Everything you always wanted to know about being an editor, but were afraid to ask

This email exchange with my managing editor pretty much sums it all up:

ME to me: I meant to mention to you that Yada Yada would like to include the extra information (and credit you) that you added as an "FYI" to him in note 83 of chapter 10 of Blah Blah Blah (about the whatchamacallit being used in Ringydingy in the 1970s). Is this OK with you?

Me to ME: That credit belongs to Whats Hisname.

Whats Hisname, an editorial consultant who occasionally eyeballs manuscripts, added one sentence to the book. I made well over a thousand edits, many of them substantive.

I will receive no credit or thanks of any kind from the author (nor will the layout person who transforms the Word docs into a publishable PDF file in InDesign), and certainly no mention in the book's Acknowledgments section. That little perk always goes to the acquisitions editor who brought the manuscript in and then, with virtually no review, turned it over to Editorial. Every time I read that section of a manuscript and see that acknowledgment, I want to scream.

One bad turn deserves another.

When I edit a manuscript, I normally turn off Track Changes when I do HTML-coding and formatting, and clean up the author's junk that is not related to content. I do this as a favor of sorts to make the author's review easier.

Those days are over. The manuscript I'm working on never should have been accepted in its current form, which is filled with more violations of submission guidelines than almost any I've seen.

Track Changes has been on from the moment I started this project and will never be turned off.

I'm going to fill this author's (and any of his kind in the future) world with every single change I make. His right margins will runneth over with the evidence of how much I had to do to bring his work to publication.

Lazy Author Syndrome

I'm working on a manuscript that has 948 endnotes (68 pages long).

There is not a single note that contains the full reference for a work, that is, first and last name of author, complete title of the work, location and name of publisher, date of publication―all of which are included in the bibliography―and page numbers.

So I have to laboriously go back and forth between the notes and bibliography files to copy and paste the missing information.

This is yet another example of a manuscript that the acquisition editor should have returned to the author, for him to complete the notes in order to provide an acceptable piece of work.

When I ran this information past my managing editor, he referred to this author as one who suffers from Lazy Author Syndrome. I told him that we should refer to these authors as Lassies.

The Undeserving

Every time I read a thank-you "to my [Acquisitions] editor" in the Acknowledgments section of a book I'm editing, I want to scream.

The acquisitions editors bring in the work (quantity); we copy editors bring it up to publishing standards (quality).

Publishers should have a policy, written into their contracts with authors, stating that in the layout stage of a manuscript they will insert a standard shout-out for the copy editor and proofreader.

I call them Hackquisition Editors.

The publishing company for which I do freelance book editing has, as do all publishers, acquisition editors. They're responsible for bringing in titles to be published.

The AEs are supposed to reject (or return for additional work) manuscripts that do not meet the company's submission guidelines and requirements.

Based on what I've seen in my year and a half with the company, it's clear that quotas trump quality. I've worked on some manuscripts whose authors could write the book on how not to write a book.

The MTF

Along with the manuscript, the editors receive from the AEs a "Manuscript Transmittal Form" which contains design and production details and, importantly, notes to the editor (e.g., level of effort required, things to look out for, author's history with the company).

The MTF is supposed to be based on a thorough manuscript review by the AE. I have not seen one yet that accurately reflected the work actually required on a manuscript. What I have seen, however, are a few edits in a book's foreword or preface made by the AE to indicate that they've "reviewed" the manuscript.

I just started to edit a book on the Middle East. In the preface, the AE inserted "Engyptian president Anwar El" before "Sadat."

Engypt: Isn't that where the Great Sphincter is?