Samhain Publishing Ltd Weblog

Let This be the Start of a Beautiful Relationship

New authors often wonder what editors expect from them, and what they can do to ensure a productive editor/author relationship. It’s quite simple, really. It’s all about communication and professionalism.

When you receive your first round of edits, be prepared for your precious words to be criticized and dissected nine ways to Sunday. After all, an editor is supposed to point out things that could be improved. We’re looking for inconsistencies, faulty logic, impossible timelines, ambiguities, outdated content, point-of-view slips, weak transitions, misplaced modifiers, repeated information, insufficiently developed characterizations, unbelievable motivation, jarring speeches, noticeable patterns, junk words, punctuation errors and opportunities to deepen the reader’s level of emotional engagement. So, yeah, chances are we’ll find a few things that we’ll ask to be changed.

It’s hard for some authors to see critical editorial comments such as “awkward phrasing”, and it’s natural to feel defensive. Step back, take a deep breath, and remember we’re on the same side—our pay depends on your sales. It’s our job to ensure adherence to house style and to point out anything that might make a reader pause and scratch her head. Think of us as advocates for the readers, who may clamor for more detail about certain characters and want you to speed things along by snipping out the more boring bits.

Now, you might feel strongly about the need to keep certain passages you’ve been asked to cut, because you need them to set up something that happens in chapter twenty. Should you gnash your teeth and bite your tongue and hit delete? In a case like that, I suggest you let your editor know. But if you consider the editor’s reason for the requested cut, you’ll probably figure out a more elegant solution: one that both meets the editor’s aim of speeding up the pacing while still planting the seeds for a plot twist ten chapter later.

This doesn’t mean that you should argue every edit. Pick your battles: if an punctuation edit is made for reasons of house style, it’s not likely you’ll be able to persuade your editor to make an exception for your book. But if you think you’ll feel uncomfortable with the result of a content revision, by all means you should speak up.

Give your editor feedback, too. Are you happy with the result? Do you wish you’d fought harder over not changing that subplot? Are you thrilled with the book but wish the editor’s criticism had been laced with more praise? Let us know. That goes for things beyond your edits. We can’t help resolve any issues an author might have—whether with the cover art, marketing blurb, or publication date—if we don’t know about them.

Many authors turn in a beautifully polished manuscript for their first book—a manuscript that’s been revised to within an inch of its life based on feedback from contests, crit partners and workshops. Then, after that first sale, some of these authors are in such a rush to send me their next project they submit a first-draft quality ms, perhaps because they think that as one of “my” authors they no longer need to put their best foot forward. This will not impress me, because I expect my authors’ succeeding efforts to require less, not more, editing. I would expect a professional author to constantly study and hone her craft, and learn to self-edit based on her past experience working with me, so that her next project is even cleaner—and has an even better shot at a contract.

Another opportunity for an author to demonstrate his or her professionalism is by maintaining discretion in cyberspace. Criticism and rejection hurt, and the nature of editing means authors often receive both. Suppress your desire to vent about your editor publicly. Trust me, if your editor isn’t following your tweets or commenting on your blog or Divas posts, it doesn’t mean that it won’t get back to us eventually. Likewise, please be considerate of your fellow authors. There are writers whose submissions I won’t even look at because of the way they’ve attacked Samhain authors online.

Keeping it professional needn’t mean being all stuffy and formal. I love hearing when you’re celebrating a major milestone such as an engagement, a new baby or a new house, and it’s not inappropriate to let me know when the news is not so pleasant— divorce, unemployment, illness or bereavement—since it could spare me from nagging you about a due date on a sensitive day. But save the details for your friends and family. And while I’m happy to discuss your writing career—pen names, genres and lengths and premises of future projects—I’m not the one you should turn to for advice on personal matters.

Communication is important in other ways, too. If you anticipate something coming up that might interfere with your availability to work on edits, such as surgery or a long trip, let your editor know as soon as possible. Advance notice shows respect for the publishing staff’s time. The sooner we know, the easier it will be for us to arrange the publication and editing schedule to accommodate this. Don’t wait until edits have landed in your inbox to tell your editor that you’re just off for a sail around the world and won’t be reachable for months or that your doctoral thesis is due so you won’t have time to review edits on your hundred-thousand-word novel until next year.

Now it’s your turn to tell us: what do authors expect from their editors?