Trade books are books intended for the general readership. They are not rare books or textbooks that would ideally be intended for a small, specific niche readership. They are most likely found at bookstores and libraries. The market for such books is the largest of all other books, which is not surprising, particularly because there are so many genres to choose from: biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, self-help, crime, children’s books, cookbooks, health – the list is quite exhaustive. The beauty in these books is that they can tell a story or shed some light into a topic we may be faced with in our lives. They have a purpose. That is the drive behind Mpilo Publishing.
During the past few years that I had been operating the publishing company, while assisting authors to self-publish their books, I have witnessed and I can say with certainty that the significance of editors and proofreaders in book projects is not that well-understood. In fact, it is undermined. One would think if editing and proofreading were so easy then the services of language practitioners would not be needed, right? Yet the services of these professionals is needed; not only because the authors don’t have the time for it, but most importantly because there is expertise needed that an ordinary person whose profession is not language practitioner would not have. That is the missing piece of the puzzle in all of this.
As an author or soon-to-be author, you may chuckle at the industry rates of editors and proofreaders without actually understanding what is it that is being charged.
Language practitioners do much more than anyone may easily think. There’s copy-editing, substantive editing, developmental editing, structural editing, stylistic editing; there’s blind proofreading, second-eye proofreading, and comparative proofreading; there are house -style guides and style sheets for consistency; there are different referencing styles. It’s a lot more than you think. If you’re going to need any book to be at the standard that publishing houses use – which essentially should be the case for all books – you need to understand the significance of the expertise language practitioners can provide.
As self-published authors, you may have the freedom of choosing which of the above-mentioned services or expertise you’d prefer a language practitioner to provide – and rest be assured, the practitioner will provide as you requested and stick to that, nothing more. But you would be putting yourself at the risk of compromising the overall quality of your book project.
Understand the expertise language practitioners provide: learn the terms, understand the job description each term entails, analyse your manuscript to confirm that you truly do not need all the expertise. It also won’t hurt to get feedback for improvement.
Blogger:
Simthandile Mhlambiso – Founder and Managing Director of Mpilo Publishing (Pty) Ltd; Member of Professional Editors ‘ Guild (PEG), Branch Secretary of PEG Committee – Western Cape.
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