ICF Book Project: Copyediting As a Career

Editorial Committee Progress Bulletin No. 3

September 2022

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We should start off by saying that the whole of ICF has reason to be pleased.

Update on the script

For a volunteer and crowdsourced book project, we haven’t done too badly. A year after the initial meeting and the creation of the Editorial Committee, enthusiastic ICF members and a few guests have together completed the script. For the record, we should mention that all contributors worked gratis.

Some changes have been made in the original table of contents (ToC), but essentially it remains intact. As chapters began to be written, a few gaps in the list of topics were identified and authors were commissioned to write on them. As the script continued to develop so did our discussions. At one stage, Vivek suggested that it would make more sense to have a series of handbooks, with the first one reserved for the essential introductory topics.?Ultimately, we agreed to remove a few topics which would be of greater interest to experienced editors from the ToC of the current, or first, ICF handbook, Copyediting As a Career.

Summary of the work done during the preceding year

·????????The Editorial Committee (EdCom) received in total 28 proposals and 36 first-draft write-ups.

·????????We sent 97 feedback emails (in response to proposals and first and second drafts of chapters)

·????????A total of 31 chapters are ready for the next stage of the book project work—developmental editing.

·????????The script, along with the appendices, has been handed over to Meenakshi Venkat, the Developmental Editor (DE).

·????????The target completion date for the work of the DE is the second week of October 2022.

Continuing discussions on the next steps

At this stage, we are in the midst of discussions about publishing the book. The key question is whether we should give it to a publisher or publish it ourselves as ICF. We are studying various publishing contracts to understand the terms we may expect to be offered. If any of you have suggestions or queries, please feel free to contact Vivek Kumar (https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/vivekkumardelhi/).

One of our most senior and experienced members, Yateendra Joshi, has begun work on the layout of the book. He has shared some samples already.

As you can imagine, there is still a lot to be done …

More bulletins will come your way as further progress is made.

A few words about the ICF handbooks series

Since it was decided that ICF would create a series of books on the various aspects of editing, some preliminary work has been done. The working title of the series is ‘ICF Handbooks for Editors’. Topics such as ‘Developmental Editing’ have been shifted from the original ToC to the second proposed title: ‘Finding Your Editorial Niche’. A full ToC is currently under preparation. The third and fourth titles in the series will be ‘All About Working As a Freelance Editor’ and ‘Copyediting in Progress’.

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The Editorial Committee???

Abha T. Gandhi

Anupam Choudhury

Murugaraj Shanmugam

Preeta Priyamvada