Editing for books in Italian

The article you are about to read has  been written by me Italian.  This is my translation into English.

Editing: introduction
Writers, it is known, are as lovers, namely blind! In the grip of passion for their story or their text, they don’t notice errors and mistakes made during writing. Mistakes are fairly normal when you write. It is not normal, instead, that you forget to edit and read your text back, in order to improve and clean it from syntactic, grammar and structure errors. This work is called “editing”.

Editing: what is it?
The term comes from English and literally means modify, correct or change a written text. Often editing has been misunderstood with copy editing or proofreading. The latter is used only to correct spelling, grammar and typing mistakes, while copy editing is a high level proofreading used to improve the style of some sentences, besides grammar and spelling. Instead, editing, many times, can even bring to rewrite entirely a written text, especially a book or a novel. Rewriting is necessary when the narrative structure is so highly incoherent to prevent publishing. There are many potential publishable books, around, but at last impossible to be published, just because they lack the narrative structure. Practically, a good book can become bad because it didn’t get a good editing or proofreading. While a bad book can become publishable just because it enjoyed the creativity and talent of a good editor. The latter is just the professional who takes care to edit and improve the content and the value of a book. In the past, before the advent of self-publishing, editing was done by the same publishers. Today, with the competition of self publishing and the scarce revenues of the same publishing companies, this important work is more and more overlooked. Today, publishing companies, both big or small, prefer not to risk. Rather, they want the perfect work just in their hands, already available for being published and sold worldwide. Just for such a reason, publishers aim only to publish translated works by famous authors: they know those are surely successful works and already edited originally and hence surely marketable. This attitude makes the work of emerging authors harder and harder. So, they are often forced to edit their book by themselves and to submit it to publishers who punctually reject or not even take a look at it!

Self-editing: why does not it work?

If you are trying to publish a book, self editing is always unadvised. Indeed, It has been scientifically proved that even the most talented and skilled author finds hard to detect a light mistake or an error. The author’s eye, driven by the brain, can only see what the brain perceives, namely the assumed beauty of the work. Only an external eye, namely that has not written with her own hands the book, can notice the smallest writing mistake. In short, to edit and proofread a book, you need the experienced eye of an external editor, because, as I said at the beginning, the author’s eye is too fell in love with his own writing to notice eventual imperfections. If you arrived at my literary bilingual blog, it is probable you are looking for information about how to edit your book. Maybe you are an emerging author, or maybe, for the first time, you are diving yourself into the fantastic writing world. It does not matter if you are a worker, a nurse or an officer. It matters only what you think to get with your book. Everybody deserves his/her dreams come true, even the one to publish a novel. But if this novel does not get an accurate editing and proofreading, probably it will never come to see the light and never arrive on the shelves of a library. There is always the option to self publish, of course, but this trend is only causing an excessive release of books, some of them good, and some of them, unfortunately, very bad. If a bad book remains in the drawer, no problem, but if it is arrives in the hands of readers and publishers, then it is a real evil!

Is editing dead?
As a book reviewer, I read hundreds of books every day and notice how much editing is by now an overlooked work, or rather, a definitively forgotten job. I read books with banal grammar and typing errors or hastily written sentences and with scarce or absent punctuation. I read text where “accumulation” becomes “ acculation”, where the foundation of a monument becomes “ the erection”. For God’s sake, etymologically, the word “ erection” is correct, because it comes from the verb “to erect”, but from the stylistic side, since the word also relates to a sexual terminology, it would be better you used a synonym or changed the entire sentence. Hence, not “the year of erection of the monument”, that could make the mischievous reader burst into a laugh, but “the year the monument was founded, built or erected”. These simple examples, gives the idea about how editing and proofreading can restore the balance of the same written text, improving and embellishing it.

Editing for books in Italian
A good editing service can make the difference between an unsuccessful and successful book. Rewriting entire chapters or a whole book must be discussed with the author of course, even because if a book has to be entirely rewritten, we are not in the mere editing job, anymore, but in the ghost writing, namely write on behalf of the author. This literary website, that hosts dozens of authors and book reviews, wants to give a contribute to improve unpublished manuscripts. The pages of this website are often visited by both foreign and Italian writers. Some authors who have Italian origins, but who live and work in foreign countries, would like to come back to write in their native language, although they have used the English language for years. If you are one of these authors and you are trying to write your book in Italian, you can contact me for editing or copy editing services. I’ll make your work enjoyable for the Italian audience. My editing services are also available for Italian writers. For more information about rates and terms of my services, you can write a message on the contact form.

Rosalba Mancuso

Rosalba Mancuso is the journalist, born in Sicily, who founded three online magazines in English. On Advicebooks Book Reviews, Rosalba shows her great passion for books, helping readers and book lovers choose and buy the best books she read and reviewed. She also worked as a contributor to print and online magazines and as a bilingual Italian-English writer. Here, Rosalba also offers room to authors and publishers who want to get their books reviewed through the voice of an avid reader like her. You must also know that this book review magazine lives thanks to your help. Rosalba, in fact, earns a small commission, with no cost for you, when you buy books through the affiliate links you find in her book reviews. This book review magazine is also funded by services of editorial reviews and book press releases.