Re: Editors: threat or menace?
- From: green_knight@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Catja Pafort)
- Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2007 10:56:44 +0100
Peter D. Tillman quoted:
Michael Kandel, "Being an Editor",
http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Kandel-Candid.html
"Editors are an annoyance, and costly, because they complicate life,
they drag out the process of producing a book, and they cause friction.
Many British publishers have no functioning editors: the manuscript goes
to the publisher in electronic form (a diskette), is forwarded directly
to the typesetter (the printer), and a freelance proofreader checks the
galleys for typos. In no time at all, the physical book is produced,
with a minimum of human intervention."
The irony is that this is written by an editor.
To my mind, 'producing a book with a minimum of human intervention' is
not an asset.
I'd argue that one of the reasons self-published books are, as a group,
worse than published books (other than many people self-publishing
before the product is ready) is that they often contain *only* the
author's input.
A good editor sharpens a book by pointing out inconsistencies; he can
see where a tangents should be cut and which bits lack explanation. By
eliminating the structural edit as well as the copy edit (a good copy
editor will help the words to flow better) the end product will be
unpolished. Diamonds-in-the-rough are nowhere near as satisfactory to
watch than when they are cut, polished, and set to their best advantage.
I've read a number of books that would have profited from editing, and
every time a writer produces the 'uncut, this is how I wanted it to be'
version it tends to be less readable than the edited one.
Catja
--
writing blog @ http://beyond-elechan.livejournal.com
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