Monday, August 2, 2010

Everything You Wanted to Know About Professional Book Editing

By : Axel Darius

Professional book editing is an excellent profession if you love to read and critique other people's works whether it is a student's essay, an author's new book, or even a business owner's literature. If you would like to do book editing it does requires skills as well as a degree in journalism to land you a position in this field. An editor is able to transform words into perfection no matter what the topic is written in, and they will perfect it. Editors all have degrees and extensive experience when it comes to proof reading and writing and they usually have a track record of successfully published presentations, book and papers.

Book editing can be divided into three categories-

Copy edit - it involves correcting the spelling, typing errors and correcting grammatical errors in the script. It generally entails following rules for terminology and punctuations, but little attention to the meaning of the script written. Copy editor generally works in tandem with the guidelines set by the publishers.

Hard edit - Instead of going page by page, the hard editor reads the entire book first before suggesting any changes. The suggestions may include something akin to adding more explanatory texts in the book, or to combine or eliminate certain section in the book. The hard editor generally charges by the number of hours worked.

A technical edit - is something similar to fact checking. This kind of editing is generally associated with technical books and journals. Before publishing such books, it is important that the facts and the statistics given are verified. It is important for the technical editor to be an expert in his field, though he may not be an expert at grammar.

Apart from checking the script, it is also important to pay heed to few more things before the book heads for getting published. The cover of the book should be properly aligned with the spell check. The same applies to the back cover as well. The spine text should be properly centered. Hardcover book jacket along with the inside flap should also be proof read before getting printed and last but not the least, the book should have proper margin and fonts, headers, footers and proper titles. These all form a part of the book editing process.

It is very important that the book editors have a long-lasting relationship with the authors. Most of the authors are generally known to stick to only one editor throughout their career.

A lot of freelancing book editing jobs are available today. Before one opts for such a job, he or she has to ensure that the person should have a penchant for spotting and correcting spelling and grammar mistakes. Also, he/she should be acquainted with the general layout of the books and is ready to read and reread the manuscripts many times over. Freelance book editors generally work for publishing houses or e- books writers. They should be well acquainted with the technicalities of grammar. They should also have to be voracious readers themselves, because only a well read person can do justice to the job of a book editing. It becomes easier for new entrant in this field to start off with smaller projects and once they have gained enough expertise in the field, they can move on to bigger projects.

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