Category Archives: Working practices

The importance of page turns in picture books

Picture books may have some of the shortest word counts of any books, but that doesn’t make editing them straightforward. Lisa Davis explains what editors and authors need to consider when using the format of the book itself to build the story.

When initially editing a manuscript without illustrations, it’s important to consider what the illustrations can bring to the narrative. Some manuscripts might come with illustration suggestions embedded in the text to help get an idea of what the author envisions. The author may also have broken down the manuscript into page splits, but if the editor or the author is not familiar with the picture book format or editing picture books, it can be easy to overlook the importance of page turns.

Using the picture book format

The standard picture book on the market these days is 32 pages. This includes all front and end matter, which often takes up a minimum of three pages for title page and copyright information. The text itself is usually around 500 words – it’s a lot of story to pack into a small amount of space, and that’s why the format of a picture book matters so much.

Whatever the production stage, but particularly when developmental editing a picture book, an editor needs to think about the book in spreads – the two pages that face each other compose one spread. This is essential when commissioning artwork since the illustrator will need to know if they are illustrating a single page or an entire spread. Picture books can have a mixture of artwork sizes throughout, so they could take up an entire spread, a single page or even just part of a page that features several illustrations. These all aid with the pacing of the story. But, along with the pictures, we can also use the format of the book to help pace and build tension in the story.

With each turn of a page, you can completely change the scene or tone. It’s almost like a lift-the-flap book where you reveal something to the reader. Imagine the story being read aloud to a child and pausing before turning the page to ask, ‘What do you think is going to happen now?’ Or the way a scene may be cut in a film or TV programme where something is shown that contradicts what was just said for humorous effect. Or even panels in a graphic novel where you build up to something big that needs a whole page of its own.

How to use page turns

While most picture books today will use page turns to some extent, certain titles rely on this element for comedy, surprise or dramatic effect. One great example is the classic Rosie’s Walk by Pat Hutchins, which uses the page turns throughout the whole story for comedic effect. While Rosie the hen goes on a walk around the farmyard, a fox follows behind her planning to attack, only for the page to turn and the fox has a mishap that results in Rosie (unknowingly) escaping.

Unless the story fully relies on page turns, as in Rosie’s Walk, it’s more common to use these page turns for scene changes sparingly for greatest effect, usually around the climax of the story. For instance, the book I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen uses a page turn as Bear makes a realisation that yes, he has seen the hat he’s been looking for. The previous page leads to this with a ‘Wait a minute …’ moment, letting the reader know something big is going to happen once they turn the page. And then – page-flip – we zoom in on Bear’s face as his mood changes from sadness to rage, illustration turned from subtle tones to awash with red. The rest of the story hinges on this moment, which is why it’s vital to use every element a book offers (text, artwork and format) to build up to it.

Another popular page-turn technique in picture books is using the very last page of the book (which will be a single page that faces the inside of the cover) to add an illustration vignette to suggest what might happen after the story has ended. For instance, maybe you think a character has learned a lesson, but then the illustration suggests the same situation is about to happen all over again.

A great example of this final-page usage is Nine Lives Newton by Alice McKinley. At the beginning of the book, Newton the dog mistakenly reads an obscured sign and now believes that dogs have nine lives, setting him off to do all the things he had previously avoided doing – with a poor cat following behind trying to warn him (while using up its own nine lives in the process). By the end of the book, Newton learns about his error, and our cat friend thinks all is well again. But on that final page, a vignette shows Newton looking at another obscured sign leading to yet another misunderstanding, suggesting to the reader that the chaos is about to start all over again! It’s a great way to end the story with an unexpected laugh.

Adding page turns to a manuscript

It might be easy to see the strength of a clever page turn when you’re looking at published books, but how do you know where to put the page cuts in a manuscript that you’re working on? This can be done by looking for those moments in the text with a sudden scene change. Think of them as ‘3… 2 … 1 …’ moments, or points where someone reading aloud will add a lot more drama. For instance, consider where you might want page turns with the following sentences:

The little owl stepped up to the edge of the branch, puffed up its chest, stretched out its wings and leapt into the air. What a glorious feeling! it thought, just before it started to fall down … down … down … and then … CRASH! landed right in the middle of a bluebird nest.

Bear in mind that picture book pacing also means considering how many words are on each page. Effective page turns can mean that a page with a big reveal or sudden dramatic moment might have just a few words – or even no words at all. While there are many ways to split up a moment like this, an option could be:

(Spread 1 – left page)

The little owl stepped up to the edge of the branch, puffed up its chest, stretched out its wings and leapt into the air.

[illustration: full page of baby owl preparing to fly]

(Spread 1 – right page)

What a glorious feeling! it thought, just before it started to fall down … down … down … and then …

[illustration: page of vignettes showing owl at various stages: 1) happily flying, 2) realising it’s falling, 3) falling more, 4) properly tumbling down]

(Spread 2 – full spread)

CRASH! landed right in the middle of a bluebird nest.

[illustration: full spread of a dishevelled owl sitting unhappily among some perplexed bluebird chicks]

This is an exaggerated way to write this out in a manuscript and is rarely necessary, but it is sometimes helpful if a self-publishing author needs to commission the illustrations according to the page splits (because it will influence what the illustrator is commissioned to draw and how many illustrations are required). When working with authors who plan to submit the book to agents or publishers, then it’s better not to be as prescriptive with page numbers or illustrations, and to simply leave line breaks within the text to give an indication of pacing.

So if you’re getting into picture book editing, remember that there’s more to it than just the text and illustrations – there’s also the whole format of the book that you can play around with. That’s what makes editing picture books both challenging and exceptionally fun!

About Lisa Davis

Lisa Davis (she/her) is a children’s book editor and publishing consultant who specialises in making children’s books more inclusive. She has worked at major publishers in the UK including Simon & Schuster and Hachette, and in departments including editorial, rights and production. Before going freelance in 2018, she was the book purchasing manager for BookTrust, the UK’s largest children’s reading charity, which gives over 3.5 million books a year directly to children.

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.
Find out more about:

Photo credits: child reading by Marta Wave on Pexels; Rosie’s Walk and Nine Lives Newton, Simon and Schuster.

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

How editors can help self-publishing children’s book authors

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It’s easier than ever for first-time authors to self-publish children’s books but the process can still be confusing. Annie Deakins demystifies her role as an editor, explains how she can support authors in other ways and offers some tips to both prospective writers and editors.

The email begins, ‘Hello, I found your website and see that you proofread children’s books. I have written my first children’s book. Can you help me to publish? I need the grammar, etc, to be perfect. How much do you charge?’

I need more information.

Using my education background

I proofread children’s books using my knowledge from 30 years of teaching in the primary classroom. I know what makes a good children’s story, whether it’s a picture book, chapter book or another format.

When I taught children to read, I showed them how to understand and value stories with words chosen for effect. When I taught writing, I guided them to improve their writing using modelling – dissecting how the stories were written.

Supporting indie authors

When I retrained as a freelance proofreader and started my business, I had no idea about the area of self-publishing. But the process has grown in a way that makes getting their books out to readers attainable for new independent (indie) authors. And my knowledge has grown with them.

As it can be easier to self-publish than to go down the traditional route, it seemed logical to offer my services to indies. Half of the weekly enquiries I receive through my website are from new children’s book authors asking for help.

So, back to that email. What is my response?

The author hasn’t indicated the genre or word count, or attached their manuscript, so I request the current file of their book and ask some questions. I can’t provide a quote unless I’ve seen the material.
The author replies with their book file. As they have asked for a proofread, I’d hoped to see the finalised, illustrated manuscript as a PDF. However, when I open the file, it is a Word document with no illustrations.
When I read the manuscript, I am excited by the writing. I feel I would be a good fit for the author, so I explain my packages.

By this point I realise that this author, like many new indies, doesn’t understand the process involved in publishing. They have asked for proofreading but they realise they need more than that. They need an editor; they need advice. As a first step, I refer them to the resources on the website of the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), where there are written guides and author forums. I am a Partner Member of ALLi, offering an editorial service.

