Tag Archives: publishing

A week in the life of an ELT editor and project manager

Editor and project manager Derek Philip-Xu shares with us the ins and outs of his varied week in the world of English language teaching (ELT) editing, where he focuses on producing digital content for publishers.

My route into publishing

I’ve been involved in ELT and publishing for over 20 years now, but I initially started off my work life as a chartered surveyor. That was a career path I followed for seven years before deciding to take a career break. I wasn’t keen on backpacking, but my sister’s suggestion of teaching English abroad sparked my interest. While she was thinking that it would be good for me to travel the world and gain valuable work experience, she was also hoping to visit me for nice holidays somewhere in Europe.

In 2003, following completion of my CELTA (Certificate in English Language to Speakers of Other Languages), I moved to Japan to teach for a year. This was not because I didn’t want family visits, but there was something about Japanese culture and the way of life that I found quite captivating. A year out turned into five years, followed by two years teaching in Spain and then six years in China. My time in China saw me move from teaching into publishing, developing both print and digital materials for young learners. When I returned to the UK, I continued working in publishing, specifically on digital ELT materials.

Why the focus on digital content?

I have always believed that digital products are an important part of a publisher’s course offering. They are not just a free add-on, as I have sometimes heard them described. They take time and effort to produce and, as was seen throughout the pandemic, offer teachers and students the opportunity to continue their classroom activities – albeit in a slightly different format than before. Digital ELT content continues to offer flexibility in the form of micro-learning and bite-sized learning. Students can practise their English wherever they are and whenever they want, providing them with a degree of control and choice that wasn’t available when I started out.

So, what is a typical week?

Well, is there such a thing as a typical week? Probably not, which is quite nice as it keeps things fresh and interesting. Generally, I start off the week with an overview of the tasks I need to get through. I use a handy business and project management app called Notion to organise my workload into projects, to-do lists and due dates. It quickly gets me into the work mindset, setting me up for the week ahead.

If I’m lucky enough to come into a project right from the very beginning, there will be a project kick-off meeting scheduled at some point. For example, one of my clients has asked me to join the project team as a content editor for a digital component the client is developing. I’ll be making sure the content that is written follows the brief, is pedagogically sound and is generally fit for purpose.

Project kick-off meetings, whether I’m the project lead or part of the project team, are an excellent way of ensuring that everyone is on the same page. Sometimes aspects of the project have not yet been decided on, such as the overall platform design, and these meetings are a good way of communicating those known issues but also assuaging any uncertainties that team members might have. They are a good opportunity to start building rapport with the rest of the team, ask any questions, present any doubts and generally get up to speed with the project and its documentation.

Project update meetings follow on from the kick-off meeting and can range from quick 15-minute weekly catch-ups to longer meetings once or twice a month. Project management is a lot about communication but also involves information gathering, and project update meetings are a useful tool for that. It is vital that the correct people have the most up-to-date information so that the project can proceed smoothly. In my project update meetings, we are looking at changes to the schedule to bring forward the go-live date, as well as interrogating the existing publishing workflow to ensure that it fits with the schedule and the budget.

My publishing work as a digital commissioning editor has set me up well for dealing with project management tasks, and, indeed, there are many crossovers (such as scheduling, briefing and budgeting). I am currently building on that knowledge through studying with the Association for Project Management. Nevertheless, having worked with publishing workflows for many years, and understanding the bottlenecks and pinch points that invariably crop up, it has become easier to anticipate and, therefore, deal with such issues.

Editing work

One of my regular jobs is working as editor of Voices, the flagship magazine of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL). This is a mix of editorial and project management work. For project management, this involves setting schedules and ensuring that authors and contributors submit their articles by the specified deadlines and generally progress everything through the workflow in a timely manner.

The editorial part of the work involves me liaising with the authors, providing advice and feedback on their work. This is a very satisfying part of the job as I get to speak regularly with IATEFL members from all over the world, helping them with their articles on a wide range of ELT-related subjects. Many of the authors are writing in their second language, which is no easy feat. I aim to guide them through the publishing process by first asking them to submit a short outline of their article which I can provide feedback on. This provides the author with a foundation upon which to start writing their article in more depth. There can be regular check-in points just to make sure that good progress is being made and to resolve any potential issues. Once submitted, I give the article an initial edit before sending it off to the copyeditor.

This culminates in the proofing stages, where I get to work closely with the designer and the copyeditor, checking to ensure that everything is in the correct place. One important aspect of our work is our desire to make the publication more accessible. This has involved checking the fonts and font sizes used throughout and updating to sans serif fonts, to improve readability. We are also looking at including alternative (alt) text descriptions for images which can be read by screen readers.

Running my business

I do not particularly like the term ‘freelancer’ because it sounds so temporary; I am a self-employed business owner. Although the projects I take on may last a few months or maybe only a few weeks, there is nothing temporary about the business I am running. While I have to work on my project tasks, such as the content editing and project management (the money makers), I do also have to spend time during the week on business admin and other similar tasks.

Jobs will not come in if people do not know you or what you do. So, there has to be some element of networking to increase my business visibility and online presence. Although I’ve gotten better at networking over the years, it’s not something I particularly like doing. Nevertheless, going to the IATEFL conference as well as the ELT Publishing Professionals Freelancers’ Awayday is invaluable (and fun).

Concentrating on the likes of your accounts from a business health standpoint as well as increasing your visibility as a business has an impact on your project pipeline. It is important to ensure that you plan ahead and know how much time you have available throughout the coming months and, potentially, for the year ahead. Some projects will tide you over for a few months, with others being more short term. With increased visibility, you may often be contacted at short notice to see if you are available to take on work. I have my time-tracking spreadsheet at the ready to see exactly how much time I have available and when.

Running

My week wouldn’t be complete without a few runs around Maidenhead, where I live. I’ve been involved with Maidenhead Athletic Club for around six years now, most recently as the club’s chair. Getting out and about for a run, no matter how fast or slow, is a great way to wind down after a busy day. Running is great for alleviating stress and anxiety, and for rooting you in the present. I’d definitely recommend it after a busy day of project management and editing.

