Editing is an invisible art where the very best work goes undetected. Editors strive to create books that are enlightening, seamless, and pleasurable to read, all while giving credit to the author. This makes it all the more difficult to truly understand the range of roles they inhabit while shepherding a project from concept to publication. In What Editors Do, Peter Ginna gathers essays from twenty-seven leading figures in book publishing about their work. Representing both large houses and small, and encompassing trade, textbook, academic, and children's publishing, the contributors make the case for why editing remains a vital function to writers and readers everywhere. Ironically for an industry built on words, there has been a scarcity of written guidance on how to actually approach the work of editing. This book will serve as a compendium of professional advice and will be a resource both for those entering the profession (or already in it) and for those outside publishing who seek an understanding of it. It sheds light on how editors acquire books, what constitutes a strong author-editor relationship, and the editor's vital role at each stage of the publishing process a role that extends far beyond marking up the author's text. This collection treats editing as both art and craft, and also as a career. It explores how editors balance passion against the economic realities of publishing. What Editors Do shows why, in the face of a rapidly changing publishing landscape, editors are more important than ever.

About the Author
Peter Ginna was most recently publisher and editorial director at Bloomsbury Press; before that he held editorial positions at Oxford University Press, Crown Publishers, St. Martin's Press, and Persea Books. He has taught editing in New York University's publishing program, and comments on editing, books, and publishing at the blog Doctor Syntax and on Twitter at @DoctorSyntax.


Book Information
ISBN 9780226299976
Author Peter Ginna
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 482g
Dimensions(mm) 23mm * 15mm * 2mm