Nonfiction Publishers: A Panel Discussion

Panelists: Em Gale, Mary Metz, and Julie Van Pelt

Moderator: Rebecca Brinbury

Meeting Description

This Guild meeting was a discussion about the ins and outs of nonfiction publishing with in-house editors at Sasquatch Books, Mountaineers Books, and UW Press. During this meeting, the panelists explored the various aspects of editing for their publication, for both freelance and staff, including expectations, processes, and communication. Please note that there was no video recorded for this meeting, only audio.

Panelist Bios

Em Gale: As managing production editor at Sasquatch Press, Em Gale oversees the production process working with authors, designers, and acquisitions editors, and she supervises e-books with Penguin Random House. She manages to fit in proofreading and freelance editing as well. And in her spare spare time, she likes to swim, read, and explore Washington beaches on the rainiest of days.

Mary Metz: Mary Metz is a senior editor at Mountaineers Books and works with authors, freelancers, and staff to oversee editing and production of roughly a dozen books per year. She has worked at Mountaineers Books since 1986, and has been in the editorial department since about 2002; her earlier years at Mountaineers were spent in general administration, acquisitions, and foreign rights. She is an occasional hiker, a dedicated bicycle commuter, an indifferent but enthusiastic gardener, a compulsive reader (mostly fiction), an amateur birder, and an even more amateur photographer.

Julie Van Pelt: Julie Van Pelt is senior project editor at University of Washington Press. Prior to moving in house, she worked for more than fifteen years as a freelance editor for trade publishers, university presses, journals, and individual authors. She also taught copyediting for seven years in the UW’s Certificate in Editing program. She lives half-time in Seattle and the other half quite happily in Port Townsend.

Moderator Bio

Rebecca Brinbury: Rebecca Brinbury is an editor and literary arts administrator. She works at University of Washington Press, where she is assistant to the director, and Poetry Northwest, where she is managing editor. She has previously worked at ACT Theatre, Hugo House, the Bureau of Fearless Ideas, Seattle City of Literature, and as the administrator for the Editors Guild. Rebecca also works as a freelance copyeditor; she lives in Greenwood with her husband, daughter, two black cats, and sourdough starter.

(Written notes from the 11/13/17 meeting by Ginger Everhart)

Polly Zetterberg opened the meeting and made announcements. With announcements taken care of, Rebecca and the panel began their discussion.

First question from Rebecca: Describe your position and what is the most interesting book you’re working on right now.

Julie: has been at UW Press as a senior project editor since April of this year. The most interesting book to her is the one that everyone had told her the authors would hate the design of and the response from the authors was that they love it.

Em: has been at Sasquatch for four years. Most interesting current project is a cookbook with PCC, which is undergoing a rebranding coincident with this publication.

Mary: has been at Mountaineers for thirty-one years, fifteen of which have been in editorial. Relies on freelancers to know what they’re doing since she has little formal editorial training.

From Rebecca: There is a huge diversity of books among these three presses. Can you give us an overview of the process at your press from acquisition to print?

Julie: Typically, university production schedules are much longer than other presses for publication process, but even these presses are collapsing their schedules in order to be more competitive.

Em: Sasquatch’s schedule is one year for overseas printing, ten months for domestic printing. Unlike UW Press, Sasquatch is trying to push the time frames out, with the hope of changing the twelve-month time frame to fourteen, and the ten-month time frame to twelve months.

Mary: Mountaineers Books strives to complete the process from receipt of initial manuscript to available in bookstores within one year.

Question from the audience: member recently was presented with a contract stipulation from legal publishing client that freelance copyeditors don’t work more than eighteen hours per week. Is this a normal expectation from publishers for freelancers to devote to a project?

Em: Sasquatch gives freelance copyeditors three weeks to complete their initial copyedits, stating that it’s up to the freelancers to manage their time. The others on the panel concurred that this was similar to the freelancer process with their presses.