About Derek Philip-Xu

Derek Philip-Xu left his native Scotland in 2003 to teach English in Japan and Spain before moving into school management and publishing while in China. On moving back to the UK in 2016, he continued working in ELT publishing, specialising in digital content development and commissioning. Derek is now self-employed, managing his business Refreshing Publishing, which offers digital content development, publishing project management and editorial services.

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: desktop by Pexels on Pixabay; team meeting by fauxels on Pexels.

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, 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.

Creating style sheets for fiction

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Creating a style sheet is an essential part of the editing process, but what you might include in your style sheet depends on what kind of text you’re editing. Jane Hammett looks at some of the topics to consider if you’re working on fiction.

It’s easy to get carried away and create a style sheet that’s several pages long, but this might not be helpful for the client. Always keep your client in mind: how will they benefit from the style sheet you are lovingly compiling for their work? You could think in terms of why, what and how. Let’s take these one by one.

Why compile a style sheet?

A style sheet will be useful to the author – it shows them the spellings and style conventions you have used, and it ensures that their novel is consistent throughout, so James is not allergic to gluten in Chapter 1 but in Chapter 2 he’s happily eating a sandwich. Consistency helps the reader to enjoy the reading experience more – and reduces the risk of negative reviews for authors.

A style sheet is also useful to other editorial professionals who see the text after you, such as a proofreader. If they have a query, they should be able to search your style sheet and find an answer.

It will help the typesetter (TS): your style sheet should include a list of any silent changes you have made to the manuscript (ie those made without tracked changes switched on), a list of text features (see the list below), and any instructions you have given the TS in the edited manuscript (such as <TS: please set as handwritten letter in magical swirly handwriting>).

What could your style sheet include?

All style sheets should include information about how language and SPaG (spelling, punctuation and grammar) are used in the manuscript, such as:

the form of English used (British, US, Indian, Canadian …)
-ise or -ize forms for verbs such as recognise, organise, etc.
the use (or not) of the serial (Oxford) comma
single or double quotes
parentheses: en rules and/or ellipses
the treatment of numbers in the text
the use of italic and bold.

Each style sheet should also contain a separate word list – this is essential for every job. If you come across a word on page 5 that has a variant spelling, how will you remember how it was spelled when you come across it again on page 505 if you don’t make a note of it in your style sheet?

As well as consistency in SPaG, a fiction editor has to keep an eye on the following:

Tense: is the book written in first-person present or third-person past tense, for example?
Point of view (POV) (the subject of many blogs posts all by itself): who has POV? One character or more?
A story’s characters (and descriptions of them): you might find it helpful to keep a list of all characters with a brief note of how they relate to each other. A character description might look like:

Skye (age 14 at end of Book 1, born May 2009). Appearance: short dark brown hair, 5 foot 4, scar over right eye, brown eyes. Character: feisty, brave, adventurous. Background: born in London; her parents are divorced. Family: Alana (mother), Cameron (father), Isla (sister).

Timeline: with all fiction, a timeline is important, but especially if you’re working on a text that is not linear: for example, a text that contains flashbacks or that jumps around in time depending on who has POV.
Plot: keeping a note of what happens in each chapter is really useful – for the author as well as you!
Plot threads: are they all tied off by the end of the book?

You might decide to list all these things in one style sheet, or you might prefer to create a separate document for each.

If you’re working on a specialist genre, there will be other things to consider. For example, in science fiction and fantasy worldbuilding is important, so you will need to include details about the fictional world the author has created, and a list of the words the author has invented for this world. This could include rules (‘Only certain characters can time travel. The time-travel portal is hidden in London’s Waterloo Station’). It could also include geography: you might find it useful to make notes about the setting, especially when this differs from the real world. You could also include a list of place names, road names and building names that are mentioned.

If you’re working on a style sheet for the first book in a series, think about what the author and readers will need to know for subsequent books: where is the book set? Do any characters die in the first book? If so, which? (You don’t want them being accidentally resurrected in Book 2 …) Character descriptions and events in the first book are also important. If you were asked to create a series style sheet, you could continue Skye’s description as follows:

In Book 1 Skye achieved her aim of finding the treasure. At the end of Book 1, she, Elise and Rohan are talking about finding the magical amulet – they need to find it before the evil king does. Pls check this happens in Book 2.

This style sheet is a work in progress: it will be amended and added to by the publisher, proofreader and editor for each book in the series.

Noting all these things helps authors maintain continuity in a series, especially when they may have a break of several months in between writing each book.

How should you compile a style sheet?

It’s sensible to keep a master style sheet and save a copy of this for each new job. Remember to give it a file name that includes the job title, the author’s name, your initials and the date – don’t just name it ‘style sheet’! I highlight everything in my style sheet for a job, then when I come across a feature in a manuscript, I note how the author has styled it and remove the highlighting for this issue from my style sheet. At the end of an edit, if any items are still highlighted, they haven’t come up in the job and can be deleted from my style sheet.

And finally … some text features to look out for

How to style all the text features you might come across in a work of fiction comes up over and over again on the CIEP forums. Style guides such as New Hart’s Rules cover how to deal with text features such as figures and tables, but are silent on how to handle many of the features that crop up in fiction, such as:

characters’ thoughts
text messages
telepathic communication
words remembered or imagined
words spoken by an alien/non-human character
inscriptions or lettering on signs
flashbacks
emojis
handwritten notes
maps
newspaper headlines and articles.

Should these be displayed? In a different typeface? In italic, or in roman with single quotes? You could spend a lot of time thinking about this … I keep a note of text features I see – in manuscripts I edit and published books I read – and how they’re set. Letters and extracts from newspaper articles tend to be displayed and in a different typeface, while thoughts and words remembered are often in italic, to differentiate them from the narrative. It’s sensible to make a list of text features in your style sheet, and add an example of each from the text. In the text, you could add coding or a Word style to each feature, depending what your brief says to do, so the typesetter can find each feature easily and decide how to style it.

This blog post has been a quick guide to what you might include in a fiction style sheet. I hope it has answered any questions you might have – or inspired you to make some changes to your master style sheet!

If you’d like to find out more about fiction style sheets, then you might like to check out Amy Schneider’s The Chicago Guide to Copyediting Fiction (University of Chicago Press, 2023), the CIEP’s guide Getting Started in Fiction Editing by Katherine Trail, and Louise Harnby’s resources on style sheets.

