My high school English teacher told me that I would have a bright future as a copy­ed­i­tor. That was when I was on my way to col­lege in the big city to study International Affairs. I was going to be a diplo­mat at the United Nations, and then I changed my mind…I was going to be an archi­tect. The idea of an edi­to­r­ial career never crossed my mind.

Until, after grad­u­at­ing col­lege into a rough mar­ket to be an archi­tect, I landed a sweet job as an edi­to­r­ial assis­tant at an archi­tec­ture mag­a­zine. I loved edit­ing, pri­mar­ily for the rea­son that it gave me access to so many inter­est­ing peo­ple and ideas. I’d had a lib­eral arts edu­ca­tion in archi­tec­ture, and I was amazed to meet and inter­view the most promi­nent archi­tects of our time. Instead of going to grad­u­ate school in archi­tec­ture as I had planned, I stayed in pub­lish­ing, fol­low­ing a chain of pro­gres­sively more inter­ested and respon­si­ble edi­to­r­ial jobs.

It takes a vil­lage to edit a book.

There are sev­eral dif­fer­ent kinds of edi­tors that I know:

Acquiring, Acquisitions or Commissioning edi­tor. This is the taste-​making edi­tor who brings new books and their authors to agree­ments with a pub­lish­ing house. The acqui­si­tions edi­tor is respon­si­ble for shap­ing the pro­posal, work­ing with agents, shep­herd­ing the pro­posal to the pub­lisher, mar­ket­ing, and sales teams. As a gate­keeper, the acqui­si­tions edi­tor is often the pri­mary con­tact between the pub­lish­ing com­pany and the author. She is also and is the book’s inter­nal cham­pion and will defend the books bud­get and mar­ket­ing pri­or­ity. At some pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies, the acqui­si­tions edi­tor receives sign­ing bonuses and has clearly defined sign­ing and rev­enue (value) targets.

Development Editor. A devel­op­ment edi­tor, often a free­lancer, helps the author to cre­ate a com­plete man­u­script. This often means detailed re-​organization and even re-​writing. The devel­op­men­tal edi­tor might also help the author to secure any rights or per­mis­sions for illus­tra­tion or pho­tog­ra­phy or quoted text. Depending on the num­ber of books in a pub­lish­ing pro­gram, the Acquiring edi­tor may or may not be respon­si­ble for the devel­op­ment of the man­u­script. Some pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies have devel­op­ment edi­tors on staff who actu­ally write and cre­ate books as they go.

Once the man­u­script is approved by the pub­lish­ing team and is con­sid­ered com­plete, the man­u­script is “trans­mit­ted” to the publisher’s pro­duc­tion department.

Managing Editor. The man­ag­ing edi­tor is typ­i­cally in charge of the book’s pro­duc­tion process. The keeper of the sched­ules and pro­duc­tion bud­gets the man­ag­ing edi­tor pro­vides an esti­mate for the cost of pro­duc­ing the book and assigns the book to the edi­to­r­ial and design staff. The man­ag­ing edi­tor sets the house stan­dards for edi­to­r­ial and design, and makes sure that final edi­to­r­ial files are ready to go to the printer. Because the man­ag­ing edi­tor over­sees the pub­lish­ing pro­gram as a whole, she is rarely very involved with any one par­tic­u­lar book.

The Copyeditor. This is an amaz­ing picky, detail-​oriented per­son who care­fully checks the man­u­script for typos, gram­mat­i­cal errors and prob­lems with con­sis­tency or logic. Often, the copy edi­tor also “tags” a man­u­script for pro­duc­tion, which means she marks up all of the head­lines, quo­ta­tions, side­bars, boxes, cap­tions, lists, foot­notes and other book ele­ments. The copy­ed­i­tor may also pro­vide the book’s front mat­ter accord­ing to the publisher’s style. (There are also edi­tors who spe­cial­ize only in tag­ging, and I imag­ine that the copyeditor’s role will expand as e-​book ele­ments will also have to be specified.)

The Indexer. Not every book has an indexer, but these are spe­cial­ized edi­tors too who decide which items are impor­tant enough to be called out and who com­piles the books’ index.

The Proofreader. When every­one else is done with the book, a proof­reader pro­vides a fresh set of eyes to make sure that all of the pre­vi­ous edits did not intro­duce new errors when the old ones were cor­rected. If the copy­ed­i­tor marked up the man­u­script by hand, she’ll also make sure that all of the cor­rec­tions were incor­po­rated into the final version.