✍️ Tandem Services Editing & Coaching: What’s copyediting?
Empowering you to write the stories of your heart and increasing your impact with a book. Helpful information for your writing career each month In this issue:
Craft: Communicate Great!The Communicate Great Biz Bundle is here! I have some resources available in it, and I grabbed some of these already. It’s only open for a little while, so sign up and start claiming your goodies. This focused bundle is designed for small biz people like you (and if you’re an author, congratulations, you own a business!) who want to level up their business communications skills, outputs, and processes. Because being able to communicate in and about your business more effectively and efficiently can lead to rewards like:
Here’s a quick overview of this Bundle:
This great deal expires at midnight on Sunday, so get it now! Career: What’s a Copyedit?There are a lot of different definitions of what editing is and does. There are no real standards for editors, so writers often have no good way of knowing if an editor is worthwhile. Even recommendations can be biased. Just because your writer friend liked their editor doesn’t mean it was a good edit or would be a good fit for you. But it’s also important that your editor gets you and your story. It needs to be a good fit. My goal is always to preserve your vision and your voice for your story. You want an editor who also wants that for you, as well as making your story the best it can be. Last month I talked about developmental editing. It’s the first step in a comprehensive edit. You want to start with this, because it deals with the structure of the book. Once you have that the way you want it, then it’s time to move to the copyedit, which is a polishing pass. This is the step most people think of as editing.This is where the editor looks at the sentence and paragraph structure of the book, making it the most clear and readable. Whether for fiction or nonfiction, a copyedit edit will look at the these issues:
Be willing to look past the red ink. It looks like a lot, but everyone’s manuscript looks like that. Be sure to use Track Changes to approve the changes you agree with. If there’s a change you have a question about, use Comments. Be encouraged! Your manuscript is getting better. This stage is the last time to make any significant changes to the manuscript. After this, we will just be looking for errors, so make sure you have things the way you want them. Just like with developmental editing, rices for copyedits vary based on word count, where you are on the writing journey, and the expertise of your editor. In general, you get what you pay for, like most things in life. Because a developmental edit does such heavy lifting and gives you the most bang for your buck, you can expect to pay about half of the cost of a developmental edit, on average between $1,000-$3,000. Next month I’ll talk about proofreading. Career: How to be productive if you’re not naturally wired that wayMy son and I were talking about the Myers-Briggs personality types the other day. Now, if you know me, you know I love the Enneagram. But I find any kind of personality typing system fascinating. And so going down that rabbit hole, I found this great video that I think will help a lot of you. Even if you don’t know your MBTI or you’re not an ENFP, many authors and creatives are. This was one of the best videos I’ve seen how to be productive if you’re not naturally wired that way. Where you can find me Want personalized writing advice? Share a writing, editing, or publishing hurdle you have faced or a question you have and I will email you an autographed copy of Eat the Elephant: How to Write (and Finish!) Your Book One Bite at a Time and send you a personalized five-minute video. Click here to find out more. This month’s resource recommendationPeople do judge books by their covers. That’s why I spend the money to have create covers designed by Alexander von Ness of Ness Graphica. He does great work, not only for me, but other authors. If you’ve asked for a cover designer recommendation from me, it’s likely I’ve sent you to him. Check out his portfolio here: https://www.nessgraphica.com/ Look carefully and you can see one of my books peeking out in his header. Writing quoteNo tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader. — Robert Frost Pressing on! Jennifer PS—You should assume any link in this Update is an affiliate link. It costs you nothing more but gives me a few pennies. 🙂 |