Finding the right package

I offer three packages:

My basic proofread is checking for typos and errors of grammar and consistency. In traditional publishing, this would take place at the end of the publishing process when the manuscript has been copyedited, illustrated and typeset.
My proof-edit is a proofread plus tweaking the text with edits or suggestions for improvement. I guide the author on the use of appropriate language for the age of the child. For example, is the book aimed at 4–7-year-olds, 8–11-year-olds or another age group? Is the topic suitable? Is the vocabulary appropriate?
My advanced package includes the tasks outlined in point 2 but I add my consultancy service. I give indies advice on how to get their manuscript ready for self-publication. It includes a proof-edit in Microsoft Word, and a second proofread of the final proof of the book as a PDF just before it is published. By this time, a book designer has formatted and designed it to fit in the illustrations. It has a separate book-cover file which includes the front, back and spine.

To help this latest author to find the right package for their needs, I offer to do a sample proof-edit to show how their manuscript can be improved. I take different parts of their manuscript and demonstrate: a) a proofread and b) a proof-edit. As always, the author sees the value I add with my edits and chooses my consultancy rate. Then I invoice them for the deposit (usually 50%) so that their slot can be booked in my schedule.

Helping to find an illustrator

As the picture-book story lacks illustrations, I ask the author if they have an illustrator in mind. They say they want the story checked first to make sure it is ‘okay’ and ask if I can recommend an illustrator.

It’s a good idea for an author to have researched the kind of illustrator they want to use by, for example, looking at book covers of children’s books in the same genre and/or looking at the portfolios of illustrators to find one who uses the style they prefer. I recommend they look in the Directory of Partner Members in ALLi to find an illustrator.

Building the book

I’ve often been asked if I put the book together by combining the illustrations with the story. No, I don’t offer design, layout or typesetting as a service, yet. The skills of a book designer are in demand with the increase in self-publishing.

Book production involves a variety of specialists. We all respect each other as trusted colleagues. On LinkedIn, I’ve found several skilled typesetters who work with indie authors who I recommend to my clients. I also direct them to the ALLi Directory of Partner Members.

Offering sympathetic support

I am usually the only editing professional who sees the manuscript. When I am asked a question about self-publishing to which I don’t know the answer, it’s not a problem. I say I’ll find out. Answers can be found in the CIEP guide How to Work with Self-Publishers, or in the CIEP forums, or … on the ALLi website. Can you see a pattern emerging?

Considering the author’s marketing strategy

Lastly, when I return the proof-edited manuscript to the indie author, I ask if they have thought how they are going to advertise and market their children’s book. The answer, as always, is no; they are so pleased they have got this far. This is the end, isn’t it? Can I help?

I explain that if an indie author sells their children’s book on their website and social media channels, they will reach more readers, parents, teachers and other authors. As with any marketing strategy, it is best to start with the product at the end and work backwards.

Resources for editors

Could you offer an editing consultancy to indie authors?

Reflect on your skills, and recognise that you have knowledge that is in demand, and that you can offer trust and value. You are a safe pair of hands for a client who does not know the self-publishing area. Your skills are an asset that prospective clients are willing to pay for.

Here are some resources you may find useful:

The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) is a global membership association for self-publishing authors. Its mission is ethics and excellence in self-publishing, and it offers advice and advocacy for self-publishing authors within the literary, publishing and creative industries around the world. ALLi Partner Members get an affiliate link in their logo that can be put on an email signature, website, etc.
The ‘Pen to Published’ podcast is presented by independent publisher Alexa Whitten and CIEP member Alexa Tewkesbury. They give advice about writing and publishing children’s books, for want-to-be authors, those who are self-publishing, and anyone who just likes to write.
An education resource is the ELT Publishing Professionals Directory, which brings together publishers and freelancers in the English-language-teaching and educational publishing sectors.

About Annie Deakins

Annie Deakins started her freelance proofreading and tutoring business in 2017 after teaching in Essex (via Paisley) for 30 years. She trained with the CIEP and is an Intermediate Member. She proofreads non-fiction for publishers and indies. Her specialisms are education, ELT, children’s books and religion. She is a Partner Member of ALLi and a member of the ELT Publishing Professionals Directory. Find her on LinkedIn.

About the CIEP

Find out more about:

Photo credits: header image by Pierre Bamin, girl reading by Jonathan Borba, both on Pexels.

Posted by Eleanor Smith, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Proofreading children’s books

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Children’s books are simpler than adult’s books so they’re easier to proofread, right? Well, no – in some cases, as Margaret Milton explains, they’re much more complicated because there is so much to consider.

When family, friends, parents on the school run or indeed other CIEP members ask me what I’ve been working on this week and I say that I’ve been doing crosswords, or counting stickers in an activity book, or reading a picture book, they often look at me with confusion and sometimes a little bit of envy. When I started out in publishing, I didn’t really have an idea of the type of editing I wanted to do. I had initially trained as a primary teacher so, in the end, it made sense that I wound up editing children’s non-fiction and educational texts. From the outside, it may seem like a bit of a skive; however, there’s a lot more to it than one might think.

Words, words, words (or not!)

With children’s books (fiction and non-fiction), there are often few words, but this is usually the very thing that can trip an editor up. You need to read, read and read again. I personally also like to strip the text out of the file sent by the publisher (usually a PDF) and put it into a Word file, then run a spelling and grammar check. This gives me an extra assurance other than my own proofreading.

Also, in lots of these types of books, there are words set in a decorative font. These should be triple-checked as this is often where spelling mistakes are made. This is especially true if the words have been illustrated rather than typed because they can be misspelled, or the original word from the manuscript can be left in as well as the illustrated word inserted.

It can be assumed (unless the brief informs you otherwise) that the copyeditor has assessed the text to ensure that the level of language is suitable for the target age range and also checked the factual information. However, if something does strike you as overly complicated/too simplistic/factually incorrect, then mark it up. Better to be over-cautious than not.

A picture paints a thousand words

If you have been tasked with proofreading illustrated books, there are certain things that you will be expected to check. One of the main ones will be reviewing the illustrations alongside the text.

By proofreading stage, the illustrations will have mostly been signed off by the designer and the in-house editor. However, the proofreader will be expected to mark up discrepancies, for example if the text reads that the girl held a silver cup in her hand, but the illustrator has coloured it gold. In cases like this, it will be up to the in-house team to decide whether to change the text or have the illustration re-coloured.

The proofreader will also be expected to review the readability of the text against the illustrations. It’s often too late for a font style to be changed, but should you feel that words will be difficult to read (for example on a dark sky background), then you can mark this for the designer. You should also mark up where words overlap illustrations or if there is an obvious gap, as text may have fallen out of a text box in the InDesign file or disappeared during conversion to PDF.

In slightly more complicated non-fiction and educational books, the proofreader will need to review photographs alongside the text, asking questions such as ‘Does the image suitably relate to the text?’, ‘Does it convey what the text is explaining?’ and (an especially important one for educational books) ‘Is there a suitably diverse range of genders, ethnicities, abilities and so on?’

Flapping about

Paper-engineered books (books with flaps, pull-out sections etc) are often tricky, as the flap or pull-out is presented to you on a separate page from the page it will be stuck to. Therefore, you will need to marry the two up and ensure that what’s on the front of the flap aligns with what will be under it. As it is two-dimensional, it is sometimes difficult to picture what goes where, especially in large, non-fiction titles with multiple pull-out and lift-up sections. Publishers will not expect you to print out the pages but on the odd occasion it might be helpful to do this if you are finding it difficult to visualise. A second screen can also be helpful in matching up the various engineered elements to their final locations.

Fancy doing some origami?

Activity books may seem, in principle, like a great fun editing job – and a lot of the time they are. However, there is a huge number of elements that need to be checked to ensure that the activities work and children (and adults) won’t get frustrated. (We’ve all been there, where there’s a piece missing or there’s no actual way out of a maze!)

The proofreader must do all the activities to ensure they work. Ask questions such as:

‘Do all the answers to the crossword fit the boxes?’
‘Are all the words present in the wordsearch (and have any naughty words crept in by mistake when it was generated)?’
‘Are there spots to place the stickers and are the stickers all on the corresponding sticker sheet?’
‘Are there definitely six differences between the two images in spot the difference?’
‘Do the origami instructions work?’

