of the full manuscript, review this and feedback suggestions for any further rewrites to the author if necessary. An editor shouldn’t tell an author how to amend their text, but they should point out where it is working well and not so well so an author can decide how best to adjust their own work. Authors tell me they are always very appreciative of positive commentary on their manuscript; otherwise, it can be very demoralising to receive a manuscript covered in marginal notes and a heavy dose of track changes. I feel strongly that an author should stand up for their text where they believe a change is not needed and I should be able to justify why I’ve indicated that a sentence might not be working or the text is best served if a paragraph is moved or dropped altogether. This makes for a genuinely creative working process and should result in a better manuscript.
At this stage, if needed, a libel check, close fact-check or sensitivity read (see below) might be done. As an author you have signed a contract to confirm what you deliver to your publisher is free from inaccurate, defamatory or libellous material. At best such errors undermine the credibility of your text, at worst unproven allegations, exaggeration or repetition of unfounded hearsay or quotations could land the author and publisher in the libel courts. Fortunately, this is very unlikely.
Publishing: Checking Facts
Medical or legal titles that include advice, dosage information and such like will need close scrutiny and a publisher may ask an author to reconfirm that all facts have been fully checked at their own expense; they may arrange for a checker if necessary themselves and pay for this or charge it to the author’s advance. I’ve known some publishers appoint freelance writers or editors to support an author in their final text rewrites where they think the author needs it; also at the author’s expense.
A sensitivity or inclusivity reading of a text – for books for children or Young Adults – is becoming more common. A reader will check for inclusive language or areas which might cause unnecessary offence to certain readers or where a plot line is particularly sensitive (abuse, mental health, same-sex relationship) to see that it has been appropriately handled. Such reads are not about censoring an author’s ideas or writing, or at least they shouldn’t be.
For academic or educational books, manuscripts are frequently sent out for independent peer review, usually to at least two readers, to satisfy the publisher that the author has produced a well-argued, convincing work or one which conforms to the requirements of the curriculum for which it has been commissioned to support. The commissioning editor needs to ensure the content or subject reviewer – a fellow scholar or teacher – can give a balanced opinion.
When the commissioning editor is satisfied that the manuscript is ready for publication, she hands this over to her desk editor if she is not seeing the book through herself. The desk editor’s role is to oversee and coordinate all the stages up to final copies. She will appoint and liaise with freelance editors to copy-edit and proofread text and will ensure each book keeps on schedule and within budget and is prepared to the quality that the publisher expects for all its books.
Copy-Editing
Copy-editing is when your final manuscript is gone through with a fine-tooth comb and checked for sense, grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors. The text will be made consistent in style and format. Additional materials such as tables, images and end and footnotes will be checked to see that they have all been delivered and are numbered or labelled to match the text and are correctly cued to it. The copy-editor will also mark text that doesn’t make sense or is confusing, suggesting slight rewrites. The amount of time it takes to copy-edit a text depends on the word count, its complexity, how well it is written and if the author has adhered to a publisher’s style or spelling guide.
The copy-editor will add notes on spelling, punctuation or capitalisation that they have imposed on the text as this will be useful at the proofreading stage and will highlight any special characters, including accents or other symbols, that the typesetter should be aware of. The desk editor may ask the copy-editor to work directly with an author to resolve any queries raised at the copy-editing stage or may sort these out herself with the author direct once the copy-edited manuscript has been returned in-house.
Whichever route is followed, once queries are resolved and the track changes all accepted, you should have a clean manuscript with the headings marked up in line with a design specification. I like to highlight headings and other styles clearly in different colours and provide the setter with the corresponding key. It avoids adding in text around headings such as [A HEAD] which might get set in error.
Armed with the ‘clean’ manuscript, the copy-editor will hand it over, usually with a standard form with a checklist that will prompt the editor to make sure they are providing all the essential details about the manuscript and its setting requirements to her production colleague who manages an external typesetter who prepares the page proofs, i.e. runs the manuscript text to the text size and font and pages to the format and design that will be in the final printed book or ebook.
(c) Alysoun Owen
Writers’ & Artists’ Guide to Getting Published
This is an extract from the chapter ‘From final manuscript to published book’ in the Writers’ & Artists’ Guide to Getting Published (Bloomsbury) © Alysoun Owen.
Alysoun has been the Editor of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook and the Children’s Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook for 14 years. She runs a publishing consultancy business and speaks about the publishing process at festivals and writing events.
The Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook 2027, the 120th edition, is out on 16 July. Read some taster articles here, including one on editing: Self-publishing success: working with a freelance editor | Writers & Artists.
Read more from Alysoun on the latest edition of the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook on Writing.ie here.
