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Episode Transcript

 

Rekka (00:01):Welcome back to another episode of, we make books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. I'm Rekka. I write science fiction and fantasy as R J Theodore.

Kaelyn (00:10):I'm Kaelyn Considine. I'm the acquisition editor for Pu... Pu... Wait, I'm the acquisitions editor for Parvus Press. And we can edit that out.

Rekka (00:20):Yeah. Is that a line edit?

Kaelyn (00:24):Oh God. You know what? That's a good question. That, uh, I think that would be a line edit. Yeah. Uh, yeah. So today we're talking about editing. Um, I know it's something we've talked about before. I think we, we really were very focused on developmental edits.

Rekka (00:40):Well, sure. Because that's your favorite, right?

Kaelyn (00:43):Yeah. You know, there's, there's different components and different people you're going to encounter through the process of editing a book and they'll all want different things from you and be asking you to change different aspects of the book. So—

Rekka (00:56):Oh, one thing we didn't say: that you are the author and your name goes on the cover. So all of these edits come from people who are hired because this is their specialty. However, this is your story. So it is up to you to stand by these edits. And if you don't feel comfortable standing by the edits, then you should not accept them.

Kaelyn (01:22):Qualifier. I will have there: check your contract. Your book may have been accepted conditionally pending you making certain changes. So there's uh, there's contractual obligations for edits. But you know, as Rekka said, at the end of the day here, his name is on this. We talk a little bit at the end of the episode, about how, you know, people are, might yell at you online about things that you had absolutely no control over. So control the stuff that you can.

Rekka (01:47):Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So anyway, um, there are lots of kinds of edits and they are variably painful each in their own way.

Kaelyn (01:56):Some are far more excruciating than others.

Rekka (02:00):And on the other side of this lovely ditty, we will tell you about them.

Kaelyn (02:17):...that landing devices on Mars is becoming as routine as something like that can be, is, is very, is very cool. So yeah.

Rekka (02:27):Yeah. Speaking of routine. How's that?

Kaelyn (02:33):You've probably heard us say things like developmental edits, copy edits, line edits. And if you're going okay, well, what the heck is all of this art? Don't I just edit the book. No, you don't.

Rekka (02:46):Sometimes you edit the book. Sometimes someone else edits the book, sometimes a third person edits the book. And sometimes you get a stack of pages and you hope that someone edited the book real well.

Kaelyn (03:02):Yes. There's three main kinds of edits. You're going to come across while working on a book and then a fourth step in this order: developmental edits line edits and copy edit. Then after copy, edit, typically comes a proofreading. We're going to go through these step-by-step and instead of giving you definitions upfront, explain what they are as we're walking through them. So Rekka, as somebody who's gone through this process, what would you say your favorite part of all of these edits are? if you had to pick one of the three, what's your favorite?

Rekka (03:36):Page proofs.

Kaelyn (03:39):Really? Even as a writer?

Rekka (03:40):Yeah. No, I mean, cause you're almost there. This is the point where you are just making sure that nothing weird happened in the process of getti