I recently bought a new washing machine, for the first time in decades. Not surprisingly, even the fairly basic model I purchased has more bells and whistles than I know what to do with, because technology is like that. As the machine operates, it automatically runs through several cycles I didn’t know I needed, but the clothes come out clean, so mission accomplished.
Now what if there was a publishing machine, where you could feed in a manuscript, add water or some other magic potion, let it run and end up with a beautiful book? While that’s an intriguing concept and there are certainly some handy tools available to streamline the various stages of work, the publishing process is simply not as straightforward as rinse and repeat. In fact, nearly every book my team and I produce serves as yet another example that there are more exceptions than rules in this business. Not exactly a scenario that can be accommodated by automation and a handful of buttons.
How about if we trade the notion of a one-size-fits-all book-making machine for a recommended series of activities designed to create the best book possible? In essence, that’s what the traditional publishing model offers—a curated team of experts putting their talents to work on each client’s book. A self-publishing author can and should access the same level of talent if the desired end game is professional-grade results. And really, why wouldn’t that always be the goal?
At the risk of sounding like shameless self-promotion, I believe there’s great value in quality book design services. After all, doesn’t your unique story deserve an equally unique treatment? Of course it does.
But if you want a quality end product, you have to invest in quality throughout. That includes the full range of editorial services from developmental editing, line and copy editing to proofreading and indexing. While those services are outside my hands-on purview, a recent project underscored their value, if only from a production standpoint.
The case in point involved a manuscript of more than 150,000 words, which when formatted, came to almost 500 pages. As I prepared the proof for review, I steeled myself for the inevitable changes that come after an author first sees their book taking shape. To my surprise, the author requested a grand total of only five revisions. I don’t know if I’ve ever had such a small number of changes come back to me, even for books a quarter of that size.
What I do know is that this author’s manuscript had multiple levels of professional editing before it hit my desk. While that may not be the sole explanation for the minimal revisions after layout, I’m betting it’s a pretty significant factor. This experience almost makes me want to do some scientific correlations between degree of editing on a manuscript and number of changes after layout. But since number crunching is not really my thing, I’ll rely instead on the knowledge that each step in the publishing process refines the material further, all in service of creating the best book possible.
Those steps, much like the cycles on my washing machine, each contribute to ever better outcomes. Although the publishing process is much more complex than washing clothes, collaborating with professionals who are masters of their trade just might make it all seem as easy as rinse and repeat.
