What Is Book Editing?

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Book editing is the process of preparing the text for presentation to its target audience.  The process involves correction of errors, condensing the text into more precise and simplified language, organizing the text for more clarification, and sometimes modifying the actual content of the book to different topics.

The person or group of people who edit the book are called editors.  There are different levels of book editing in the publishing world.  There are junior editors, who are usually newcomers to the field, and the ranks go all the way up to senior editors and directors.  The senior executive editors make the final decisions before the book is released, but there usually is a hierarchy of editors, especially with larger publishing companies.

Human editors are involved in a wide variety of media editing today including newspaper editing, anthology organization, magazines, scholarly books, ghostwriting, layout editing, and copyediting.   Usually smaller publications do not have an editor for each role and sometimes the editing jobs will overlap.  The larger the publication the more specialized the editor's role will usually be.  The executive editor is the person who makes the final editing decisions.  This person takes responsibility for the content of the publication that is seen by public eyes.  Thus, this person is the one who usually takes the blame for content that is inflammatory or controversial.  Another role of the executive editor is as a team leader.  They are required to motivate the publishing staff and develop them into better editors and writers.  The executive editor maintains and implements the production budget.  They are also involved in strategic planning of the publication.

The editors of books come in three types.  The acquisitions editor is the person responsible for creating the contract with the author.  The production editor is the one who manages the creation of the book from its draft all the way to the finish, and also is the person involved in budgeting for the book.  The copyeditor is the one responsible for editing the actual text of the book so that it is ready for public consumption.

Executive book editors have a tough task of reviewing an author's work and sometimes having to draw the line when it comes to freedom of expression.  If the book editor releases material that is inflammatory or publicly denounced, they will often take the blame and often lose their job or position as a result.  A recent example of a controversial editing dilemma was when O.J. Simpson was releasing his book entitled, If I Did It, Here's How.  The executive editor of Regan Books was fired immediately after a public outcry of the controversial content.  This is the kind of risk that an executive editor must undertake when releasing content to the public.