… and so on.

Think about time management

A children’s picture book or lift-the-flap book may only have 10–50 words so it would only take about 10 minutes to read. However, the amount of time needed to check the varying elements should be taken into consideration. An activity book might only have a few hundred words, but once the proofreader has checked that every activity works and everything is in place then this will increase the proofreading time estimate.

For the most part, publishers will set their own rate for proofreading work but if you are quoting for a job yourself then don’t work simply from the word count!

Time management is also important regarding how you spread your work out across a week. For example, you may wish to read a picture book two or three times, but over a few days in order to have a slightly fresher eye each time.

Finally, don’t forget the basics!

Checking that activities work and the paper-engineered sections are correct is important, but obviously shouldn’t be to the detriment of checking the basics. Things that so commonly cause problems such as headers, footers, page numbers, copyright information, author and illustrator names, and the title should all be factored into the proofreading time and given as much importance as the ‘fancy stuff’!

About Margaret Milton

Margaret Milton is a proofreader and project manager specialising in educational and children’s non-fiction books. She is a Professional Member of the CIEP and has worked in publishing in-house and freelance for over 15 years.

About the CIEP

Photo credits: header image by Karolina Grabowski, children reading by Mikhail Nilov, both on Pexels.

Posted by Belinda Hodder, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Providing editorial services to non-profits and businesses

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In this post, Hazel Bird looks at some of the ways in which proofreading and editing for businesses and non-profits differs from working with ‘traditional’ publishers and independent authors.

Ultimately, providing editorial services to a non-profit or business works the same way as providing editorial services to a publisher or independent author: you talk to them about what they want, check that matches what you can deliver and then carry out the work to the brief. But, in reality, working with non-profits and businesses can feel quite different from working with publishers and authors, in terms of both how you do the work and how you interact with your contact.

These tips are based on my experience working primarily with UK and European non-profits operating around the world.

Getting and scheduling the work

The stereotype is that businesses and non-profits will make you jump through endless hoops before they’ll give you any work and then will want their project done yesterday. In my experience, they have a range of onboarding and scheduling practices, just like publishers (who themselves are not immune from ‘hoopery’ and asking for demanding schedules).

But it is certainly true that the larger businesses and non-profits are more likely to require you to go through a procurement or tendering process, where you might submit a bid for a contract and perhaps have an interview. It’s important to find out how your target clients contract work so you can make yourself visible to them – otherwise, if you wait to be contacted by your dream client, you may be waiting a while!

Another key difference is that businesses and non-profits are less likely than publishers and authors to even know that they might benefit from editorial services. As such, some will approach you directly (for example, through the CIEP Directory if you have an entry) but in other cases there is scope for using your contacts and marketing (for example, via social media) to reach clients who might not otherwise come to you naturally.

Understanding your role

I wrote a bit about this topic in an earlier post on moving into a new editorial field. In summary: while businesses and non-profits may have clear ideas of what they want to achieve via editorial work, they may have less of an idea how to achieve this. You may therefore find that your role involves a degree of educational work.

But, at the same time, it’s important not to make assumptions. Some smaller communications teams may be working with an editor for the first time, whereas some global organisations have editorial policies and processes to equal those of any publisher (and vice versa). Ask questions to understand how you will fit in.

Part of asking questions, too, means understanding the nature of the changes you are expected to make. As any editor who has worked outside the traditional publishing workflow knows, ‘proofreading’ for a business or non-profit may be more like traditional copyediting (or even developmental editing!). Conversely, though, when a business or non-profit commissions you to ‘proofread’ their text, they may have an especially restrictive definition of the work – for example, to avoid the document having to go back to a sponsoring body or key stakeholders for a further round of approval.

It’s therefore vital to ask questions to ensure you are comfortable with the level of work required and to avoid doing undesired work.

Matters of style

Businesses and non-profits are increasingly likely to have an in-house style guide of some nature. You might also encounter:

glossaries, which tell you exactly how certain words are allowed to be used
lists of proscribed words or phrases, hopefully with suggested replacements
‘tone tools’, which go into detail about the tone of voice and mode of address that the organisation uses in its communications.

We editors often talk about picking up an author’s tone of voice, but with businesses and non-profits this is more likely to be about picking up the brand’s voice (remember that a brand is not just a commercial thing – most non-profits will consider themselves to have a brand too). Whereas publishers will often be happy for authors to write however they like as long as they stay within the bounds of respectful discourse, businesses and non-profits are more likely to have quite stringent ideas about how their text should ‘feel’.

The good news, though, is that once you’ve absorbed this ‘feel’, it’s a relatively straightforward matter of applying it across all the work you do for the organisation (as opposed to picking up a new voice for each publisher’s author you work with).

Communications and queries

Some businesses and non-profits will follow the traditional three-step pattern where you send them the edited document with queries, the ‘author’ (or a nominated member of the communications team) answers the queries and sends the document back to you, and then you absorb the replies and return a squeaky-clean version ready to be sent to the client’s design team. But, in my experience, it is more likely that businesses and non-profits will request a single-stage service where they simply receive the edited document with your queries and then action them as they see fit, without your input.

If this will be the case, it’s helpful to make your queries extra clear and always offer solutions, to make the client’s tidy-up work as easy as possible. Remember, they may have very little editorial experience and so be unaware of options or approaches you find obvious.

Be prepared, too, for the possibility that your ‘proofread’ may actually be followed by huge revisions – for example, if a non-profit’s policy paper is on a tight schedule and the client decides to get proofreading done while they await revisions from a key stakeholder. If you’re aware in advance of what the revisions might be, you can take account of them in your editing and provide suggestions along the lines of ‘if X changes in Y manner, you might also want to consider changing Z’. But often this is just a case of accepting that your meticulous proofread might not be the end of the road for the document and leaving the door open for the client to request further support later on if they need it.

Completing the work

Some businesses and non-profits have very specific invoicing requirements – for example, to comply with a funder’s auditing schedule – so try to learn any restrictions on timing or formatting requirements (such as level of detail required in the breakdown of tasks) in advance. Some will require you to register on a payment portal or similar. As with working for publishers, it’s a good idea to get hold of the name of a person in the finance department so you can chase overdue invoices directly, if needed.

When it comes to post-project assessment of your work, in my experience this is an area that differs hugely from working with publishers. In a publisher–editor relationship, it’s usually the publisher that is considered the expert (rightly or wrongly!). In contrast, in relationships between editors and businesses or non-profits, it’s more likely that the client will consider you the expert and simply go with whatever you have suggested (unless it is obviously wrong or contrary to the brief). This puts more of a weight of responsibility on your shoulders, so it’s important to feel you have the confidence to make decisions without an editorially trained project manager waiting in the wings to check your work. But if you do have the confidence and appropriate experience, it can be an immensely satisfying way of collaborating with clients.

Embrace the variety!

Given editors’ traditional place within the orbit of publishers, it can be tempting to see businesses and non-profits simply as ‘not publishers’ and lump them together accordingly. However, in reality they can be as diverse in the ways they handle their editorial needs as they are in their focuses and operations. The old adage ‘it depends’ plays out in work with businesses and non-profits, just as it does in all editorial work. As always, the key is to ask questions and check we understand our role.

About Hazel Bird

Hazel offers editorial services that empower non-profits, charities, businesses and authors to confidently share their expertise and impact. An editor since 2009, she aims to see the big picture while pinpointing every detail. She has been described as ‘superhuman’ and a ‘secret weapon’, but until Tony Stark comes calling she’s dedicating her superpowers to text-based endeavours.

About the CIEP

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Photo credits: header image by Sean Pollock, diary by JESHOOTS.COM, man with laptop by Headway, all on Unsplash.

Posted by Belinda Hodder, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

A week in the life of a children’s fiction editor and proofreader

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Becky Grace is a freelance children’s fiction editor and proofreader. In this post she describes her unconventional route into the industry and how an average week unfolds.

An unconventional background?

