Revisiting Betsy Lerner’s The Forest for the Trees

By Alanna Brousseau “No matter how beleaguered the world of editing has become,” writes Betsy Lerner in The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers (2010), “no matter how short a book’s shelf life in today’s market, no matter how Kindled, downloaded, or digitized, none of us can ever forget the feeling of … Continue reading Revisiting Betsy Lerner’s The Forest for the Trees

The Nitpicker’s Nook: January’s linguistic links roundup

The Nitpicker’s Nook is a monthly collection of language-related articles, interviews, and blog posts from around the web. If you read something that would make a good addition, email your suggestion to [email protected]. By Savanna Scott Leslie For many of us, this January will stand out as the month when the world lost David Bowie and Alan … Continue reading The Nitpicker’s Nook: January’s linguistic links roundup

Editor for Life: Barbara Berson, freelance editor and consultant

Interview conducted by Jennifer D. Foster A career as an editor is often a solo adventure, especially if you’re a freelancer. So we thought one way to better connect with fellow editors was to ask them the W5: who, what, where, when, and why. Read on for some thought-provoking, enlightening tidbits from those of us … Continue reading Editor for Life: Barbara Berson, freelance editor and consultant

Three months in marketing made me an even better editor

By Whitney Matusiak If you have read my BoldFace post “Three months at a literary agency made me a better editor,” then you’ll remember I figured out a systematic editorial approach that I developed from repetition. I looked at a lot of manuscripts and worked out the steps to increase an author’s chance of getting … Continue reading Three months in marketing made me an even better editor

Book review: Max Perkins: Editor of Genius

By Alanna Brousseau “The most important obligation of friendship is to listen,” explained Max Perkins to his second-eldest daughter, Zippy. Perkins, the editorial momentum behind such literary heavyweights as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe was considerably more than a reviser of words, straddling at times the roles of confidante, money lender, minder, … Continue reading Book review: Max Perkins: Editor of Genius