A comment from an audience member who is a former in-house employee for both Workman and Random House. Her observation was that one year was the average turnaround time for both presses from acquisition to bookstores, but that Workman was nimble enough to get one out in three months. She remarked on how surprising it was that with all of the advances in technology, the process hasn’t shortened up as a result.

Rebecca asked the panel: what is the scope of each of your jobs?

Julie: UW Press publishes roughly fifty books per year, with the catalog divided between two in-house project editors. Thus, Julie will oversee twenty-five books per year through the process between acquisition and print.

Em: Sasquatch publishes between thirty and forty books per year (which includes two publishing seasons). Em, too, edits roughly one-half of the books. Seasons overlap though, so she is usually working on two seasons at once.

Mary: Mountaineers publishes between thirty and thirty-five books per year, and she, too, edits roughly half of those. Currently, she is working on spring and fall of 2018.

Rebecca: How does the communication flow? Are there peaks and ebbs? Do you use proofreaders?

Julie: UW Press doesn’t always do a proofread for its publications, due to the fact that many are peer reviewed before they reach the copyediting stage. Typically, while in communication with the copyeditor on a book she is communicating with that book’s author about the cover. Frequently, she doesn’t know the title of the books she’s working on because they refer to them throughout the editorial process by author name(s). Copyeditors do the cleanup and tagging.

Em: Books are all at different stages. She does the cleanup and tagging. Proofs go to author and proofreader at the same time. Em also does the InDesign setup and manages the back and forth journey with the designer.

Mary: Mountaineers’ process varies from book to book. Currently, they are working with a lot of new copyeditors, so there’s more communication with them as they are figuring out the style and the Mountaineers system. Mountaineers project editors will typically review a copyedit by a new-to-them copyeditor before sending it on to the author to make sure the query style is appropriate. If a book has been copyedited by one of their experienced copyeditors and/or the book has had a developmental edit, they will likely have the copyeditor send it directly to the author. Mark up is done by hand on two rounds of proof.

Rebecca asked about the various subgenres in these publishers’ catalogs:

Em: Sasquatch publishes a lot of cookbooks, which have their own style. In addition to using Chicago, they use Recipes into Type and have an in-house cookbook style guide. Because of the style specificity, authors are often surprised at what looks like a heavier copyedit than they were expecting, but the edits are primarily to get each recipe to follow Sasquatch’s very specific style. Em has found that it is worthwhile to invest in getting a few of the freelance copyeditors trained up for cookbook editing, as that ultimately saves time and money on that process. And although they trust that authors have tested their own recipes, having copyeditors who cook is a bonus for finding potential issues. They also trust guidebook authors have gotten route descriptions correct, and if feedback from readers indicates errors, they will attempt to update in those cases.

Mary: Mountaineers’ biggest subgenre is guidebooks, which have an odd number style for copyeditors to work with. Maps need to be proofed to the text. They, too, trust the author on the data. It’s the author’s name on the book, and they won’t override an author correction. Freedom of the Hills recently came out in a new edition. These books are reviewed more than most because they are written by volunteers and are an iconic publication.

Julie: Documentation is more of a thing for UW Press’s scholarly publications—lengthy citations and bibliographies. UW has a specific style guide for Chinese transliterated translations handling because of their large Asian studies catalog.

Rebecca next asked the panelists: What else do you worry about, other than the words?

Em: Maps are a major concern with Sasquatch publications. With cookbooks, photos are there for the proofreaders but not for the copyeditors. An example of something specific the proofreaders need to look for is does the photo match the recipe. Did the food stylist add a topping that’s not mentioned in the recipe? Sometimes they’ll edit text to fit photo, and sometimes the photo looks nothing like the food should look and they have to reshoot. Sometimes the designer doesn’t get images until the third pass. A unique issue for a current book is checking the hand-lettered chapter titles with the possibilities of having to copy and insert letters from other chapters to fix errors.