For 15 years I taught politics and sociology in a secondary school in Kent, until I decided it was time for a complete change of career. Considering my teaching specialisms it might have made sense to focus solely on editing and proofreading educational textbooks, but my time in schools – and my additional role as a literacy coordinator – had sparked a passion for children’s literature. With no formal background in publishing and editorial work, I set about retraining with the courses available through the CIEP and fiction-specific courses provided by other editors (Louise Harnby and Sophie Playle have some amazing courses in this area). At the same time I embarked on a masters in publishing.

Changing career and retraining in your forties is quite a daunting prospect but thankfully I wasn’t doing it alone. Quite coincidentally, my sister was going through her own career change and we found we were heading in the same direction. We set up a freelance editorial business with a focus on children’s fiction, and Inky Frog Editorial was born. Our specialisms complement each other perfectly: Jess works with picture books, early reader chapter books and middle grade novels; I focus on middle grade and young adult novels. It is a partnership that works well for us.

As someone completely new to the publishing industry, I honestly found the best thing to do was to throw myself into the CIEP and learn everything I could. I volunteered to coordinate my local CIEP group and have now joined the CIEP’s Learning and Professional Development Committee. From reading fact sheets and guides, to taking the courses and attending the conference (albeit virtually), I have immersed myself in the world of editing and proofreading.

Over the last few years of running the business, I’ve realised that there’s really no such thing as a ‘typical’ week, which is perhaps what I love most about my job. I’ve also discovered that I’m not as unconventional as I thought. Many of the editors and proofreaders I have spoken to have transitioned into this profession from a range of different careers. That’s the beauty of the colleagues I have worked with: everyone brings different experiences, specialisms and strengths to the work they do.

What’s different about proofreading and editing children’s fiction?

Unless you have children or grandchildren of a certain age, it might have been years since you last read a children’s book. Friends will often talk to me about the books they are reading with their child and these books normally fall into one of two categories:

Books the parent read as a child (Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton)
David Walliams

There are obviously exceptions to this rule – and for that we are grateful – but the average adult’s knowledge of today’s literature for children is rather limited. Children’s books today are so vast, diverse and exciting; we are living in a new ‘golden age’ of children’s literature. There is obviously a great deal to be learned from reading the ‘classics’ of our youth (Frances Hodgson Burnett, Philippa Pearce, Alan Garner, LM Montgomery, to name just a few) but the market for children’s books is so very different today, as are the children themselves. Knowing today’s children and the books that they read is vital for any writer of children’s fiction. The first and most important advice we give to anyone we work with is this: read.

At Inky Frog Editorial, Jess and I work with writers who are polishing their manuscript before sending it to agents (or reworking it if the first round of querying wasn’t successful), as well as writers who want to self-publish. Just as with adult fiction, when editing a children’s book we will look at theme, genre, plot, structure, pace, characterisation, dialogue, point of view and more. However, with children’s books, there are additional factors that writers need to be aware of. Does the writer understand the huge difference between books for toddlers, books for early readers, books for tweens, books for teens and books for young adults? This difference shows itself not just in age-appropriate language, but also in age-appropriate content. Do writers understand the mixed market for children’s books? Who are they targeting: the children, their parents, their teachers, school librarians? Is the writer aware of how children’s books have changed since they were a child?

A ‘typical’ week

The week starts with an email from a CIEP colleague who has found my name in the IM Available list (a brilliant resource). She has been contacted by a potential client who is looking for someone to provide a light-touch edit and proofread of their picture book, but the editor’s own calendar is fully booked. Now, picture books are most definitely out of my comfort zone. It would be incorrect to think that editing or proofreading a picture book is easy. Absolutely not. With a children’s picture book – especially one that is being self-published – there is a duty on the part of the author and editor to create a book that is age appropriate in terms of content, tone and language; there should be an understanding of the composition of the page, looking at the relationship and interaction between words and pictures and the use of space on the page. And don’t even get me started on picture books that rhyme! (Or are meant to rhyme.) But perhaps the hardest thing to master with a picture book is telling a full, rounded, engaging story in under a thousand words. With her masters in children’s publishing, Jess is perfect for a job like this. I make the introductions and hand the project over.

I then turn to a scheduling discussion with one of my regular clients, an author of fantasy adventure middle grade novels. The second book in the current series is due to be ready for a proofread in the next couple of weeks and I need to check that we are still on course for the dates I have put aside. If my workflow needs to be amended it will be helpful to know this in advance. This client is self-publishing rather than pursuing the traditional publishing route, and we have consulted with her previously on matters beyond editing and proofreading, such as writing a series, cover design, marketing and promotion, and more.

My next meeting of the week is an interesting one. A word-of-mouth recommendation from an existing client, this is a new writer who is part-way through a crime procedural novel. Crime procedural? I hear you ask. That’s not for children! Correct. This client is indeed writing for adults (although children definitely love a good murder mystery) and while we market Inky Frog Editorial specifically at writers of children’s fiction, I also work on adult fiction. The client isn’t hiring me for a full edit or proofread, she is instead looking for some advice and guidance on her story ideas. Her goal is to enter her work-in-progress to a crime fiction competition. We talk about plot, structure, pace, action, suspense, characterisation and how to write a synopsis. She has some fantastic ideas and I can see the beginnings of a great story.

Although not specifically in the realms of editing and proofreading, we also offer a book coaching service. One of my longest-standing clients is currently writing a historical dual narrative and our coaching session is the last appointment of the week.

The ‘extra’ jobs

My working week generally involves far more than working directly with clients. I deal with the usual admin jobs of quoting and invoicing, accounts, emails and blog writing. I am sourcing guest bloggers for my website, one of whom has written an outstanding piece on the subject of branding and design for authors. I am also launching a literary festival in my town with a team of book enthusiasts, and I spend much of my time in conversation with authors, publicists, sponsors and venue owners, taking on more of a project and event management role.

I am also a firm believer in continually improving my skills and staying up to date with developments in the world of children’s fiction. To this end I recently attended a writing workshop with award-winning children’s author Lucy Strange. While this course is targeted at beginning writers (of course I want to write a children’s book!) it is also invaluable CPD for a children’s book editor.

I regularly take on work outside the realms of fiction. With my background in education, I am happy to take on proofreading and copyediting work in the education sector, both on websites and in course materials. It’s important to know your limitations and when it is best to pass on work to a colleague, but it’s also important to have confidence in your past experience, your range of abilities and to recognise all of your strengths.

About Becky Grace

Becky Grace is a children’s fiction editor and proofreader, working on all genres and specialising in middle grade and YA fiction. Prior to training as an editor and proofreader, Becky was a teacher for 15 years, a career that ignited her passion for children’s fiction.

About the CIEP

Photo credits: header image by Picsea, girl reading by Johnny McClung, girl choosing a book by Suad Kamardeen, all on Unsplash.

Posted by Belinda Hodder, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Working together

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One of the CIEP’s greatest strengths is its collegiality and mutual support. This extends to our members helping each other to find and succeed in work. Here are six ways we do this.

Advising and encouraging
Sharing information
Supporting each other’s work
Sharing opportunities
Employing each other
Working collectively

1. Advising and encouraging

The CIEP’s online member forums include a Newbie forum, where less experienced members can introduce themselves and ask questions about any aspect of being an editorial professional. These first questions often concern the best way to go about finding work. More experienced members respond with advice, encouragement and tips. These responses tend to reflect the same key themes:

Get trained, so you have the knowledge and confidence to offer your services.
Join a CIEP local group – in-person or online.
Check out CIEP resources, including our fact sheets and guides. These are free to members.
Think about how you will market yourself, including identifying the area of editing you will concentrate on. This might reflect your existing expertise (a field you’ve worked in, perhaps) or even your personal interests (for example a hobby like gardening or cookery).
Don’t limit yourself, either. If you have trained in proofreading, consider adding copyediting to your training plan. This is because sometimes a client will ask you to ‘proofread’ a document which also needs elements of copyediting to get it ready for publication.
Tell everyone you know that you are setting yourself up as an editorial professional. This may get you your first clients.
Use the ‘search’ function to find similar threads in our forums – there is already lots of advice there. There’s also a pinned post near the top of the Newbie forum, ‘Newbie FAQs and Collated Wisdom from CIEP Members’, that includes invaluable tips and suggests some great resources for when you’re starting out as an editor or proofreader.

