At FWA I spoke to several authors and had several conversations about the fandom’s writing, publications, etc. I’ll put several of these opinions in the mouth of a composite, called Ed.
Ed said to me, “I’m not sure what benefit there is for me to be published through the fandom. I have a good online following, fans who really enjoy my work. I’ve published a story through one of the anthologies, and while my online stories get several comments, not one person has said anything to me about my published story. I say this because I don’t see furry pubs giving me much exposure. I don’t need publishing for the money. The real benefit of being published in the fandom for me would be presenting a stellar edited product. Right now, I feel like the fandom’s professional publishing isn’t offering that yet.”
At one Coffee Chat I asked folks how they felt about the fandom’s quality of editing and the response was mixed. And how to improve that? The answers were “Go to writing panels, pro-writing workshops”, and then to shrug and downplay the importance of editors in modern publishing. The topic came up at another Chat and it was more open but there wasn’t a lot of concrete ideas.
I don’t want this to be taken as a slam to publishers here. RV and FP are run by two dedicated people who are too busy selling, shipping, laying out books and wrangling cover artists to do more than a proofread. Nor do they have an on-staff editor - anthologies though do have an editor. Those editors though are volunteer based. Sofawolf has a dedicated editing staff but they put out so few books a year. Beyond that we have Sean who offers to edit for pay, which is great, but there’s only one of him.
In the fandom then, your options for putting out a story are: Edit it yourself, Pay an editor, Have the publisher proof it, be lucky enough to get into Sofawolf, or if you send it to an anthology, it ends up under the eye of a volunteer editor. Because the fandom’s editing then is primarily based on volunteers, the skill is going to be considerably varied. Editors though are pretty important, because we want the books to look good; errors make the writing look bad. Every month I hear a people new to editing expressing interest in starting their own anthology.
But while we have an entire Guild here to help Writers write better, not to mention convention panel after panel dedicated to helping writers, I - as an editor myself - feel there aren’t any resources on how to help an Editor edit. Even if we have one or two fantastic editors in the fandom, we still need something to help the rest of them. As well as authors edit their writing before they get to the editor. I have no formal training, I am learning as I go, and the only places I feel I can turn are wholly outside the guild and fandom. (Also I can’t seem to find many books on being a better editor, and tons of stuff on being a better writer.)
So what can we do to help editors improve, as well as give potential editors a strong heads up? Can we get an editing workshop? Some How-tos by several of the fandom’s editors?
Also I feel it’s important to specify what an editor does. Some seem to have the impression an editor just proofreads and fixes typos. But there are multiple levels of editing. There’s the proofreading. Copyediting is a step above that, where the prose is being edited for word choice, grammar, and overall improvement. Finally there’s content editing, which is looking at narrative structure, characterization, and so on - directing the author on how to improve a story’s basic elements to improve it. My interest is in finding some way to improve both copyediting and content editing within the fandom, because the publishers at least are addressing the proofreading.
Short of “get a degree in composition and rhetoric” or “hey go to a professional writing workshop” (which are of course useful but expensive and not an option for many), I’m hoping someone else has some ideas.
I’ve found it works better for me with other people’s stuff than my own.