I’ve done some freelance stuff in the past in traditional print (nothing big, but all newsprint, not magazine or book). The publishers were big enough that there were several layers of editorial staff in some cases. What I found interesting is that the smaller outfits would just make changes and not even let me know. I didn’t even know about the changes until after I’d read the article. In one case the edits actually injected errors and screwed up the name of a cited source.

With the more professional (or at least what I felt to be) publishers they would at least send me a copy of the edits they had made before I read it in final print, these were also newspapers with larger circulations. This may just be a work ethic of some editors, I’m not sure.

What does concern me though as I started to think I’d like to write again, and started to look at sites that accept articles from freelance writers, what struck me was that a lot of these sites were stating in their criteria they were basically looking for an all in one writer/editor. This seemed rather alarming to me and really what inspired this article. For offline today I know it’s not the norm, but it seems to be a trend I was at least noticing for online publishing, and to be honest that worries me. Maybe these sites were trying to weed out the weak solicitations.

I guess as we see the move from offline publishing to online publishing the Editor’s roll will change, as you pointed out the writer has no input on the cover of a book, online there is no cover of a book.

Finally and I know this upsets some people in traditional print but traditional print is a dying medium. More books may be sold now than ever before, but newspaper and magazines are seeing their print runs go lower and lower. People are more inclined to go online to consume this sort of content. I think for books to make the leap to digital it’s going to take the evolution of e-book readers to really make that happen, but that is just a time game, and then we will see book print runs decline as well (not sales just the publishing process). The risk I guess of digital is I’m seeing it really change the assembly line of how works are published.

On a side – dumb things I’ve done: write an article on editors and not proofread the hell out of it.

A blog writer doesn’t need an editor, but good writing skills and habits. Write a post, but don’t publish it. Leave it and come back with fresh eyes so that you can catch something like this, in your sentence, “Your editor needs know everything that you’ve written before…” Come back and add the “to”. Common mistake that only needs proofing. Editors don’t suggest several synonyms, as you’ve implied, they just make the change. Authors sign over most decision making to the house. (9.5 times out of 10, the author doesn’t even get a say on the design for the book cover.) Unfortunately, or not, the internet has opened up the door for all people to take on the role of writer; talent or not (and in the majority of cases, not).

This is not an editor’s issue, but one for the reader. It might be old school of me to think this, however being under 30 and not old by any means, I believe that self-publishing a book or being a blogger does not mean one is a writer. It means you’ve accomplished something, you have a hobby and you want to share your thoughts. This deserves credit for that in and of itself. To take on the title of writer though demands more work than the above mentioned forms, and to believe that one needs an editor would imply that the work is worthy of such attention. And this, my digital friend, demands blood, sweat and tears from the writer, a life’s commitment, the years it takes to create a career… not a hobby.

(to note: I haven’t reread my comments here… mistakes are assumed.) Pubgirl