It's not often I'll diverge from books and publishing business on the blog to talk about other things. And I rarely rave about TV or other books - I usually don't have the time to read much other than submissions and the only TV I watch is on catch-up!
However, as a long-time Doctor Who fan I have been watching the progression and coming-of-age of the Doctor with great interest . . .
Having worked in publishing for so long I know that, from the outside looking in, it can seem a rather bewildering and daunting industry. Most readers don't know how long it takes to put a book together, the process involved in getting a script from (a)uthor to (b)ookshelf. It takes a hell of a lot of work both from the author and publisher and all those in between including typesetters, printers and booksellers. It's usually between 12-18 months before a delivered script will see the inside of a bookshop. So what happens during that process?
We all know that the majority of the mainstream would be happy to watch a horror flick and yet most would baulk at the idea of picking up a horror novel. Why is that when the genre has evolved so much in the last few years? And how do the authors who excel in the genre go about writing something that makes other people afraid? I ask two of the best UK horror writers writing today for their tips on how to send shivers down your spine.
Last year on the Tor Books blog I wrote a piece about how frustrated I was that there were so few decent girl's figures for my daughter to play with. I even challenged a toy buyer I knew for one of the major chains as to why this was the case - she seemed not to have really given it much thought but suspected it may well be because the toy makers thought they wouldn't sell.
So I did a blog piece last week about the types and styles of editing there were. I concentrated predominantly on traditional publishing editors because that’s what I’d spent the last fifteen years doing!
Here I go into a bit more detail about what I used to do with an editorial report and get an author's perspective on how their experience of the process was.
So over the last few weeks I've seen a few discussions about the value of editors. Some authors decrying the need for such a resource and others passionately defending them. There also seemed to be quite a lot of confusion as to what it is an editor actually does. Do they do line work, structural, copyediting? What's the difference? And how do freelance editors differ from those working in a traditional publishing house? Let's find out . . .