About Jane Hammett

Jane Hammett is an Advanced Professional Member of the CIEP and a tutor on the CIEP’s proofreading and editing courses. She’s also a Partner Member of the Alliance of Independent Authors. Jane works with publishers and self-publishing authors on fiction for adults and children.

About the CIEP

Photo credits: header image by Caio on Pexels, choose your words by Brett Jordan on Unsplash, book and potions by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.

Posted by Belinda Hodder, blog assistant.

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

Curriculum focus: The publishing process

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In this regular feature for The Edit, former training director Jane Moody highlights an area of the CIEP’s Curriculum for professional development. This month’s article is packed with useful information to expand your knowledge of the publishing process, from digital to bookbinding!

Publishing is covered in several areas of the curriculum. I haven’t included editorial processes in the list below, but rather concentrated on those aspects of publishing that are not covered by our core skills. These areas are valuable for a competent copyeditor or proofreader to know about. Most topics fall into Domain 2 Editorial knowledge and practice, but I have included one from Domain 1 Working as a professional.

KNOWLEDGE CRITERIA	EDITORIAL COMPETENCIES, PROFESSIONAL SKILLS AND ATTITUDES
1.1.1 Role and responsibilities of an editor/proofreader within a publishing team	• Understands publishing schedules and budgets, and how they interact • Is aware of the responsibilities of an editor to stakeholders and of the editor as an intermediary • Understands the place of an editor/proofreader in the publishing process • Is aware of own role within the team and able to work as part of a team
2.1.1 Workflows	• Understands the critical stages involved in any publishing process • Understands common publishing terminology
2.1.2 Schedules and budgeting	• Understands the importance of scheduling and budgeting within any publishing process • Understands the influence of the schedule/budget on the scope of editing/proofreading
2.1.4 Production processes	• Understands the roles and responsibilities of a production team • Understands the meaning and use of common production terminology • Understands the stages of the production process (eg prepress, print/electronic production)
2.1.5 Design, typography and typesetting	• Understands the meaning and application of common typographical terminology • Is aware of different fonts, typefaces and their uses • Recognises typographical characteristics: measures, alignment, spacing • Understands word and character spacing, leading, indentation, non-breaking spaces, hyphens • Understands layout, typesetting and working with a typesetter (specification, layout, revises, running sheets)
2.1.6 Printing and finishing	• Understands the requirements for different printing processes (colour, paper types, sizes, file sizes, resolution) • Is aware of different printing processes (eg litho, offset, digital, print-on-demand) • Is aware of different print finishes (eg sealer, varnishes, laminates) • Is aware of different binding methods (saddle-stitched, perfect binding, sewn, case binding, self-cover)
2.1.7 eBook formats	• Is aware of different ebook formats (eg EPUB, Amazon AZW, PDF, TXT, MOBI • Has a basic understanding of which format to choose in different situations
2.1.11 Different models of publishing	• Is aware of the different types of publishing models (eg traditional publishing, businesses and other clients, self-publishing) • Understands the different financial models of publishing (eg traditional publisher pays, author pays, open access, hybrid models, self-publishing)

Terminology

Before you can understand the processes, perhaps you might need some explanation of the many jargon terms used in the business. You can, of course, use the CIEP Glossary. Other terms might be found in HarperCollins’ Glossary of Book Publishing Terms. For a lighter look at publishing terms, try Tom’s Glossary of Publishing Terms (in which the term copyediting is defined as ‘A phase of publishing that requires little or no budget, is considered of slight importance, and may be omitted at the option of the publisher’, copyright as ‘A concept invented by lawyers as a hedge against unemployment’, and chapter-by-chapter breakdown as ‘the progressive deterioration of a copyeditor who is on a tight deadline’!)

Some slightly more technical terms can be found in Desktop Publishing Terminology – The Complete Guide (2022) from Kwintessential.

Process and workflow

Understanding the publishing process is essential for copyeditors and proofreaders. However, understanding is complicated because there is no one process – workflows vary from publisher to publisher and with different types of publishing. There are several CIEP courses listed in the curriculum and other helpful resources. The CIEP fact sheet The publishing workflow is a good starting point.

Courses are thin on the ground, but the Publishing Training Centre runs an e-learning module An Introduction to publishing, which is described as being for ‘newcomers to publishing who wish to gain a grounding in the structure of the publishing industry today, along with its key processes and functions’.

Books include:

Inside Book Publishing, 6th edn by Giles Clark and Angus Phillips (Routledge, 2019), ‘the classic introduction to the book publishing industry’.
Handbook for Academic Authors: How to Navigate the Publishing Process, 6th edn by Beth Luey (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

Here, I’m looking further to find information in the online environment:

The Publishers Association is a good source of information. Their webpage ‘How publishing works’ gives detailed information and includes personal accounts of working in the role (although when I looked, there were several broken links).
Publishing Talk aims to help new and emerging authors write, publish and sell books. Jon Reed has written a blog, ‘The book publishing process – an 8-step guide’.
Individual publishers may offer guidance to authors about their particular processes, which can also be useful to editors, particularly if they include timings. See, for example, the Bloomsbury guide to the publishing process. The timings quoted there might raise a few eyebrows! HarperCollins personalises the process, with individuals describing their roles in the company.
Bill Swainson has written a blog, ‘The Publishing Process’ (originally written 27 July 2012 and updated 20 January 2021), for the Bloomsbury Writers & Artists newsletter.

For a different kind of publishing process for non-fiction, read the IntechOpen article ‘Publishing Process Steps and Descriptions’. IntechOpen is an open-access publisher. This model of publishing charges a fee to the author or the author’s institution (£850 per chapter) and the subsequent (online) publication is made freely available to readers.

ALLi provides information on the self-publishing process in a blog by Orna Ross, ALLi Director: ‘What Is Publishing? The Seven Processes of Book Publishing’. Also describing the self-publishing process is a guide from the Writers’ Guild, published in 2022, Self-publishing: A step-by-step guide for authors.

Other web resources include an ‘Academic Publishing Toolkit’ for potential authors from the University of Manchester Library. The University of Manchester Library has a number of helpful webpages on the publishing process. ‘The publishing process – what to expect’ includes flowcharts for each type of publication. These webpages give information about typical stages, milestones and timescales that you’re likely to encounter when publishing a journal article or a monograph.

