Editor Interview: All About Copyediting with Erika Steeves
Hello everybody and welcome! Happy Thursday to you all.
This week is a bit of an untraditional post as it features a special guest. Please welcome Erika Steeves!
Erika is a freelance copyeditor for Indie authors and publishers with experience in fiction, nonfiction, and academic books.
For the full interview with Erika, you will have to visit YouTube, but enjoy this fun sneak peek!
How Erika Got Into Freelance Copyediting
Susan: Tell us a little bit about how you got into freelance copyediting and proofreading.
Erika: Sure. So it's quite a circuitous path but if I go back about 11 years, um, I started actually in traditional publishing. I was hired as a publishing intern at a small press and that's pretty much where I learned the ropes of publishing…. After the internship, I got a job there and it was amazing; I learned so much from the managing editor. But then after that year, I decided freelancing was more my groove, and so I started my own business, and since then I've been copyediting and proofreading….In the traditional publishing realm I was doing fiction but once I started on my own, I really started in academic and non-fiction books….So, I came from the non-fiction world in my freelance business and into the fiction world, uh, I guess four years ago now, and so now I'm really focusing in on speculative fiction, science fiction, horror, um all the genres I love to read the most and that is really the focus of my business.
Susan: I have to say, God bless you for loving copyediting because, as we talked about, I am a developmental editor at heart. I love storytelling and I love going to my authors and saying 'what about this?' or 'what if the character did this?'.... While I can do copyediting, that is a technical and powerful skill to have that I do not have the patience for on an everyday basis. So you have my utter awe and joy that you do that.
Erika: Well yeah, and I feel the same way about developmental editors and people who work, you know, with the big picture. It's a really significant skill set and that's the beauty of editing: we all can work together and there are so many types of editors and skill sets that complement each other.
Copyediting vs. Line Editing—What is the Difference?
Susan: Most people think of copyediting as fixing commas, as fixing spelling errors, everything like that, but it's so much more than that as well. Talk about sort of the wide scope of copyediting and how that's so necessary for publishing.
Erika: Right, so there is the stereotype of, you know, the copyeditor with the red pen slashing the manuscript to bits and all that stuff. And it's there, I guess, for a reason, but really my take on copyediting is to have a more flexible mindset. So, yes, of course there are the technicalities…we're looking at hyphenation, capitalization, consistency across the manuscript, numbering—like just the details at the sentence level that no one really needs to know about….But especially when I work with Indie authors, there are line editing considerations that come in, too. It's kind of like a blend that a lot of editors do with Indie authors. And the line editing stuff is like smoothing out the sentence…being flexible and knowing when to let things go and when to push for querying the author about something, but always having in mind like they have a style. There are reasons behind everything that's going on here, and it's up to me to be curious about that.
Susan: I want to sort of clarify for anybody watching this—so you, as a copyeditor, can do some line edits. A line editor may cross over into copyediting, but those are two different things. So when you hire somebody for your Indie book, you want to clarify with them exactly what they're going to do for you because you don't want to hire a line editor and assume they're going to fix all your grammatical errors. And vice versa; you don't want to assume a copyeditor is going to do a ton of line edits… so there's a little bit of a balance to be found there. I know on your website it mentions that you do a sample edit, so that's probably something that you sort of give a feel for there, right?
Erika: Yeah, the sample edit is definitely where the author can get a feel for whether the level of feedback, the level of intervention, how I comment, how I give feedback is in line with what they're expecting and who they want to work with. Getting that right fit, yes, is very, very important.
Watch the full interview on YouTube to hear more about the balance involved in editing, stylesheets in the sci-fi and fantasy genres, when to hire an editor, and self-editing as an author. You can connect with Erika at her website or follow her on Instagram to learn more about her services. And until next week, keep writing!