2. Sharing information

Within the CIEP member forums, information is shared about all sorts of editing- and proofreading-related subjects, from tax rules and software glitches to the use of commas. But CIEP members who aren’t registered for our forums can also benefit from the wisdom and experience of other members. Most of our fact sheets and all of our guides are written by CIEP members. The information in these resources aims to equip our members for work, from setting up a freelance business and getting your first clients to editing in specialist areas like scientific articles, cookery books and legal publishing.

Many of the topics covered in our bank of resources are explored at a deeper level in our range of training courses which, again, are designed and delivered by CIEP members.

And there’s more information in our vast collection of blogs which are overwhelmingly written by CIEP members. Our blogs cover almost every editing-related subject, many of which are related to gaining work. Use the ‘search’ function to see what you can find. The Flying Solo series, written by Sue Littleford, author of the Going Solo guide, is particularly useful if you’re just starting out.

3. Supporting each other’s work

Suzanne Arnold and Nadine Catto met through the CIEP London group during lockdown and realised that they lived round the corner from each other. Nadine says: ‘We started meeting up with a few other editors and have all become great friends. As Suzanne and I live very near, we often go for walks together. We have collaborated on a few work projects as well.’ Friendship and work combine, as Suzanne describes: ‘It is a regular (and very valuable) sounding-board thing and sometimes even a bit of informal accountability. But it’s not structured or planned – it’s two friends bouncing ideas around and sharing links to online resources etc and the “agenda” is very driven by what’s going on in our lives on any particular day.’ The connections created by their local group help them both. Suzanne says: ‘There’s a lot of informal help behind the scenes – on a more mundane level, too, such as messaging saying “does this sentence look right to you?” And that often involves the wider group of CIEP friends who live locally.’ Sometimes this informal help extends to pet-sitting: Suzanne feeds Nadine’s cat when she’s on holiday.

In contrast to this more informal growth of connections within a larger formal group, some CIEP members decide to set up their own small accountability groups. In a CIEP blog, ‘Accountability groups: What? Where? Why?’, Eleanor Abraham says: ‘It’s good to have other perspectives, but sometimes you don’t want 150 slightly different opinions, but rather the chance to talk things through with people you trust and respect.’ Eleanor’s group has an hour-long meeting each month, which suits the busy lives of its members; Erin Brenner’s accountability group has a monthly goals check-in and in-person and online retreats. Erin writes: ‘We’ll refer each other for work and collaborate on projects. Some of us have even partnered for new business ventures, and we regularly discuss opportunities to do so.’

4. Sharing opportunities

From recommending other people for work to advertising jobs they can’t themselves take, CIEP members often share work opportunities with each other. This happens on our member forums: on the Marketplace forum and local group forums in particular.

As Erin’s accountability group does, many members also recommend colleagues who possess the skills a client will need. Most people who have been editing or proofreading for a while have had the experience of being asked to suggest someone else if they’re too busy to take a job. Directories can help here. The CIEP has a directory of Professional and Advanced Professional Members, but some of our local groups also have their own directories of CIEP members which list their experience and specialisms. It also helps to pre-empt clients’ requests for recommendations to develop our own list of editors we would happily recommend if we can’t do a job.

5. Employing each other

A step beyond recommending our colleagues is employing them to do something for us. In ‘Reflections on the self-publishing process’, Kia Thomas describes commissioning two other CIEP members to help her publish her own novel, and they in turn report on the experience. The project went so well that Kia is planning to use the same team for her second novel.

Kia went about finding Judith Leask, her editor, ‘not just a good editor, but the right one for me’, by ‘asking CIEP members who were looking for more experience in fiction to put themselves forward for the job’. It can be a great approach to work with other editors who are at this stage of their career – for you as a ‘client’ and for the person you’ve asked to do the job. Judith says: ‘Being chosen by Kia to edit her novel was very exciting, because I knew I’d learn a huge amount from her, and that turned out to be true.’

The CIEP has a system for encouraging its members to work with other members who are keen to gain more experience: IM Available. This is a list, refreshed every fortnight, that includes any Intermediate CIEP members who are available for work, with details of their training, skills and experience, so that other CIEP members can employ them – to edit or proofread their own writing or to help with a surplus of client work.

6. Working collectively

Another way to deal with work that is too much for one editor or proofreader is to work in a partnership or a larger collective.

One such collective is Editing Globally, which, through six editorial professionals, spans the globe’s time zones but also the full range of tasks related to getting a publication produced: manuscript evaluations, project management, translation, developmental editing, line editing, fact-checking, copyediting and proofreading, formatting and design. This 24/7, end-to-end service can make it easier for a client to hit a tight deadline. Janet MacMillan, one of the editors in Editing Globally, is a fan of team working:

Editorial teams come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, from a team like Global Editing to informal, ad hoc, two-person teams who work together to complete a job over a timescale that would be impossible for one person. I value being able to work with trusted colleagues, whose expertise and knowledge I learn from, and I believe that learning makes me the editor that I am. No matter the size or shape of the team, being able to work with others expands an editor’s knowledge and skills.

Make the most of the editorial community

Freelance editing and proofreading can be lonely work. It pays off – sometimes literally – to reach out to your professional community. If you want some more ideas about how to do this, download our fact sheet ‘Making the most of the editorial community’, which is free for CIEP members.

About the CIEP

Photo credits: hands together by Hannah Busing on Unsplash; two women working together by CoWomen on Pexels.

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Overcoming perfectionism

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In this post, Harriet Power discusses some ways of thinking that editors and proofreaders can use to disentangle themselves from the pursuit of perfectionism.

Many of us editors and proofreaders are perfectionists. I’m one of them. But while I think we should care about our work and that high-quality work is important, the trouble comes when this shifts into beating ourselves up over our mistakes, or spending extra unpaid hours on a job to get it just right, or feeding the sense of inadequacy that comes from imposter syndrome.

Here are some of the ideas and ways of thinking that have helped me to relax a bit and become less beholden to perfectionism.

Humans make mistakes

We all make mistakes: it’s just a human trait, and that’s OK. In fact, it’s an important part of how we learn: by making mistakes through trial and error, we learn how to do better next time. (One of the worst mistakes I ever made in-house was to send a book to press without the author’s name on the front cover. WHOOPS. Thankfully the author accepted my heartfelt apology, and it wasn’t too big a deal for the publisher because it was a school textbook where the author’s cachet was minimal, but you can be sure I learned my lesson from that.)

Linked to the idea that we all make mistakes is the fact that as (human) proofreaders and editors, we can’t catch everything. Some things will inevitably slip through the net.

This is something that the publishing system acknowledges. It’s why there are so many eyes on a book: the copyeditor isn’t expected to catch everything, and neither is the first proofreader, and so on. If a human could do a ‘perfect’ proofread, and a typesetter could do a ‘perfect’ markup, then we wouldn’t need three or four or even five proofreading rounds.

I’ve worked on school textbooks in-house where there were so many pairs of eyes on them: a development editor, a copyeditor, reviewers, the authors, in-house colleagues, proofreaders, and there’d still be reprint corrections. At first this was dispiriting, but the fact it kept happening helped me to realise that mistakes are just inevitable and perfection is impossible.

Publishers aren’t paying for perfection

Publishers usually have to compromise on quality in some way and they do this consciously. They choose not to pay for a separate development editor and copyeditor, they squash the schedule, they cut budgets: they choose to make a book that is OK, or even good, but rarely perfect.

Often there’s just not the budget to pay for the extra work that would elevate the book to the next level, and I think publishers realise that for the majority of books, those extra hours aren’t worth the investment anyway. Because readers (generally) don’t demand or expect perfection, so it’s not worth the time, effort and money that it requires.

So if the publisher isn’t shooting for perfection, then you shouldn’t feel you have to either.

This wonderful article by Jeff Reimer puts it much better than I can, and is well worth a read.

A project is simply a project, neither a sacred trust to better the world nor a consecrated burden the publisher has placed on their shoulders to ensure the book is a masterpiece. A job is a job is a job.

