Professional Editors?

[cw gortner]

[quote=""Catherine Delors""]Sounds like you are very fortunate with your editor/publisher, Cindy. What I like about my "own" editor is that she points out things I already know, but don't want to know. She is a mind-reader. [/quote]

My editor is the same; she has an uncanny ability to zero in on the flaws and weaknesses in the ms., as well as those areas that require refinement. With a three to four-page editorial letter, she and her assistant editor know just how to set me up for revisions.

My copyeditor is terrific, too; she finds those tiny mistakes that always slip between the proverbial cracks. I hope I'll get the same one for my Catherine de Medici book.

My agent is invaluable, however: she doesn't line-edit but rather acts more as a story and character development editor. Some of my best ideas during revision came during discussions with her.

[EC2]

[quote=""Catherine Delors""]Wow, EC2, this Richenda person sounds a bit scary. Do you feel she is always right?[/quote]

No, she's not always right, so while I always listen to her, I don't always follow her suggestions. However, she is darned good. Usually it boils down to about 3 STETS in a 500 page novel and a couple of 'This is why so and so has to stay' replies on the explanation sheet. She's not scary at all; I get on with her very well. It's more like putting your valuables into the hands of someone you can trust to do the best for them without interfering with your voice. (and I've had one or two apalling copy-eds in my day). She doesn't just do historicals. The UK's top selling Katie Fforde always has Richenda for her modern rom-coms.

Xiaotien, Not all UK publications go down this route, although many of them do.
Perhaps you'll have a 'UK' experience with your novels in the future!

[Christine Blevins]

[quote=""Catherine Delors""]
Truth is, an agent doesn't have time to edit. She likes your manuscript, or not. "Editors" at big publishing houses, ditto. Their job is to purchase new stuff, and the title "editor" is just a remnant of times long gone, like the vestigial tails of tadpoles. The people who do edit are line-editors. That comes very late in the process, or not at all. I am currently reading "The Hemingses of Monticello" which is a GREAT book, but unfortunately not line-edited. The difference really shows.[/quote]

I think the process must vary from agent to agent, and house to house.

As a debut author, I have only limited experience to go on, and it was opposite to the one you cite here. My agent is an ex-editor, and though she did not line edit, she did catch a few typos for correction. She claimed my manuscript was very clean, and she has in the past worked with her authors doing in-depth line edits in order to get a manuscript into the proper shape. She wants wants any manuscript she is representing to be the best it can be for submission.

My editor at Berkley also does not line edit per say, but she will give comments and suggestions where she thinks a scene may need to be fleshed out or tightened, and she will question word choice, dialog tags, etc. Then the copy editor then does a very, very thorough line edit in keeping with house style, with instructions to the typesetter.

We all put a microscope to the first galleys (which ended up being the ARC) and everyone makes further corrections and edits. After those were instituted, the final galleys went through one more very thorough review by me, my editor and the fresh eyes of a proof reader—who double-checks a whole slew of things beyond punctuation, like continuity of character and place name spellings, archaic word spellings—and there were some good catches being made, even at this final stage. Through it all, I always have input and approval.

It seems kind of funny, but I have not actually read the published MIDWIFE OF THE BLUE RIDGE, so I really don't know if there are any mistakes in it that were overlooked. I hope not!

I have a two-book deal, and my agent acted as a beta reader on my recently turned in manuscript #2 , which will be published in April. I have an over-the-phone editorial meeting scheduled for tomorrow with my editor, and the whole process begins again!

[cw gortner]

My experience at Ballantine was very similiar to yours, Christine. And funny thing is, I've never read the published version of The Last Queen, either.

But my German translator - of all people - e-mailed me while translating the book and told me he'd found a few errors, which I scrambled to get fixed for the trade paperback that'll be released in July 2009. One was a river name; in Spain, it's the river Esla and I had it right in my initial ms. but somewhere along the way during revisions my word processing software auto-corrected it to Elsa, as in the lion. None of us caught it, though we read the galleys over and over. Even the Spanish publisher failed to catch it!