Takeaways from a talk with a developmental editing and academic publishing expert

For academic writers and those of us doing developmental editing, the release of Laura Portwood-Stacer’s new book Make Your Manuscript Work is cause for celebration. It’s full of hard-earned, ready to be applied expertise: after I started reading it last week, I immediately began sharing resources with a current client. Here are my quick takeaways from Portwood-Stacer’s visit this week with The EFA / Editors Canada Academic Editing Book Club.

The importance of knowing the rules in order to break them.

While she is overwhelmingly non-dogmatic in her approach, emphasizing a writer’s freedom to make choices about their writing, Portwood-Stacer is also very pragmatic and feels it is crucial to arm writers with expectations of acquisitions and publishing as a whole. It gives you power, she said.

Just how laborious developmental editing can be.

Portwood-Stacer said that one reaction she commonly gets from readers is, “now I understand why developmental editing costs what it costs.” The book shows that it’s literally a book worth’s of job.

For dev. editors, it’s key to set the scope of what you’re offering.

If you’re not an expert if the field you’re editing, you need to be transparent that you’re assessing how the book lands with general reader, not act as a peer reviewer.

Despite current political repression in US, academic presses are in solidarity with authors.

When asked about trends in academic publishing, Portwood-Stacer was quick to share hope that presses are more than willing to work with authors exploring controversial ideas and may even help authors tailor things like their title to not raise red flags.

Being thorough is important, but it can also come with overwhelm.

Portwood-Stacer shared that while dev. editors can scale each job based on the needs of the client and triage if an author is strapped on time, it’s also important to include as much as possible in the first editorial assessment since an author might not have the time or resources to hire an editor for a second round.

While she’s considering a final book in her trilogy someday (along with her Book Proposal Book) that might cover A-Z of publishing process, it won’t happen for awhile.

She’s taking a well earned break after the feat of writing this book. Not only did she pivot and rewrite this book to address academic writers rather than just developmental editors, she also coded every editorial letter she has ever written to uncover her four pillars (argument, evidence, structure, and style) and took spelled out the nitty gritty of what is and isn’t an argument.

Even if you’re brilliant and have watched the show all through high school, getting on Jeopardy! can take more than one try.

Portwood-Stacer auditioned while in grad school but didn’t get on the show until later, during COVID. She was grateful to win a bit of money and scratch it off her bucket list.

The work involved in pitching an academic book to a general audience is harder than it seems.

This was in response to my question, as I was curious of her thoughts since I’m interested in helping authors craft crossover books. Portwood-Stacer said that pitching a trade book involves a whole skillset that academic authors may not be familiar with, including what it involves to “perform” like a trade author, commiting to things like maintaining a platform.

Image credit: Knife and Spoon Box - Line Drawing c. 1940 Isidore Sovensky