Readers are more forgiving (or less observant) than you think

Most readers are going to forgive or not even notice a few slips here and there, like the odd typo or clunky sentence or stilted line of dialogue.

I’m not saying that these things don’t matter at all – they do, and lots of them can accumulate to break a reader’s immersion in the novel, or make the how-to guide harder to read and understand. But a few slips here and there really aren’t the end of the world. Readers generally care more about the bigger picture, like whether the story’s any good or whether the text gives them the information they need.

This is something I’ve noticed when reading non-fiction books. Some of them have what I’d call significant flaws – issues that I’d try to fix as a development editor – like unnecessary waffle and repetition, unclear examples, etc. But these books still do hugely well and get 4+-star ratings on Amazon.

Maybe a good analogy here is a musical performance. A hard but important lesson to learn as a musician is that individual mistakes genuinely don’t matter (and half the time the audience doesn’t notice them anyway) – what matters is the overall performance. I’ve done performances where I’ve completely fallen off the tune, played bum notes, forgotten the chords and more, and people still come up afterwards and say ‘that was amazing!’ I think the same is true of reading a book: it’s the overall experience that matters. So don’t sweat too much over the small stuff.

Authors are allowed to write the books they want

This is something it took me a while to accept once I started working with indie authors, because previously I’d just been working in educational publishing, and educational publishers will usually intervene and rework a textbook if the author’s done a bad job (or has simply failed to write to the brief). But I think educational publishing is something of an outlier here and often it’s important to remember that it’s the author’s book.

When I first started doing development edits for indie authors, I think I had a tendency to go overboard: to try to make the book ‘perfect’ and in doing so bombard the author with tons of comments and things to fix. But I suspect this just overwhelmed them and I was asking for too much from them. So now I try to remember to rein my suggestions in. Because I can still help an author to make a book better, even if it’s not going to be perfect, and that’s OK.

The book is not (just) your responsibility

It’s the publisher’s responsibility, and the author’s, and the proofreader’s, and the typesetter’s, and so on. You don’t have to carry the weight of ‘perfecting’ the book on your shoulders alone.

Editing is subjective

If you give a manuscript to five different editors, you’ll come back with five different edits. This truism is something a lot of us freelancers hear without being able to witness it first-hand, but it’s something I’ve actually seen while working in the CIEP information team. If three of us in the team review a proof, we’ll all comment on different things. I don’t think that makes us better or worse editors than each other – it’s just that editing is subjective and we all notice different things.

The corollary to this is that we can’t all notice everything.

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses

This is another way of looking at the idea that we can’t all pick up on everything. Every editor and proofreader will have some things they’re better at than others: that’s just a part of being human. We can’t be perfect, great or even good at everything.

I’m not great at the intricacies of grammar, I don’t know enough about the self-publishing process, and I really need to organise and formalise my workflows better. These are all things I’m slowly working on, but in the meantime I try to play to my strengths and do a decent-enough job otherwise, and make peace with the fact that I simply can’t be brilliant at everything. (And the positive feedback that I receive suggests that my clients don’t expect me to be brilliant at everything and don’t care that I’m not.)

Even regular people deserve to make a living

This freeing idea comes from Jennifer Lawler, who wrote this short post on LinkedIn about imposter syndrome. Never forget that even ‘regular’, far-from-perfect people (i.e. the majority of us) deserve to make a living.

Once I embraced the idea that I didn’t have to be special in order to deserve not to starve, it freed up a lot of mental bandwidth to do the work to the very best of my ability and not fret otherwise. Letting go of the idea that I have to somehow be A-MAZING all the time actually allows me to have a more realistic perspective on my abilities and to (so ironically) do better work.

I can’t claim to always follow my own advice, but I hope some of these ideas will help you if, like me, you think it’d be healthy to disengage somewhat from your perfectionism. If you’ve found other strategies that work for you, please share them in the comments!

About Harriet Power

Harriet Power develops and copyedits nonfiction books and educational materials. She is a commissioning editor for the CIEP information team, and a Professional Member of the CIEP.

About the CIEP

Photo credits: header by Ann H on Pexels, woman reading a book under a tree by Pramod Tiwari on Pexels, sign saying wisdom with perfectionism crossed out by geralt on Pixabay.

Posted by Eleanor Smith, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Considerations when curating an NGO’s style sheet

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There’s more to compiling a style sheet than deciding on spellings. Lorenzo Fusini describes some of the factors he’s had to consider when trying to ensure consistency among a large, disparate team of writers and editors.

I’ve been a part-time volunteer editor for a young non-governmental organisation (NGO) for a few months. The NGO’s mission is to provide free education to refugees, and my role mostly involves editing web content and grant applications.

When I started there was no style sheet: I observed writers and editors applying styles according to their own preferences or by imitating the styles of existing documents – yes, ‘styles’ plural. It was obvious to most that the situation would soon degenerate, and since I’d been the most vocal about this issue, I was assigned the task of curating a style sheet.

I’m going to share with you the challenges I’ve encountered in this assignment, how I’ve overcome them and the reasons behind the solutions I’ve adopted. As you’ll see, most of the topics are high-level aspects of curating a style sheet, more to do with its management than its content, as that’s what has required most of my attention.

Many decide, one implements

The NGO’s leader wants us to agree on solutions as a group. This is why I’m the curator of the style sheet, but I’m not alone in choosing the rules it contains. Everybody is welcome to suggest additions and changes, which are then discussed openly: all opinions are considered, with extra weight given to suggestions from the more experienced writers and editors, and in the end the group often reaches a unanimous decision. I then modify the style sheet accordingly, and once I’m done I notify the entire team.

New members every week

A team of volunteers working purely online has two distinctive traits: it changes continually (every week some volunteers leave and others join) and its members have vastly different cultural, professional and educational backgrounds. A style sheet is, then, a fundamental tool in ensuring that the NGO’s voice doesn’t change from one week to another.

We have volunteers from all walks of life, and most have never worked in the publishing sector: they might not know what a style sheet is, or that we have one. Our simple remedy is to regularly remind all writers and editors about it, and we’re considering including a link to the document in the welcome email every new volunteer receives.

Target audiences

We have three main audiences:

refugees with basic English or no knowledge of English, trying to learn what’s necessary to get on with their lives
managers of companies and charitable foundations with the resources to support the refugees
the general public, including prospective volunteers, who are curious about the NGO’s mission.

An implication is that text written with one audience in mind might not be appropriate for the others. That’s why we’ve decided to include a brief reminder at the beginning of the style sheet. Material destined to be read by refugees, prospective volunteers and the general public should be simple, direct and welcoming, never forgetting that some of the readers are destitute and desperate. With managers, on the other hand, we should be formal, courteous and concise, showing that the NGO is a serious and trustworthy organisation.

Modify only when necessary

If I change the style sheet too often with the honourable intention of improving the clarity and appearance of everyone’s writing, the NGO may end up in trouble! Perhaps future documents will look better than the previous ones but at the cost of being different in style. This is not a problem if the change happens together with other big changes in the organisation (such as when its efforts shift towards another category of disadvantaged people, requiring an overhaul of most documents). But if the words written today have, for example, a different spelling or hyphenation to the ones written last week, our reputation could take a hit, especially in the eyes of donors, and lead to the NGO receiving fewer resources.

I do consider modifying the style sheet, however, when I notice that the same questions keep popping up and when new phrases peculiar to the NGO are introduced. Adding relevant entries to the style sheet and amending the less clear ones makes writing and editing faster – no need to ask those questions and wait for the answers – and eliminates ambiguities.

Start with the AP Stylebook

When it comes to the content of the style sheet, the easiest starting point has been, like almost everything else in life, to imitate others. Together, we decided to get inspiration from the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook because it’s one of the most popular for web content, and even those who’ve never heard of AP but consume web content are familiar with the style through exposure.

Our style sheet, however, doesn’t need to be as comprehensive as AP. I started by writing the most relevant sections – abbreviations, spelling, capitalisation, punctuation, date and time, numbers, currencies and titles of publications – and later added further guidelines to solve my fellow editors’ recurring problems.