What all these useful articles don’t say, in their attempts to set out a clear process, is that some (sometimes all) these processes can happen in different orders, or all at once. Often, the design is adapted from a previous publication, so is already set before the editorial processes start. Sometimes publication is driven by the market, and marketing may be started before a word is written or edited. Publishers’ marketing departments are often over-enthusiastic about the speed of production of their forthcoming titles! How often have you ordered an advertised book only to be told (often several times) that the publication date has been put back?

Ebooks

Anum Hussain’s blog post ‘How to Create an Ebook From Start to Finish’ (11 August 2022) is a useful introduction, as is ‘How to Make an Ebook in 5 Steps Without Breaking a Sweat’ from Designrr.

‘Everything Self-Publishers Need to Know About Ebook Formats’ (8 November 2021) gives a run-down of the different formats available and when (and how not) to use them.

Printing and binding

You can read about the printing and binding processes, but it is hard to imagine what it’s really like without seeing it. YouTube is a happy hunting ground for videos – once you start to look, you will find many helpful videos that explain the process or just give you a feel for what it is like. Here are just a few.

If you don’t know much about the printing process, watch Gorham Print’s YouTube video, which shows the process in a small printing company. Watch the same basic process on a giant scale in a Korean company, Mega Process (or this one: Factory Monster). I can tell you from personal experience that these factories really are that noisy, even without the music! This clip is more explanatory: ‘How It’s Made Books’. I’d recommend watching them both: the Korean ones will give you a better feel for the real action, but the explanations in the latter are very helpful.

For a slightly different approach, watch Amazon Books’ ‘make on demand’ process. The sound quality is occasionally quite poor, which is a shame, but it’s worth watching to see the POD (print-on-demand) process.

Newspaper printing is quite specialised. Watch the New York Times (in 2019) or The Times (in 2022) being printed.

Offset litho printing is described in a video from Solopress and the sheetfed system in one from Sappi (this one has subtitles). Express Cards’ simple animations make the whole process a lot easier to understand.

Digital printing is explained in a video from Sappi and from Sticker Mountain (Indigo printing).

The Telegraph has a video from 2012: ‘Birth of a Book: how a hardback book is made’ – there will still be companies in existence who use the human touch, but probably not many like this one. For an even more esoteric skill set, watch ‘The Chelsea Bindery Show the Processes of Book Binding’ – once upon a time, most books were bound like this. It’s more like this now: ‘Book binding (Muller Martini Monostar)’.

About Jane Moody

Jane has worked with books for all her working life (which is rather more years than she cares to admit), having started life as a librarian. She started a freelance editing business while at home with her two children, which she maintained for 15 years before going back into full-time employment as head of publishing for a medical Royal College.

Now retired, she has resurrected her editorial business, but has less time for work these days as she spends much time with her four grandchildren and in her garden.

About the CIEP

Photo credits: letterpress by Jirreaux; printing machine by Dengmert; both on Pixabay.

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

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

Forum matters: Getting to grips with the publishing process

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This feature comes from the band of CIEP members who volunteer as forum moderators. You will only be able to access links to the posts if you’re a forum user and logged in. Find out how to register.

Many CIEP members are either specialists or, at least, tend to offer a limited range of services. We are often just one cog in the long and complicated process that takes a raw manuscript and converts it into a published product. While many of us are shielded from the labyrinthine complexity of the full publishing process, circumstances can sometimes find us having to get up to speed quickly on aspects of the job.

Whether it’s newcomers seeking to make those first important contacts and secure their first clients or more experienced members presented with new processes or having to get to grips with unfamiliar programs, the CIEP forums have proved to be a helpful source of advice and information for members seeking to navigate the complicated and confusing world of publishing.

Working with publishers

New members in particular regularly find sound advice about getting established. How to find work with publishers is a common theme on the forums. There have been a number of discussions about the best way to approach publishers, including this thread in the Fiction forum, and the rights and wrongs of editorial tests as well as the experience and qualifications that publishers might be looking for. The question of publishers asking freelance editors and proofreaders to sign non-disclosure agreements has also been discussed on the forums. Anyone frustrated by a lack of response to initial contacts or to editorial tests will draw comfort from a recent thread in which members described how, even if it takes years, that initial contact with a publisher or potential client can eventually lead to work.

The question of what different publishers mean by copy-editing and proofreading may not always be entirely clear. A recent thread raised concerns about proofreaders being expected to identify and correct problems in texts that should perhaps have been picked up earlier in the publication process.

For certain publications, fact-checking is an important part of the process, and this is something that editors can be asked to do. This thread explored some of the considerations an editor would want to take into account before agreeing to do such work, and deciding on how much to charge for it.

Working with publishing technology

Many editors and proofreaders are perhaps lucky in never having to venture beyond Word and the occasional pdf. But there are a host of other programs that the publishing industry uses and you will find experts in these among the CIEP membership, many of them happy to share advice and expertise through the forums. Recent forum threads have focused on LaTeX, InDesign and MathType. If you find yourself faced with a tricky problem in relation to design or typesetting, the forums will often be a great place to find answers. A similar thread explored the options for formatting books for sale on Kindle and other electronic devices.

Sharing experiences

The forums are also a useful place for members to discuss experiences, good and bad, with individual publishers – though such conversations often switch quickly to private messages, away from the main forums.

If you’re a CIEP member seeking to expand your knowledge about any aspect of your work and the variety of ways in which we interact with the publishing industry, our forums are always there to offer advice and help. See you there!

About the CIEP

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Posted by Belinda Hodder, blog assistant.

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

Talking tech: The publishing process – getting personal

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In this month’s Talking tech column, Andy Coulson shares the systems he uses to keep on top of his editorial work, from scheduling projects and organising to-do lists to tracking client and author queries.

This month’s theme for The Edit is ‘the publishing process’. Whenever I see the word ‘process’ I think of workflows and project management, which brings me to collaboration and communication. These are things that technology can be really helpful for (or completely sabotage).

