When you write some poems and need to send them out into the market for your audience, it can be intimidating. It’s also hard to find a reliable person to handle your poems. But you need to find poetry book editors to take a look at your poems. This is the only way you can know that the poems are well-written and may stand out on the market. You should remember that there are several types of editing. Any potential editor can explain their areas of expertise and what you can expect. This article discusses poetry book editors.
Poetry book editors
It can be hard to know if the potential poetry book editor is a good fit, so you need to check how they work. A good poetry book editor needs to call you to address your questions or concerns, send ideas properly, and assist you understand their feedback.
Even better, it makes sense to request for a sample edit on their poems so that you can see the type of feedback and support you can expect. Their feedback style needs to match with what you desire. You should also ask them their general vision on how they intend to approach the work.
A good poetry book editor also needs to have a critical eye and be flexible. This means the editor should not tear your work apart, offer unsubstantiated feedback, or force you to change things. If a poetry book editor looks at a poem, they should attempt and find various ways to improve the poem based on your strengths and not on their poetic tastes. Therefore, whenever you find an ideal poetry book editor, you should expect them to assist you to discover work that you feel excited about and confident.
To also know that a potential poetry book editor is indeed a good fit, you must make sure that they are flexible. This means you should hire an editor who can meet your needs. Simply put, you need to find a person who can assist with your needs. If you have a limit on how much you intend to spend, then you should find a poetry book editor who can happily help.
And, if you want feedback to be delivered in a specific way, such as hand-delivered on archival paper, then let them know. This is because you are looking for an editor who can read your poems and share feedback, so you must get someone you trust. If you don’t trust your poetry book editor, there is a chance that you may not trust their feedback.
Your feelings about hiring a poetry book editor also matters. You should determine your feelings when you chat with a potential editor and see if you can work well with them. A good poetry book editor should show support for your writing and see things in a new way. After all, you don’t want to get an editor who makes you feel confused or makes things more complicated.
You should remember that not every person can be a perfect fit, so your goal is not to look for a perfect poetry book editor. Instead, you need to find the right editor for your poetry book, making it crucial to be picky.
You can find many poetry book editors on the market, and you just need to call a few of them to see who you match with. Before you decide to work with the editor, you need to check the agreement. You need to make sure that the agreement is okay and you understand the terms and conditions. Don’t sign an agreement if there are some unfavorable terms and conditions.
Developmental editors
A developmental editor is a term that is usually used in the fiction world. Developmental editors can do an early edit on a larger-picture concept in your collection. With poetry, a developmental editor is sometimes a critique or manuscript evaluation. In most cases, a developmental editor can do several things, such as providing feedback on the structure, tone, voice, length of poetry collection, and many more.
As you can see, a developmental editor can do many things. This includes making sure the poems are arranged properly, ensuring the line breaks are working to establish a consistent voice and style, and many more.
Line editors
Line editors do editing at the line level. Line editors are good for poets who desire to have detailed feedback on the poems. This means your poem may find a new direction, you may find the right line, and an editor can suggest areas to reduce or move stanzas.
Therefore, if you get a line editor for your poetry collection, they can provide line-level feedback on the titles, word choice, line breaks, poetic movement, stanza breaks, and many more.
A line editor can offer full arrangement suggestions, suggest alternative collection titles worth considering, ensure that the line lengths in the poems work, check a balance between concrete and specific images.
Proofreading
A proofread tends to be the final stage before your collection of poems go to print. Hence, a proofreader can check several things, such as misspellings, typing errors, stylistic inconsistencies, and formatting errors. A poetry book editor can look at the page numbers, formatting of images, table of contents, and all the content to make sure that there are no errors.
That said, it makes sense to find a poetry book editor who cannot change your voice. A good editor can give suggestions on editing, word choice, and style, but they should not your voice. Unfortunately, some editors out there offer wrong feedback. This is the reason why it’s a good idea to ask a potential editor about their approach to editing.
You can determine that the potential editor is a good fit by asking them to explain how they work. An editor can choose to call you to address your questions or concerns, help you understand their feedback, and many more. Besides, you should ask for a sample edit on their poem so that you can see the type of feedback they provide.