Spelling

The choice of spelling can be a marketing tool. The NGO is based in Norway, which typically favours British English spelling, yet it’s significantly easier to receive money from American companies and charitable foundations than from European ones (I’ve been told that this is because of some special tax advantages that exist in the US). Since we want to receive positive attention from such entities, we chose not long ago to switch our preferred spelling from British English to American English.

Capitalisation

The question I’ve received most often is ‘Should I capitalise this?’ The NGO organises courses for refugees and uses many software tools, so it’s a good idea to separate the names of these from normal text. Some suggested using italics, but we agreed on using roman title capitalisation because it’s easier to read, especially when a webpage is littered with the names of courses, companies and software products.

Besides the general guideline, I also added a list of all those terms that are specific to the NGO, to eliminate every possible doubt about their spelling and style.

As a consequence of these changes, the queries on capitalisation have dropped to almost zero.

Currencies

We apply for grants, write web content to describe possible ways to support us and produce brochures that illustrate our progress. We want to reach out to the whole world, so we have to represent money in the most unambiguous way possible – and money holders like to be accurate with their figures. That’s why we’ve chosen to use three-letter codes for currencies rather than their respective symbols.

I hope you’ve found this different angle of working on a style sheet interesting and some aspects worth considering for your next project. If you ever face problems similar to mine, I hope my experiences will help you solve them. I’ve certainly enjoyed having this responsibility and seeing how much it has simplified my colleagues’ jobs – a bit like raising a baby and seeing it walk!

About Lorenzo Fusini

Lorenzo Fusini is an editor, data scientist and swimming instructor with a PhD in Engineering Cybernetics. His favourite activity is to put his hands on different fields of knowledge, professionally or not. He enjoys freediving, playing games (video, board, role-playing), reading science fiction, weird fiction and folklore, and chatting about all sorts of topics.

About the CIEP

Photo credits: header image by NASA, handshake by Cytonn Photography, decide, commit, repeat by Brett Jordan, all on Unsplash.

Posted by Belinda Hodder, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Compiling style guides for Christian publishers

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Specialist organisations may require style guides that are tailored to their material. Editors Mary Davis and Fiona Little describe their experiences of compiling style guides to suit the needs of two clients publishing for the Christian market – but the principles are relevant for other subject areas.

Mary Davis: Tulips, chocolate and CPD

Near the start of my freelancing journey, I was asked to copyedit an 11,000-word manuscript by a small, independent religious publisher. Their little production team lacked specialist knowledge but were doing their best to produce quality non-fiction books for their relatively niche target market.

Their house style extended to a few bullet points on a side of A4, requesting that authors follow the Society of Biblical Literature’s SBL Handbook of Style and giving a few pointers on preferred formatting, footnotes, numbering systems and so on.

As I raised author queries and produced style sheets, it became clear to the client that there were significant inconsistencies across their publications. They asked me to do a critique of several books, and I produced a short report looking at design, formatting and style choices. There was a clear need for consistency and one of my main recommendations was the production of a more comprehensive style guide.

How did you go about it?

Soon after, the flu struck and I was in bed for days. I certainly didn’t have the energy for a meticulous copyedit or proofread, but I did have the appetite for a bit of informal continuing professional development (CPD)! I knew the client had a low budget and I decided to produce a style guide for them free of charge. I’d developed a good understanding of their authors and target readership, and my style sheets provided much of the detail. Consulting style guides from other clients and online resources, I focused particularly on presentation, which I felt would be key in encouraging authors to use it.

What did you include?

In consultation with the client, it didn’t take long to compile the finished guide – a carefully designed, six-page PDF.

Standard features: It included the things you’d expect, such as a general introduction, notes on abbreviations and contractions, UK spellings, preferred punctuation, numbers, dates and times, and book and hymn titles.
Emphasis on clarity: The writing style of some of the authors I had already copyedited was unnecessarily complicated and so the guide included an emphasis on clarity and plain English.
Interactive links: To make it user-friendly and easy to navigate, I included internal clickable links and external hyperlinks to resources like the SBL Handbook of Style and preferred dictionary.
Clear presentation: Aesthetically, I took great care with the layout, heading size and examples of correct usage, ensuring that authors would find it visually appealing and easy to use.
Personalised features: Working from my style sheets, I compiled a list of commonly used words, indicating preferred capitalisation and spelling. I also specified preferred formatting for Bible references and Bible ‘shortforms’ (abbreviations for each book of the Bible), as authors had been simply adopting their own preferred convention.
Ongoing: To facilitate updates, I supplied the client with a Word document in addition to the PDF.

What did the client think?

They sent me some tulips and chocolate in the post to say thank you! They also asked me to do some paid training with their publications manager, which I conducted online.

The guide is a number of years old now, but I asked the current publications manager to comment on its usefulness. She replied:

Our style guide has greatly benefited our publishing organisation. It provides clarity for authors who need to know what our expectations are and helps us to create a quality uniform product. From basic expectations (like grammar) to more niche requirements (like capitalisation of terminology), both our writers and editors appreciate the consistency that the style guide gives.

I didn’t get paid for this work but the six hours or so I spent on it was immensely worthwhile. Careful reading of a number of style guides was valuable in itself – and, on top of that, the project cultivated strong working relationships and resulted in a stream of ongoing work. They weren’t and aren’t my highest-paying clients – but, as well as tulips and chocolates, this project gave me confidence and specialist knowledge at a key stage in my career.

Mary’s top tips for compiling a specialist style sheet

Assess the material produced by the organisation and current authors’ writing styles. Does it match the client’s requirements?
Decide what standard features are required in the guide. Do you want to reference an existing guide or dictionary?
Working from style sheets and other sources, compile a list of commonly used words, noting preferred capitalisation and spelling.
What other guidance will be needed? The inconsistencies between publications will give you a steer on what may be required.
Take care over presentation, and include clear examples of correct usage. Internal links and external hyperlinks may be useful.

Fiona Little: Discussion and flexibility

When a client asked me to produce a style guide for an ongoing series of church reports, I welcomed the challenge. The client wanted to review the styles used in the existing reports and create a more comprehensive style guide that would ensure greater consistency in future reports in the series. Although the authors were theologians and clergy, the reports were intended to be available to lay people, so a style guide for academic theological writing might not be suitable. A tailored guide would help authors, editors and proofreaders working on the series.

Starting points

I was able to refer to previous reports in the series, all of which were in British English. The client had begun to draw up a list of preferred spellings, hyphenations, capitalisations and so on, and an author had added comments to it. There seemed to be omissions and contradictions, but the document gave me some idea of the priorities.

The main issues

Spelling

I found spelling inconsistencies not just in the existing reports but also in the client’s word list – for example, Oxford-style ‘-ize’ spellings seemed to be favoured for most words, but ‘baptise’ was preferred over ‘baptize’. After some discussion, the client decided to standardise on ‘-ize’, and we chose the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors (NODWE) as a default guide.

Punctuation

We also agreed on Oxford style (as described in New Hart’s Rules) for dates, serial commas, dashes and other aspects of punctuation. The style guide would need to outline these.

Capitalisation

Capitalisation was the biggest issue. We agreed easily on initial capitals for specific meanings as opposed to general ones (eg ‘the Father’ in reference to God); words with multiple senses needed particularly careful treatment – for example, ‘church’ was used, variously with and without capital C, for a building, a congregation, a Christian denomination (such as ‘the Church of England’) and Christian believers worldwide. The client opted for ‘the Bible’ but ‘a bible’, unlike NODWE, but followed NODWE in downcasing pronouns for God. The style guide would need to give clear examples of these usages.

References

While detailed bibliographical references were not covered, we agreed a format for references to other reports in the series, including their numbered sections.

For the frequent Bible references, the client wished to stick with the abbreviations for books of the Bible used in the New Revised Standard Version, along with a distinctive chapter-and-verse format used by a larger publisher. These choices seemed to work because their parameters were clear.

A style was also needed for the titles of documents in Latin; the client wanted italic with maximum capitals, even though normally a Latin title would have sentence-style capitalisation.

Numbers and dates

We agreed on maximum elision for number ranges (eg 341–2) and years (1988–9), following New Hart’s Rules, but we treated chapter and verse numbers in Bible references differently (see ‘References’ above).