We all need to manage a range of workflows with different clients and types of job, but these all have common elements. The ones that come to mind are managing workload; tracking work; and dealing with issues and communicating those to clients. We all need good systems to handle these and arguably our effectiveness as freelancers is down to how good these functions are. I’m going to give you a guided tour of my own system as a way of illustrating where technology helps with this and where it hinders.

I’ve got here by a process of evolution so I strongly recommend that whatever you do, you review it from time to time and be prepared to change it. My aim with these systems is to give myself clear visibility of my availability; to have a good understanding of the steps to complete a task, and where I am with those; to collect queries, manage circulating those and make sure I deal with the feedback; and to plan my working day around work and life commitments.

Availability: Can I fit this job in?

To keep track of my availability, typically over the next six months, I use Google Calendar. Everything gets chucked in here – holidays, dental appointments, possible jobs etc. I use different calendars for work and family stuff, and different colours for each. If you need some help in how to do this, this article covers Google Calendar and this one covers iCal on a Mac.

When I agree a potential job, I create a new calendar entry covering the expected dates. In the title I include the client contact details, which means I can easily find the original email if I need to contact them. The other thing I usually do is change the colour for the task. These colours relate to customers and are consistent with the colours I use in Toggl to track time.

Now I can use the calendar to see what I have on and what I have coming up. This lets me respond quickly to enquiries and changes in schedules, and also means I can confidently plan other areas of my life around work commitments. I know when I’ve got a busy week coming up, so don’t try and fit in a dental appointment.

Here I think a technological solution works really well. The multiple colours help me take in a range of information quickly. The multiple calendars allow me to filter information.

Planning: How do I do the job?

Once a job goes live, I start looking at it in a bit more detail. Generally, I need to break it down into manageable steps I can then track. This lets me see progress, which is good for my stress levels (usually), and means I can keep the client updated. The other benefit to this is that I can use my time flexibly as I can have a much more granular view of how long things are taking.

I use a to-do-list manager, as I tend to think in lists, but there are any number of other tools you could use to organise these tasks, such as board or card-based tools like Trello. My favourite is Todoist, which is available on Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. I like it because it lets me organise things in projects and tasks that I can split into smaller elements. I can add reminders and various flags and labels that let me sort and organise tasks.

I tend to keep some projects that I can dump one-off tasks in, which are often non-work related. For example, I have a ‘maintenance tasks’ project that all the jobs that need doing around the others get put in. I also have a ‘personal tasks’ project that can contain recurring tasks, like reminding me to check if I need to collect my son from school.

Each task within a larger job gets its own project. I can add project-specific details in the description, and add to these through comments as the job goes on. I split a job into tasks (where it’s relevant) and may even have sub-tasks if it proves necessary. The sub-tasks can be a good way of keeping track of things that are part completed, so if you have a chapter 3 edit task and you are waiting on queries you could create a sub-task of ‘deal with Ch3 queries’ before moving on to the next chapter.

Todoist is where I keep track of everything rather than keeping it inside my head. I think a technological solution here is really good. At this level of task management you get a lot of change, and have to manage lots of odds and ends of information.

One other advantage of using Todoist is it allows me to get information out of email. Email is a brilliant tool, but is utterly useless for storing information, and has a tendency to then create distractions from what you need to do. (Cal Newport’s A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload is an interesting exploration of this.) Even with the search capabilities of modern systems it is cumbersome to try to track bits of information in email. It is far better to add key information to the project in your task manager.

Organising the day-to-day

Here’s where technology and I part company. To plan my day, I use a pen and paper and do something called time-blocking. I have a square-gridded notepad and keep a weekly calendar with each day divided into hours. I then mark in my wife’s work commitments and any other fixed commitments that need working around. I can then plan in what I am going to do and when, drawn from the tasks in Todoist. I also include things like any plans to exercise, so there is a greater chance of me actually doing those. I do most of this in pencil so I can change the plan if things overrun or need to be moved. I tend to plan the next day at the end of each working day.

Taking time to do this on paper means I spend a little more time thinking about what I am going to do. This (hopefully) means I am being a bit more intentional about what I am choosing to do and reminds me it is all a choice, which helps to stop me stressing about things.

Keeping track of queries

Going back to the theme of not storing things in email, I’ve changed how I handle queries. Keeping track of queries is a really important task, especially on bigger jobs. I can’t begin to quantify the amount of time that I’ve wasted trying to find a project management tool that would handle all the things mentioned above and help manage queries, but I can’t find one that suits me.

My solution came out of a conversation on the forums about this. Abi Saffrey suggested using conditional formatting in Excel for ‘at-a-glance’ status on queries. For each job I have a queries spreadsheet with columns for the location of the query (I split this into file name, page/folio number and location description on the page so I can search for all the queries on a particular file), who it is for, status, date sent, date received, details of the query and the reply. The status column uses a list to select the status: draft, sent, received, re-queried, done. These have different colours, set by conditional formatting.

When I send out queries it doesn’t matter whether I send the Excel file, copy a couple of quick queries into an email, or share the Excel file on OneDrive, there is always one master copy of the Excel sheet that I keep updated with statuses and replies (copied from email if needed).

Bringing it all together

As I mentioned, I’ve never found the perfect tool to do it all; consequently, I use several tools that I’ve found I can make play nicely together with minimum effort. In addition to these I also use Toggl to track time and Quickfile to handle billing, invoices and accounting.

I think the trick with systems is to invest some time in thinking about what problems you want any system to solve. In this way you can research tools and decide what compromises and tweaks you can make. Hopefully this then means you end up with a system that works for you, rather than one you are trying to fit into.

About Andy Coulson

Andy Coulson is a reformed engineer and primary teacher, and a Professional Member of the CIEP. He is a copyeditor and proofreader specialising in STEM subjects and odd formats like LaTeX.

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Posted by Belinda Hodder, blog assistant.

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

Apply now to the Printing Charity’s Rising Star Awards

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Each year, the Printing Charity holds the Rising Star Awards, for young people working in publishing, print, paper, packaging and graphic arts to invest in their career development. Applications to this year’s awards are welcome until 2 April 2023. One of 2022’s winners, Rosie Catcheside, shares her experience of applying for the award, and the career benefits that winning gave her.

