Thursday, September 9, 2010

What a real publisher brings to the table . . .

The piece below is part of a discussion on LinkedIn that was started by the author Douglas Keeney. Although the book in question is non-fiction (hence the intense legal session) the same things hold true for works of fiction. These are all things that would cost a great deal for a self-published author to provide for themselves. Just some food for thought in the ongoing debate over the pros/cons of self-publishing:"I'm impressed with my publisher. Here are some of the things they did for my manuscript.

My new book is due out in Feb from St. Martin's. I am so impressed with their attention to the manuscript.

1. The editor gave me comments during the early rewrites. It was like going to graduate school and the topic is you, and how to make you a better writer.
2. Three months later, I go in to the mandatory legal review. This involved three two-hour sessions page-by-page thru my manuscript with their outside law firm. Intense. Not a lot of casual conversation. The focus of their questions are-- is that person dead or alive? What is the soruce of their quote? If I interviewed the person, did I have a permission?
3. Next came the line edit. FedEx delivers to me a copy of the 536 page manuscript marked up by the line editor. With teeny marks made in red pencil, I count roughly 5.000 typos, grammatical and punctuation mistakes corrected by my line editor. At least 500 queries are written in the margin for the au -- for me, the author -- to answer."

*excerpt from a discussion on LinkedIn 

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