Despite my oft-stated personal goal of someday writing…er, make that publishing…a book, I
have little real knowledge of the deeper world of publishing. I know several editors, but we don’t often talk about the
details of publishing; more often we discuss the best books out there, bad television and the coming
apocalypse (oh, it’s coming, all right…you can bet your horsemen…all three of them).
So it was interesting to read Jen Leo‘s
fascinating and informative interview
with Tara Weaver, a freelance development editor. Jen’s first
question gets right to the meat of the matter: what IS a development editor? And we subsequently learn that the
development editor (or DevEd…as I like to call it) does pretty much everything where the actual content of the book is
concerned. She looks at plot, character, pacing (a whole book about ONE day in a man’s life…puleeeze, Mr. Joyce,
get that OUT of here! … Just kidding, I’m sure Tara would have published Ulysses, or at least used the
manuscript as a nice high chair). But I digress.
In all seriousness, read the interview and pick up a few helpful tips as I did on how best to make your book idea a
sellable one.