I first heard about The Printing Charity’s Rising Star Awards from a colleague who had been selected as a Rising Star in a previous year. At the time, I had recently completed my English Literature MA and was working as an administrative assistant at a Newcastle-based creative-writing magazine. While I really enjoyed my role, I was eager to develop my skills further and to take on more responsibility. I also, ultimately, wanted to get into the publishing industry; I had always loved literature and was incredibly keen to work directly with authors and to help get books into the hands of readers. The Rising Star Awards offered a great opportunity to achieve these aims so, in 2022, I decided to apply.

With these development goals in mind, my funding requests included several online editing and proofreading courses run by the CIEP. These were a mixture of self-assessed and tutor-assessed courses, all of which included note sheets, tasks and tutor access. My courses included the copyediting and proofreading suites, as well as specific courses on editing fiction and editing digital content. Through these courses, I was able to build on the skills I had been learning on the job, while taking a more structured approach to my learning and familiarising myself with industry-approved methods. As well as developing my skills, I also wanted to broaden my industry knowledge, so I requested CIEP membership and BookMachine membership. These memberships helped me to connect with other professionals in the publishing community and to access invaluable information about industry news.

After submitting my application for the award, I was invited to an online interview with a member of The Printing Charity and two professionals working in my field. All three of my interviewers were supportive and friendly and it was hugely beneficial to discuss my career aspirations and training plans with professionals in my area. Both the application questions and the interview provided a valuable opportunity to think about my career ambitions and to consider any gaps in my knowledge. This helped me to ensure that the items I had requested were the best possible resources for my professional development. The Printing Charity made sure that the application process was clear and accessible throughout, and were always keen to help with any questions. The awards ceremony for the winners, hosted at the House of Lords, was also fantastic – it was a wonderful opportunity to celebrate in London and it was great to meet the other award winners and judges in person!

The Rising Star Awards really have been invaluable to me throughout the past year. The CIEP courses helped me to cultivate concrete editing and proofreading skills, allowed me to access professional tutors and enabled me to structure my learning in the best possible way. My editing and proofreading skills have developed further with every course I have completed and the BookMachine subscription has been a great resource for acquiring industry knowledge. Since winning the award last year, I have taken the next step in my career and am now working in publishing, as a publicity assistant at Faber. The award equipped me with the practical skills and publishing knowledge to break into the industry and really helped me to hit the ground running in my new role.

I would absolutely recommend the Rising Star Awards to anyone who is considering making an application this year. The process is smooth, the rewards are enormous and if you win, you will join a fantastic network of young professionals. If you are passionate about the print industry and want to develop your skills, do put in an application – it could make a huge difference to your career!

Visit The Printing Charity’s website to apply for the Rising Star Awards. The deadline for applications for 2023 is Sunday 2 April.

About Rosie Catcheside

Rosie was born in the North East but is currently living in London, where she works as a Publicity Assistant at Faber. She has an MA in Modern and Contemporary Literature and won a Rising Star Award from The Printing Charity in 2022.

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Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

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

Resources round-up: The publishing process

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Welcome to this round-up of resources compiled by the CIEP. This time, we look at how books are made. We have divided our picks into:

Free resources from the CIEP
Books
Glossaries
Articles

Free resources from the CIEP

Forgive us for leading with our own resources, but some of the free fact sheets on the CIEP’s practice notes web page provide a useful overview before we delve into the details of how books are made. ‘Anatomy of a book’, which describes the different parts of a book, is a good place to start. After that, you might want to explore the book-making process with ‘The publishing workflow’, supplementing that with the ‘Good editorial relationships’ infographic. Finally, ‘Proofreading or copyediting?’ covers which type of editing happens at different points in the creation of a book.

Books

These books aren’t free, but you can read free reviews of some of them by members of the CIEP, which might help you decide which are worth investing in.

Books about the publishing process

Two major editing and proofreading books – Butcher’s Copy-Editing (4th edn, Cambridge University Press, 2012) and New Hart’s Rules (2nd edn, Oxford University Press, 2014) – contain overviews of the publishing process. You might already have these volumes, so see what gems you can find within.

Inside Book Publishing by Giles Clark and Angus Phillips (6th edn, Routledge, 2019) covers the processes of traditional publishing in more detail. And to really dive into the subject, reach for the Oxford Handbook of Publishing, edited by Angus Phillips and Michael Bhaskar (OUP, 2019). Since this was reviewed by a CIEP member, a cheaper paperback version has been published.

If you’re coming to book production from a self-publishing point of view, the Writers’ & Artists’ Guide to Self-Publishing (Bloomsbury, 2020) could be helpful. Read the CIEP review for more.

The parts and people that make up the books

From a book’s blurb to its index, the different parts of a book have been explored in recent publications that are as entertaining as they are fascinating. For more recent bookish books, read our end-of-2022 round-up blog.

To add to these, get a copyeditor’s experience in The Subversive Copy Editor by Carol Fisher Saller (Chicago University Press, 2016), and hear from a lexicographer about how dictionaries are made in Word by Word by Kory Stamper (Pantheon, 2017).

Glossaries

Introducing ‘Publishing terminology explained’, Penguin Random House says: ‘Publishing shouldn’t be a mystery and that’s why we’ve pulled together an A–Z list of terms that we use in our business to help you navigate conversations and become familiar with how a publishing team operates.’ The CIEP has also written a free glossary of editorial terms.

Articles

Articles by and for the self-publishing industry excel in discussing how books are made. Recent examples include: ‘Why prologues get a bad rap’ by Tiffany Yates Martin on Jane Friedman’s website and ‘When should you have a table of contents and an index in your book?’, a TwitterChat run by the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi). You can rely on ALLi to really drill down to the intricate details that self-publishing authors might not realise they need to think about before the process starts.

However, one element that most authors will consider is the cover of their book. Cover designer Jessica Bell wrote articles recently on different aspects of this. For Jane Friedman, she discussed ‘The key elements of eye-catching book cover design’, and for ALLi she wrote about ‘Indie author book cover design: what works in 2022’. From ALLi you can also discover what really doesn’t work, in the TwitterChat ‘How a bad cover can ruin book sales’.

Last but never least is indexing. Indexer Geraldine Begley took to the AFEPI Ireland blog with ‘Indexing: An introduction for the curious’ which answers every question about indexing you can think of, including ‘Can’t a computer do that?’ (‘No’), and ‘Do I have to read the whole book?’ (‘Yes and no’). For anyone considering entering this interesting profession, or simply interested in what indexers actually do, this is indeed a great introduction for the curious.

