Making a book

Writing, at least on the professional level, is a group effort. We don't normally think of it that way, of course. If someone's name is on the book, the magazine article or the newspaper story, that is the person who gets the credit — or the blame. Yet there are others, usually many others, who are involved.

Rebecca Lee makes this clear in her 2022 book How Words Get Good. Her expertise is book publishing, and in her career she has been involved in many of the steps in the process of making words good, now including writing a book herself.

Even though authors are the ones whose names are on the books, they need help. They need agents to find someone to publish their work, for example. They need editors. Many authors are terrible spellers. They make mistakes of all kinds, and writers are often the last ones to notice their own mistakes. (I know this from sad experience.)

And then there are proof readers. What is the difference between a copy editor and a proof reader?  Lee tells us. Essentially, a copy editor gets a manuscript ready to be printed. A proof reader checks for errors made by the printer. Does the printed work match what was supposed to be printed?

Lee even devotes chapters to footnotes (her own footnotes are superb, well worth reading), cover designs, blurbs, fonts and what happens when books go out of print. Her book covers an amazing amount of territory — probably too much, actually — and it is a wonderful resource for anyone wondering what goes into making a book.