Author and Editor Together: Building the Best Manuscript

By Jon Harrison

This booklet is about the author-editor partnership and the role it plays in creating the best possible manuscript. It focuses on the partnership between the freelance editor and his or her author-client. By author-client I mean the individual author who seeks out an editor and pays that person directly for services rendered.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Editorial Freelancers Association
• Release date: Jul 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781880407752

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Author and Editor Together: Building the Best Manuscript

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the friends and colleagues who contributed their thoughts to this essay, and particularly those folks who graciously gave me permission to quote them by name. Special thanks go to Steve Cox, Martin Felando, Ivy Green, Dana Peterson, and Deidra Parrish Williams.

I would also like to thank my wife Gerri and our daughter Kate for their patience and support.

J.H.

Introduction

This booklet is about the author-editor partnership and the role it plays in creating the best possible manuscript. It focuses on the partnership between the freelance editor and his or her author-client. By author-client I mean the individual author who seeks out an editor and pays that person directly for services rendered.

The booklet does not consider the role of an editor employed by a publishing house, journal, or magazine. Nor does it consider the role of an editor who works for a publisher or other organization on a freelance basis. It is, rather, about author and editor alone together, and how they, working together, can turn a draft into a polished manuscript ready for the eyes of an agent or publisher.

An editor working for an organization as an employee or freelancer is paid by that organization, whereas a freelance editor working directly for an author is paid by that author. The relationship between author and editor is inevitably affected by the fact that the author is also the person writing the checks. The freelance editor who works directly for an author is not really an employee, but not quite an independent contractor either, at least not in the way