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Posted by Belinda Hodder, blog assistant.

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

An author’s experience of being edited

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Aaron Wilkes is a prolific school textbook author. In this blog post, he talks about his experiences of being edited and shares the things that have made the editing process easier for him.

I’ve been in the ‘writing game’ for quite some time now, perhaps nearly 20 years, and I’ve been either the sole author, co-author or ‘series editor’ for over 80 student textbooks, revision guides and online resources, from Key Stages 1 to 4. I’m a history teacher by trade – it was my full-time job up to a few years ago – but, in my spare time, I’ve written for Stanley Thornes (that then became Nelson Thornes), Folens and, most recently (for the last ten years), Oxford University Press. Over the years, I’ve worked with lots of editors, both in-house and freelance, and thought I’d share my experiences of being edited and how some editors have really helped make the whole editing process easier (or in some cases, harder).

Friendly introductions

Firstly, it’s just really nice to get a friendly introductory email. I don’t expect War and Peace, but a simple ‘Hi, I’m … and I’ll be working on … etc, etc’ with a phone number is always appreciated. A quick chat over the phone can be lovely too. In fact, a quick chat is often worth its weight in gold because it gives me a chance to put a ‘voice’ to the comments and feedback I’ll get.

Now I completely understand that both writers and editors are really busy, but sometimes it can be helpful to just have a 10–15-minute conversation about things. I’m sure we’ve all received text messages that we’ve looked at and thought ‘I’m not sure how to take that’. It can be the same with feedback on manuscripts. Depending on the day I’m having, the feedback can sometimes be taken ‘wrongly’. This is where an initial chat on the phone can help, just so I feel more familiar with the editor and ‘get them’ a bit more. Writing is quite a lonely profession – you tend to sit on your own, in the quiet, for long periods of time – and when it comes to making revisions, the offer of a chat is sometimes really nice.

I’ve been working with an editor who is new to the team at OUP and she always signs off her emails by saying if you don’t want to spend lots of time answering via email, just give me a call and we’ll chat things through. Most of the time I respond by email, but sometimes it’s really nice to talk. Open lines of communication are a really important part of the process.

Solution-focused feedback

Another part of the process that I really value is the way I get my feedback. Personally, I don’t mind at all if an editor makes minor changes (though I still want Track Changes to show me what they are!). I write lots of words that make up lots of sentences, so will sometimes mess up the way I structure a sentence, or simply ‘overwrite’ something that can be expressed more succinctly. The editors I find easiest to work with simply fix these problems with minimal fuss. I like it when that happens – I trust the editor to get that right. And when I’ve had a conversation with the editor already, when I’ve chatted on the phone, it makes me value their changes more because I think that they understand me a little.

With slightly larger changes, in my opinion, the best editors are the ones that help you out! They throw me a bone when something reads a little ‘off’. I might have pored over the paragraph for over an hour, and in my eyes I’ve made it as good as it can be. If an editor thinks there should be a change to the ‘thrust’ or shape of the paragraph (or perhaps the whole spread itself), it is so incredibly helpful if they help out a little and shape it how they want to. It’s so nice when I read in the comments at the side of a Word document, ‘I think this might read a little better like this: [and then they construct, or part-construct the text] – have a look and let me know what you think.’ Most times I will just accept these changes.

Feedback that doesn’t overwhelm

When I get an edited manuscript back it’s usually accompanied by a load of mark-ups and comments via Track Changes. If there are loads of comments and changes – and the manuscript is awash with different coloured text where revisions have been made – it can be a little daunting (and demoralising). In recent years, I have asked my editors to clean it up a little before I get it back. Especially if the manuscript has gone to two or more people, and they’ve all made comments – do I really need to see the whole discussion? As I mentioned before, I’m happy for the changes to be made and sent back to me for a final ‘yes’ (it’s nearly always ‘yes’).

In a similar vein, feedback from OUP arrives in two forms – and I like it. The manuscript is edited and I get feedback via comments and Track Changes. All good. Then, at the next stage (when the first proof is ready), I get a ‘queries grid’, which is a Word document that acts as a conversation between reviewer, editor(s) and me. This is the part of the process that is sometimes done over the phone, and is where the quality of the relationship between editor and author is important. These grids are used to track decisions made together about queries.

Concrete examples

Another particularly powerful idea is to actually show an author the direction you want them to go in. I’ve just undertaken a new project in which the style of writing is a little different to what I’m used to. The editor simply exemplified what was required – she gave a WAGOLL. This is something that most teachers are familiar with – What A Good One Looks Like. I think this is key for getting the best out of an author – model what you want them to do.

I think this is especially important with new authors. I regard myself as a bit of an ‘old lag’ now. It’s never my first rodeo when I get a new book contract, but I know (because they’ve told me) that new authors find it really helpful to be shown what needs to be done. I’m not entirely sure that sending them a ten-page document covering what needs to be included is particularly helpful – it’s just a ‘wall of words’ – so in my experience the most productive new author meetings are the ones where you sit round a table (or on Teams) and have an experienced author come up with five, eight or ten top tips or ‘golden rules’ for writing spreads. I’ve done this several times with new author teams where I’ve sat with them and explained how a spread is formed and how the process works for me.

I enjoy and value working with editors, and have always embraced the process. I’ve become really friendly with several editors, and have even phoned them to pick their brains on little issues that have cropped up when working on other projects. To their credit, they have always been most helpful, and I have returned the favour several times when I’ve been contacted by editors who wanted a chat about something that they were struggling to get their head around. I realise that every editor–author relationship will be different, but I hope the things that have helped the editing process to go more smoothly for me might help other editors and writers out there too.

About Aaron Wilkes

Aaron Wilkes has over 20 years’ experience in teaching history and writing school textbooks. During this time he’s written or contributed to over 80 textbooks, revision guides and online resources. He leads the PGCE Secondary History course at the University of Warwick and is the co-creator and owner of the online history journal practicalhistories.com.

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Posted by Harriet Power, CIEP information commissioning editor.

