The sexiest person in publishing is your copyeditor. Seriously.
Okay. First things first:
What the hell is a copyeditor?
That’s a hard question because honestly copyeditors can’t even agree on how to spell copyeditor or copyediting.
Grammar nerds use style guides for consistency and those guides could be Chicago (most books), AP (most newspapers), MLA (other stuff like college) and they all have slightly different rules that copyeditors and publishers follow.
Those differences are really obvious when you just look at how to spell copyeditor.
Chicago Manual makes it all one word – copyeditor.
AP makes it two words – copy editor.
WIT uses – copy-edit or copyedit
Agh!
But basically what copyeditors do is broken down like this:
1. Make it conform to a style that the publishing house uses.
2. Makes sure the cross references are cool, checks things like footnotes, tables, endnotes, illustration, caption, content, etc.
3. Edits the language, grammar, etc.
4. Tells us writers if there is something super inconsistent in the story
5. Reminds the author that they need permission to use poems or song lyrics, etc.
6. Sometimes checks the chapter numbers, subtitles, headings,
They are the organizational, picky geniuses of the publishing world. They are people who look for errors, remind you of the rules, the hall monitors of publishing.
It’s hard to make that sound sexy, but damn, it’s sexy. These unsung heroes make your book look good, you look intelligent, and what’s sexier than that?
Writing Tip of the Cast
Being sexy isn’t about having your hair down. Listen to our random thought for more on that. Being sexy is about taking all the steps to make what you create as good as it can be. What you create might be a marriage, a book, a painting, a baby. Whatever. Invest the time in it. Invest care in it. That’s damn sexy.
Dog Tip For Life
Pay attention to people who help you better. Blow off the people who hurt you in the guise of helping. Go with your gut instead.
SHOUT OUT
The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Night Owl” by Broke For Free.
WRITING NEWS
IN THE WOODS – READ AN EXCERPT, PREORDER NOW!
My next book, IN THE WOODS, appears in July with Steve Wedel. It’s scary and one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Buzz Books for Summer 2019. There’s an excerpt of it there and everything! But even cooler (for me) they’ve deemed it buzz worthy! Buzz worthy seems like an awesome thing to be deemed!
You can preorder this bad boy, which might make it have a sequel. The sequel would be amazing. Believe me, I know. It features caves and monsters and love. Because doesn’t every story?
ART NEWS
You can buy limited-edition prints and learn more about my art here on my site.
Patreon of Awesome
You can get exclusive content, early podcasts, videos, art and listen (or read) never-to-be-officially published writings of Carrie on her Patreon. Levels go from $1 to $100 (That one includes writing coaching and editing for you wealthy peeps).
WHAT IS PATREON?
A lot of you might be new to Patreon and not get how it works. That’s totally cool. New things can be scary, but there’s a cool primer HERE that explains how it works. The short of it is this: You give Patreon your paypal or credit card # and they charge you whatever you level you choose at the end of each month. That money supports me sharing my writing and art and podcasts and weirdness with you.