Abbreviations

The reports used abbreviations for the names of various publications and organisations, and these needed to be listed in the style guide.

Because of the simple format of the reports, headings, lists and footnotes – among other features – were not covered.

The result

The completed style guide had short sections on all the categories highlighted above. The general reference to NODWE made a long word list unnecessary, but I listed recurrent words and names where the chosen style differed from NODWE.

Fiona’s top tips for compiling a specialist style sheet

Look carefully at the material to get a sense of the content, presentation, tone and intended readership.
Discuss the client’s preferences with them, and if their ideas appear unfeasible or inconsistent, explain the alternative options as straightforwardly as possible.
Consider whether a published style guide (eg Chicago Manual of Style, New Hart’s Rules or the American Psychological Association (APA) style guide) would cover all or most of the requirements, but don’t assume that the client will be familiar with it.
You may also find ideas in publishers’ copyediting guidelines and specific copyediting briefs.
If you base your style guide on an existing one, set out any exceptions to its guidelines clearly.
Consider organising the guide by type of text (eg headings, book titles) – this can be easier to navigate than a list of formats (eg italic, maximum capitalisation).
A couple of well-chosen examples may be easier to follow than a lengthy explanation; for instance, maximum elision of page ranges can be shown with ‘301–2, 341–5, but 315–16’.

About Mary Davis

Mary Davis’ first job was for someone who was obsessed with clear, beautifully written English. Her freelance work started soon after, alongside other jobs. It developed more formally when she undertook some training to check if her skills were fit for purpose – they were! Mary is an Advanced Professional Member of the CIEP and is delighted to be doing a job that never fails to put her head in a good place.

About Fiona Little

Fiona Little, an Advanced Professional Member of the CIEP, began her editing career with work on Grove music dictionaries and later copyedited material for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Now based in Washington DC, USA, she copyedits academic texts mainly on music, history and religion.

About the CIEP

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Photo credits: header image by Michael Morse on Pexels, someone taking notes from a Bible by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.

Posted by Eleanor Smith, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

A week in the life of a freelance commissioning editor

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If you’ve ever wondered what a freelance commissioning editor gets up to, in this post Sarah Lustig has provided some answers!

I work as a freelance commissioning editor for several different educational publishers. Before starting my business, I worked in-house for a large educational publisher. I had a lot of experience as a project manager, but almost none as a commissioning editor.

Slowly, project management jobs morphed into commissioning (sometimes by way of nebulous ‘author management’). Before I knew it, I was overseeing large multi-component courses. Now it’s a core part of my services. My in-house experience was with international curricula and I still do a lot of work on them now, as well as occasional UK and vocational titles.

Before I go into what a typical week might look like, let’s clear up some confusions around the work of a commissioning editor.

How is it different from project management?

In many ways, it isn’t. The work of the commissioning editor is largely the same as that of the project manager, which is why my project management skills helped me segue so neatly into commissioning.

The key distinguishing feature of the commissioning editor’s work is that it centres on the early development of the content. A project manager (PM) may take over later. The handover to the PM often happens after any manuscript development has been completed and the materials are ready for copyediting. In that case, the freelance commissioning editor may stay on the project, but in a reduced role, or they may hand over to an in-house colleague.

In the same way that a designer maintains a key relationship with their illustrators, the commissioning editor takes ownership of the relationship with any authors. Throughout the project, they are the author’s first point of contact. In some cases, all author queries go through the commissioning editor and the rest of the team has little to no contact with them.

The commissioning editor also has overall responsibility for the project; team members (including the PM) will escalate issues to the commissioning editor, who makes a decision on how to address them. For that reason, freelance commissioning editors may work very closely with an in-house team member, such as a publisher. A freelancer can reasonably make decisions about text features or style, but they probably cannot make business-critical decisions, such as a decision to delay publication if there is an urgent issue with the content.

Back to a typical week: let’s assume I’m at the start of a new project. What would my week involve?

Commissioning authors

One key task of the commissioning editor is to commission the authors to write the content. The commissioning editor might choose them from contacts the publisher has supplied, from their own list of contacts or by sourcing someone new through sites such as LinkedIn.

At the start of a new project, I compose a standard email to send out to prospective authors. It will include:

Details of the project.
The schedule.
The remuneration being offered (if known at this stage).

Depending on how urgently we need to find someone, I might email several people simultaneously (and explain that in the email). Otherwise I approach one or two people and wait for their responses.

A typical week might include a phone call with a new author who has questions about the project. Some prefer to iron out any questions over email, but a phone call can be especially useful if you do go on to work together on the project.

Author briefing

While I am approaching potential authors and waiting for replies, I also start drafting the author briefing document. The publisher may have a template that they ask me to work from. If not, I have my own template that I adapt. The brief always includes:

A project overview and contents list for the proposed publication.
Any series features.
Special requirements.
Rights and permissions guidelines – the publisher usually supplies some standard wording; I add to that any artwork and/or photo budgets.
Workflow and contacts.

The author briefing can be an exciting part of the job. It’s often one of the most creative tasks. It’s at this stage that the vision for the product is laid out. Will you add any new features? How will you address a unique requirement from the subject specification, such as scientific practicals or field work?

This brief is a really important part of the project materials. It will be used by several other team members to get to grips with the expected content. It might also be used in briefing freelancers later down the line.

Another key task of the commissioning editor is to check that the material submitted by the author matches the brief. Some small variances are normal and can be resolved during development editing. But it’s more troubling if the author has not submitted a section or has not briefed any photos, in a brief that asks for 100 photos.

Liaising with reviewers and development editors

After the author has submitted their manuscript, it may go to reviewers or a development editor to check. Often, the commissioning editor will commission and brief any reviewers or development editors, in the same way they did with the authors. They will also liaise with them throughout their work.

Since the work of these freelancers is necessarily in-depth, there are likely to be content amendments to the text and author queries. In a normal week, I might receive some of these comments back from the freelancers. I go through them to see if there are any simple issues I can resolve myself in the manuscript – a question about the grammatical style used or a simple error found. I then send everything else back to the author to work on.

There may be some work to do between the author and the reviewer or development editor, to agree on the best solution to a problem. As commissioning editor, I have the ultimate decision-making responsibility in any disagreements. They don’t happen very often. Usually I can defer to the author.

Team meetings

Part of the commissioning editor’s role is to attend – and sometimes run – team meetings. These meetings could include a project kick-off and regular team update meetings. The commissioning editor usually runs the project kick-off. This is a time for them to brief the rest of the team on the project.

In most weeks, it’s likely that I will attend an update meeting with the team. Early in the project, when the manuscript is with me, I use the team meeting to tell others what the author has delivered and the progress of any editorial work, such as development editing.

Later, when the manuscript has passed to a project editor, the project editor or project manager will provide the team with updates. At that stage, my role in the meeting is mostly to answer any queries.

I might also be called on to make decisions when there is a problem. For example, the typesetter has been delayed and won’t return the proofs on the agreed date. Can we afford to delay the schedule? If we delay now, can we save time later on? Do we want to batch the content to keep it moving? A project manager will advise on all these points but often the commissioning editor will decide what course of action to take. A wise commissioning editor listens to the project manager’s suggestion.

The rewards and the challenges

I find commissioning work very rewarding. I’m there at the very beginning of the project, when the concept is still being scoped out. I then get to see the vision realised in the final product.

It can be very challenging, especially when there are problems and I need to try to provide solutions and answers. Sometimes the problem-solving itself is a good challenge; sometimes it isn’t. However, for me, the satisfaction of seeing something develop from nothing, until it’s a real product out in the world, outweighs the difficulties.

About Sarah Lustig

Sarah Lustig has been working in educational publishing since 2010. She has been freelance since 2014, providing educational publishers with proofreading, commissioning and project management services. She specialises in international curricula, as well as some non-fiction subjects. She is also the author of the middle-grade novel Mystery in the Palace of Westminster.

About the CIEP

Photo credits: office desk by Dose Media on Unsplash; phone call by Marcus Aurelius on Pexels; team meeting by Headway on Unsplash.

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.