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

A week in the life of a freelance editorial project manager

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What does editorial project management actually involve and where do copyeditors and proofreaders fit into the process? In this post, Julia Sandford-Cooke describes some of the typical tasks she undertakes as a freelance editorial project manager working on educational projects.

The week begins with a review of my To Do list and a check of schedules because To Do lists and schedules are at the core of editorial project management. I’m currently an editorial project manager (EPM) on two large educational projects and I spend a lot of time checking, updating, ticking off and fretting about dates. These days, the scheduling software Smartsheet defines the work of the whole team; some projects have five or six separate schedules for different components, all feeding into each other, dates turning red if one of those components begins to run late.

In fact, if you run your own editorial business you’ll already have skills in getting tasks done on time and within budget for external clients.

I’m drawing attention to this straight away because newer editors sometimes feel that they lack the experience to take on a project management role, that they don’t have the right qualifications or enough in-depth knowledge of how publishing works. But, looking back at my early days as an editorial assistant at an educational publisher, I realise that I’ve been a project manager for most of my career – certainly before I began to define myself as a hands-on ‘editorial professional’. If you’re able to organise, schedule and write polite emails, you’re halfway there – in-house experience isn’t necessary, although admittedly it can make finding project management work easier, not least because of the network of contacts you’ll have built.

What does an EPM do?

So what do I do in a typical week? Well, it depends on the project – I work in educational publishing and a teacher resource is quite different to an online lesson or a printed textbook – but, in general, an EPM is expected to:

maintain schedules
keep track of spending, including maintaining budget records and raising purchase orders for freelance work
commission freelancers, such as copyeditors, proofreaders, fact-checkers and indexers
communicate with typesetters or digital teams and make sure they follow the brief and stick to the schedules
keep the client informed of progress, via emails and meetings (yes, an EPM does have to be prepared to attend and contribute to weekly or fortnightly video meetings)
collate proof comments from the project team – it’s not uncommon to bring together and streamline corrections and queries from the publisher’s content manager, designer and commissioning editor, the awarding body (if the resource is being endorsed), the proofreader, the author, the fact-checker and an internal peer checker, all within a single PDF proof.

I have to fit all this in among other, smaller, editing and proofreading jobs for other clients – yes, back to scheduling again!

Who do EPMs work for?

Most EPMs either work directly with a publisher or – more often these days – work for a ‘packager’ or publishing agency that is contracted with the publisher and completes the projects using a mixture of their own employees and freelancers like me. Examples of UK-based educational publishing agencies (who, incidentally, all have friendly and supportive staff) are Haremi, Just Content and Newgen.

EPMs may be given a company email address while they work on their projects, which I have to admit goes against my sense of being a self-employed person with my own brand identity. However, it does reinforce a feeling of teamwork with colleagues on the project – whether in-house or freelance – and means that people you contact know which business you are representing.

Typical task: commissioning and briefing freelancers

Which brings me to today’s pressing task. I need to commission a proofreader to start next week. As a freelancer myself, I know that ideally jobs should be arranged a few weeks in advance but, of course, the unexpected often happens – projects run late, someone gets Covid – so unfortunately I’m finding it a challenge to identify someone suitable at short notice. I prefer to use an editorial professional who I know will do a good job, who I’ve worked with before or who is recommended by a colleague. When I was looking for an indexer, a team member said, ‘Use this person – she’s awesome!’ And indeed she was. That’s the sort of recommendation project managers look for, and that gets freelancers repeat work.

In this case, the proofreader also has to fulfil certain criteria. They must:

have access to, and have previously used, the client publisher’s online systems. Getting set up is a long and complicated business, even before you are confronted with what could be a new and bewildering interface, and time is not on our side.
be on the packager’s freelance database. This means they’ve (probably) passed the editorial test, signed a confidentiality agreement and been added to the finance systems so that a purchase order can be raised and they can invoice.

I only contact one person at a time – it’s probably not the most efficient way of working but I don’t want to ask several people and then have to let them down in the admittedly unlikely event of them all being available for the job. It’s made me realise, with my freelance editor hat (tiara?) on, that EPMs value a quick response, whether it’s yes or no, so that they can keep their project moving.

I have adapted the brief to meet the needs of this resource and contact three potential proofreaders. The first is too busy, the second will be on holiday and the third is going on maternity leave. I make a cup of coffee and collate some proofs while I consider who to contact next.

Typical task: collating proofs

This is one of my favourite jobs, especially now it’s done on PDF on my screen and not on a desk covered in reams of A3 pages from five different sources. It’s where my editorial skills come in handy, as I assess all the comments, take out duplications and make a judgement on which corrections to ask the typesetter to make. As I work through, I compile a query log where, for example, the fact-checker has raised author queries or where the designer and the content manager of the publisher have suggested different solutions to overmatter. I upload the PDF and query log to their online system and let the content manager know it’s ready for her to check. She is very efficient so I know she will consider it carefully and get back to me with any questions.

Typical task: checking a digital project

Now I need to check that corrections have been made to my other project, a digital resource, so I log out of one system and log into another. This type of resource is new territory for the whole team so there’s been a constant stream of online messages as colleagues ask for advice. Digital projects will become more common as publishers innovate to meet the needs of the market (in this case, blending remote and classroom learning), and publishing agencies often put out requests for people with skills and experience in digital publishing and associated platforms. Freelancers who have worked on this project and others like it – whether over the longer term as EPMs, or on specific tasks such as proofreading – will be in demand for similar jobs in the future.

Editorial project management can be tiring, frustrating and stressful. On the other hand, it’s exciting and satisfying to see a project through, to watch it develop and to help shape it to be as good as it can be for the market and for the client. If you like a challenge – and what editorial professional doesn’t? – and, of course, if you thrive on schedules and To Do lists, it’s definitely worth considering. Check out the CIEP’s Editorial Project Management course if you want to learn more.

About Julia-Sandford Cooke

Julia Sandford-Cooke of WordFire Communications has 20 years’ experience of publishing and marketing. She has written and edited numerous textbooks, specialising in vocational education, media studies, construction, health and safety, and travel.

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Photo credits: calendar by rattanakun on Canva, laptop by Jessica Lewis Creative on Pexels.

Posted by Harriet Power, CIEP information commissioning editor.

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