Mary: Mountaineers also has a lot of map scrap. If the authors haven’t delivered the map scrap with the manuscript, then Mountaineers does not consider the manuscript to have been submitted, because they can’t begin the editing process until they have the scrap. Often illustrations are made from photos, so if photos are needing to be reshot, that slows down the illustration process.

Julie: UW Press frequently deals with permissions issues. Images have editorial content, so it’s a problem if the copyeditor doesn’t have the images it’s hard to get a complete edit. Julie isn’t reading the books in detail, she relies on the copyeditor to get the word stuff right.

Rebecca’s last question was about the levels of copyedit each of the publishers typically request.

Mary: Mountaineers never does a light copyedit. They estimate six pages per hour, and she thinks they ask a lot of their freelancers.

Em: Sasquatch also expects a lot from freelancers. They don’t usually hire developmental editors, and thus they require heavier levels of copyedit. Developmental editing creeps its way into copyediting. Again, the expectation is six pages per hour for copyedit and ten pages per hour for proofing. Map editing is more of an “if you have time without going over budget” situation for the copyeditors, and they don’t hire freelancers for everything: sometimes publications are handled completely in house.

Julie: UW Press is a dream place for mechanical copyeditors. They do not ask their copyeditors to fact check. Her rule is to turn off the internet while you’re copyediting a UW Press publication. You should be able to copyedit with a dictionary and style guide. Heavy copyedits are sometimes required, mostly for writers who are non-native speakers. Otherwise, they require mostly light to medium copyedits.

The following questions were either pre-submitted or asked by audience members.

What is developmental editing like for nonfiction?

Em: Developmental editors look for consistency in content locations (all techniques in one chapter of a cookbook). At Sasquatch, most of the developmental editing is done in house by the acquisitions editors.

Mary: Mountaineers doesn’t do developmental edits on guidebooks. The Braided River imprint publications get more developmental edits, mostly because those books are narratives.

Julie: UW Press uses the peer review process in lieu of developmental edits, for the most part. Acquisition editors support and develop books and then send them out to readers for peer review that he or she then reviews and packages up for the author to make revisions. Sometimes (infrequently) they will hire a developmental editor after peer review if it’s a trade title for the press.

What are the expectations for copyeditors v. proofreaders. Who does what?

Julie: UW Press requires the copyeditor to correct errors in the manuscript and the proofreader to correct errors in the proof. Their books go straight into page proofs after copyediting. The indexing is done from the cleaned-up copyedit.

Em: Proofreads for Sasquatch publications can be heavy because the copyedits can be heavy and include some developmental-editing work for the copyeditor. Sasquatch will occasionally hire a cold reader. Staff and interns will do some of the proofreading duties.

Mary: At Mountaineers, proofreaders are the unsung heroes of book publishing. To distinguish between indisputable errors and suggested edits, she has proofers put the important markup in ink and the suggested edits in pencil.

Should authors work with a developmental editor first?

Em: Unlikely to be a benefit with Sasquatch, as they don’t put a lot of stock in author claims of having had their manuscript edited already, because it is unlikely that the edits will meet the publisher’s editorial standards.

Julie: UW Press discourages developmental edits to books once the books have been acquired, as editing may take a book in a different direction from what the press contracted for.

Which do your presses do more: Accept pre-written manuscripts or approach writers about book ideas generated in house?

Em: Sasquatch rarely publishes unsolicited manuscripts, but they do try to read everything that comes in over the transom, and if an author has his or her name out there and a marketing platform in place, Sasquatch may go with it.

Mary: Mountaineers are actually more likely to publish an unsolicited manuscript. And after an author has done one book and the process goes well with them, they are likely to be invited to write more.

Julie: Acquisition editors for UW Press make the rounds of conferences and lectures all the time to find out who and what topics are emerging in given areas of study.

Do you still love the books you’re working on?

Though each had a caveat or two, like the preference to actually be out on a hike than reading about one, all three definitely do still enjoy the books they work on.