A manuscript might appear ready for editing even when the rest of its publishing workflow is anything but. The content may contain the bones of a good subject or story, but the project can quickly descend into chaos if you try to do everything at once. Copyediting, proofreading, layout checking, metadata, front matter, and final file inspection are part of the publishing workflow, but they should never share the same workspace in your brain. To edit a manuscript effectively, first identify which part of the workflow it is a part of.
It helps to think of the publishing workflow as a journey from text to publishable files. It starts with the question: What files do I have, which one is the working version, what is my version control status, and what decisions do I need to make? It next asks, How should I plan the edit? Is what follows a higher-level edit, or is what follows a copyediting and proofreading exercise? It then raises the question: How should I edit? Should I be concerned with words and phrases, sentence structure, punctuation, and style? Should I be concerned only with consistency and correctness? Proofreading, after all, occurs only when the manuscript is relatively settled. Should I be looking out for doubled words, spacing problems, missing punctuation, missing headings, and heading styles that aren’t up to spec?
Here’s an exercise to make your job easier before you start your first edit. Copy and paste one sample page from your manuscript to a new page. Do not change the text on that page. Instead, above the text, write down its current publishing status. Don’t think about editing it; think about the work that needs to get done to bring it to its next state. Are you going to be working from this file to change chapter order? To update the headings? To make sure a term is consistently spelled in a consistent way? To make sure the page number in your TOC is correct? Are you trying to identify items for your client to resolve prior to starting your edit? Thinking about these tasks first saves you from wasting time trying to proof pages that you’re going to change anyway.
Version control is another publishing exercise that is sometimes neglected. There’s no better way to make yourself crazy than when you have “final” and “final revised” and “new final” and “actual final” all sitting on your desktop, wondering which file you should proof. The solution doesn’t have to be complicated: One file is the working file, others go in an archived directory. Keep filenames simple but consistent, so that they always include the filename, date, and the version or stage of the file. Even this minimal form of version control helps your work to stay connected to the correct manuscript so that you don’t lose track as you move between edits, copyedits, and proofs.
Publishing involves much more than what’s in your manuscript. You also have to keep a style sheet, and it needs to include spelling rules, capitalization rules, punctuation rules, heading rules, and even names or acronyms. You also have to think about your front matter (title page, copyright page, table of contents, dedication, foreword, etc.) as well as back matter (acknowledgements, author bio, endnotes, bibliography, etc.). You also need to be clear about the metadata (book description, category, subject headings, contributor names, keywords, etc.) before you start editing. You need to think about all of these as part of a larger whole, not as afterthoughts or decoration at the end of your book.
In addition to what’s above, you need to plan for your layout check (or page proof). Your layout checking is not about making the book look good. It is also not about editing text to make it read well. Instead, you need to look for problems with margins and spacing, problem pages and captions, widows and orphans, line length breaks, headings and title hierarchy. When the text is still in flux, layout check can get very frustrating because every time the text changes you have a fresh round of issues to resolve. That’s why it helps to think of the publishing workflow as a series of tasks that you should think about in a sensible order: editing and text decisions come first, proofreading comes second, and layout check comes third.
In short, you need to think about your current publishing workflow before you start working on a manuscript. Ask yourself, Am I in version control mode, planning my edit, editing for consistency, proofreading for content changes, editing for text changes, layout checking, creating my metadata, or creating my book checklist? That small habit can transform your publishing workflow, allowing you to give each activity its full attention without getting overwhelmed by editing commas when you’re actually dealing with a changing book, confused handoff, missing table of contents page, or a messy book schedule.