Trends and issues in UK editing and publishing
‘The Velcro conference and carnivorous bees’ — report by Susan Addison
How are editors in the UK trained, and how do they update their skills?
As educators of editors, Marilyn Dorman, Sharon Nevile and Jennifer Wright from the University of Southern Queensland have a particular interest in these questions. In search of answers, they attended the Third International Conference on the Book in Oxford in September 2005.
Editors in the UK are an elusive lot, maybe even a dying breed, they concluded, after finding themselves the only editors at the conference. The trio from Australia presented a paper on ‘Editing in the 21st century: What are the challenges, and where are the opportunities in curriculum development and teaching?’ They asked editors and publishers in Oxford and London the same questions, and reported on their findings at the June meeting of the Society of Editors (Qld).
Editing has become a cottage industry in the UK. Most hands-on editing is now done outside the publishing houses, they discovered. Gone are the days when editors rose through the ranks, learning the craft and receiving mentoring from more senior employees on the way. Most copyeditors are freelancers who live in the backblocks — or in the south of France, they deduced. At Oxford University Press (OUP), Blackwells and Macmillans, the three UK publishers they visited, they found only very senior people, such as managing or commissioning editors, working in-house.
OUP continues to rely on editors who worked in-house before the onset of outsourcing in the 1970s. No thought seems to have been given to replacing these experienced editors when they retire. At Blackwells they found a more collegial culture. The work of ‘desk editors’ who operate from home is carefully monitored and they gather for a group training day once a year. Macmillans employ as editors specialist teachers or language specialists who are given short training courses in the company’s house style. These ‘editors’ are based in-house, which gives them the benefit of their colleagues’ experience.
Who looks after the interests of editors?
The Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), which covers the whole of the UK, lists minimum pay rates for freelancers on its web site www.sfep.org.uk. Everyone enters the SfEP as an associate, they were told. Membership is earned by attendance at conferences; members with advanced skills enjoy additional benefits, such as greater prominence on the freelance register. SfEP administers accreditation of proofreaders. The attrition rate is high: 31 out of 41 failed a recent exam. One examiner received a death threat from a failed candidate, so the Society no longer reveals examiners’ names! No exam has yet been developed for copyeditors.
So what training in editing is available in the UK?
Through its postgraduate courses Oxford Brookes University focuses on the business of publishing and associated quality issues rather than editing. Short courses and distance education courses in editing and publishing are run by the Publishing Training Centre www.train4publishing.co.uk, an educational charity based at Book House in London. Barbara Horn, a tutor at the Centre, acknowledged a resistance to training in editing in the UK, compared with countries like China and Russia where people are embracing it.
Incidentally, the draft ISO marks for copy preparation and proof correction Horn mentioned during their interview (and later emailed to them) have been made as language- and alphabet-free as possible because much editing is likely to be outsourced to India and China in the future. Preparation for proofreading in the digital era, in the form of software that Horn helped to develop, may be seen at www.paperlessproofs.com.
If training in editing is so fragmented in the UK, are there openings for Australian editors?
The speakers reported that although the publishers they interviewed expressed a clear preference for people who had worked in-house, applicants were able to take a test.
What, then, is the future of the book?
Dominant themes of the conference, they reported, were the death of the scholarly monograph (no longer economic to publish) and the burgeoning of large book chains at the expense of corner bookstores and of booksellers who know something about books. One US librarian told the conference that her library held no books on its shelves—everything was available online. They were relieved to be informed that children in the UK receive a ‘book bag’ (a bag of books!) twice during their primary schooling — exposure to the ‘real book’ experience.
For those intrigued by the subtitle of their talk, that is, ‘The Velcro conference and carnivorous bees’, the presenters demonstrated the distracting and distressing sound of conference satchels being ripped open. As for the carnivorous bees, they came across them at an Oxford pub, the bees having settled on a plate of chicken.
The Book Conference 2005 web site is b05.cgpublisher.com/other.html, with the main speakers listed on b05.cgpublisher.com/main_speakers.html.