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Recommended Books For Ambitious Editors by Tim Sanders
September 07, 2012
Regardless of what you edit, it’s a craft that requires life long learning. You’ll get most of it through your experience, doing the work. But sometimes, a good book on editing can kickstart your creative juices and give you tools to up your game.
While I’m tempted to simply point you to The Elements of Style or the AP Style Book, I know you read these (again) every few years already. After all, you are a professional! So, I combed my network to find a few books off the beaten path.
Here are my recommended reads:
- Editors On Editing: What Writers Need to Know About What Editors Do – Fantastic collection of essays by editors, publishers and writers. Covers the changes in the industry, the lack of appreciation for editors and ways to hone your craft without selling your soul.
- Lapsing Into a Comma: A Curmudgeon’s Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print—and How to Avoid Them by Bill Walsh - From the author of The Elephants Of Style comes a rollicking, but highly useful guide to making quality books worth reading. He’s the Simon Cowell of the industry, and you’ll wince/laugh/learn from his experience. (Thanks to @OnePlusEditor for this recommendation!)
- Maxwell Perkins: Editor of Genius by Scott Berg - This biography covers the life of one of the greatest editors of our time. He is famous for salvaging F Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby. Perkins defines the true value that editors bring to the publishing process.
- Eats, Shoots & Leaves: A Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss - This is a proof reader and copy editor’s best read of the bunch. The book is both humorous and helpful at the same time. (Hard to do in this genre.
Are there other books you’d recommend to your fellow editors? Let us know in the comments and I’ll thank you on Twitter!
About Tim Sanders
Tim is a bestselling author and former Yahoo! executive with a mission to disrupt the traditional publishing and self-publishing industries and share knowledge with authors looking to publish and market high-quality books.
Follow @sanderssays