Copyediting vs. Editing - Taylor Stevens Tells Us the Difference

Have you ever wondered what a copyeditor does?  How about an editor?  And what's the difference? This is something that I think a lot of us don't know.  Taylor Stevens, an author who has graced this blog in the past, clarifies these questions.  I've got the whole article below.

But I've got a couple of other things to tell you first.

1.  My buddy Steve sent me this link to Amazon's 1st brick-and-mortar bookstore.  It's in Seattle (not surprisingly, since that's where Amazon's headquarters are).  They just announced that they've picked San Diego for their 2nd location.  And they intend to open a bunch more across the country.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/12/business/media/a-virtual-trip-through-amazons-physical-store.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share

2.  I announced this on social media.  But let me announce it here.  About 4 years ago, I asked for, got, and posted guest blogs.  I want to do that again.  Whether you are officially connected to book world (blogger, author, editor, publisher, etc.) or not, I would welcome your input.  If you've got something to say about books (print, ebooks, audiobooks), let me have it.  And if you want to connect  with me, go ahead and send me an email at lloydrrussell@gmail.com.

3.  Here is Taylor Stevens on editing/copyediting:

A Report from the Author Trenches: Copyeditors One of the things we talked about way-back-when is the difference between editors and copy editors. A brief recap: when most people outside publishing say “editor” what they’re really referring to is a copyeditor—the person who cleans up a manuscript for grammar, typos and word usage, and does small fact checking. Editors are the guys and gals who acquire the manuscript for the publisher, guide the book through the production process, and work with the author on big picture details like plot, characters, pacing, and what’s working/ not working in the story. Editors don’t typically do much in the way of copyediting. I’ve mentioned before that not all copyeditors are created equal and how the good ones have caught some horrific bloopers and saved me from looking really stupid. An example of that kind of blooper was in THE INFORMATIONIST when I’d somehow mixed up all my latitudes and longitudes. Maybe most readers wouldn’t have noticed but it would have created credibility issues for those that did. Odds are pretty slim that the copyeditor spotted my mistakes just by looking at them, which means s/he double checked the details and that’s how the errors were caught. I’ve made mistakes throughout every book in this series, sometimes due to using outdated sources, sometimes just due to my own lack of attention to detail. I’ve gotten populations wrong and descriptions wrong, I’ve made mistakes when comparing one thing to the next, screwed up the way I referenced GDP and other statistical details, not to mention that every page I write is riddled with punctuation errors. Needless to say I need copyeditors and am grateful for them. But some copyeditors are smarter than others, and some take a lot more pride in checking the details than others do. I thought it might be fun to share a few of copyeditor bloopers. Now, to be fair, I must preface with this: copyediting is a pretty thankless job. Every book needs copyediting which makes copyeditors critical to the publication process, but copyeditors are mostly outsourced, which makes them necessary as whole and keeps them expendable and interchangeable as individuals and that’s really gotta suck. And, since their job is to point out all the things that are wrong, it’s not like anyone rejoices in getting their work. Copyeditors are the kind of like the dentists of the publishing world. What defines a “good” and “bad” copyeditor probably varies from author to author and book to book. And it’s possible, maybe, that a fantastic copyeditor for one person has a bad day for the next. It’s all relative. I’m not bashing anyone here—that’s the point I’m trying to make. Personally, I have two copyediting gripes—only two—and if a copyeditor manages to avoid both of them, that copyeditor is AWESOME in my esteem and I will request to have him or her again if in any way the publisher can make that happen. If the copyeditor manages to avoid at least one of these gripes, I still consider it a decent experience. But hit them both and I will be giving side-eye glares and thinking less than generous thoughts. My first gripe is ignorance/ unawareness when amplified by slothfulness. A lot can be told about the quality of the work by the specific things the copyeditor queries the author on, and what the copyeditor lets slip through without querying or checking. Here’s an example from an original (not copyedited) text: “[Logan] stepped back to cover the clerk while Gideon zip tied the man’s hands behind his back.” The copyeditor highlighted “zip ties” and noted, “not sure what this is.” So the copyeditor didn’t know what a zip tie was. That’s a little unusual seeing how zip ties are used for so many things that it would be nearly impossible to have lived a college-educated life in the United States without ever having come across one, but okay, no biggie, moving right along, right? Actually, this is kind of a quality-related issue because the same person who didn’t know what a zip tie was is the person whose job it is to make sure that words are used correctly in context *but they didn’t bother to look up and/or Google the unfamiliar*. (Sadly, this happened a number of times in the same manuscript.) “I don’t understand what this means” and all its variants is a very important query, but its best used when the copyeditor finds a sentence, paragraph, or scene to be unclear. Unfamiliar terms really should be looked up, in the same way other details are looked up, to make sure they are being used correctly. It’s been my experience that when a copyeditor queries on the easy stuff without double checking, bigger things tend to get missed entirely—possibly because they’re so focused on the little stuff they are oblivious to what matters most (but I honestly don’t know why it is). I’ve only twice experienced blatant errors escaping the copyedit process and both times it came at the hands of those who focused on the “zip ties” of the manuscript. Thankfully, in these instances the big mistakes were caught by someone else before they went to print. Here is my all-time favorite example of that first copyediting gripe: The original (non-copyedited) text said: “They settled again into small talk, then gradually into silence as Logan, lulled by the peace of her presence, the rhythm of the wheels against the tracks, and fighting three days awake, drifted into the oblivion of sleep.” The copyeditor wrote: “Is this an old fashion train? Trains these days don’t have wheels.” Let us pause a moment for reflection. And then maybe do a brief search through Google images? My second copyediting gripe is when the copyeditor is tone deaf and so grammatically correct that s/he destroys all cadence and author style by inserting every he, it, that, was, she, and were that had been deliberately omitted from the text. Gratefully, I have only experienced this twice. Not surprisingly, this too was at the hands of the “zip tie” copyeditors. Salt in this wound is when the copyeditor insertions are (carelessly?) placed between the wrong two words. As I said above, copyediting is a mostly thankless job and even though it’s easy to roll eyes and poke fingers at the less than stellar copyediting experiences, the truth is they still put a