Writing Effective Author Queries

Cost	$135 for the United States; $140 for Canada and Mexico; $145 for other countries
Instructor	Zipporah Collins

Have you ever had an author respond with hostility to what seemed to you to be a perfectly routine editorial query in a manuscript you’ve edited? How about having an author give an answer that has nothing to do with the question, leaving you wondering what to do? Or having an author not answer a bunch of queries at all?

Writing queries that produce the results you want is both a skill and an art. It’s an often-overlooked part of becoming a really top-notch copyeditor, substantive editor, or developmental editor. A longtime editor shares techniques and tips on making your queries highly effective, with a wealth of examples from actual manuscripts. Learn at your own pace to write truly effective queries, and practice your skill on passages from a wide variety of writings.

What the Course Covers

Writing Effective Author Queries focuses on editorial queries that editors write to authors (or occasionally to other members of the publishing team). The course assumes that you already know how to copyedit. It doesn’t cover basic copyediting rules, tasks, and procedures or define terms that copyeditors are familiar with, such as tracking changes, second pass, end matter, and cleanup. If you have not been trained as or worked as a copyeditor, or have not at least gained familiarity with copyediting by working in a closely related position, you would benefit from first taking a class or correspondence course on copyediting before tackling this course. You’ll then have an easier time understanding and getting the most out of this course. (Editcetera offers basic copyediting in a correspondence course, the ABCs of Copyediting, and in a workshop.)

The information in this course applies to queries in all kinds of manuscripts, text and trade, juvenile and adult, book, report, and periodical. Whenever you edit and need to ask the author a question or give the author a comment about what you are doing, you can use the knowledge you’ll gain in this course to make your queries truly effective.

The course includes

• What to query
• What not to query
• How to set the right tone in your queries
• How to disarm a suspicious or defensive author
• How often to query in different parts of a manuscript
• How to make your queries clear and avoid misinterpretations
• How to choose among various querying mechanisms
• How to create queries that make cleanup of the manuscript easier after the author’s review

Materials and Supplies

When you enroll, you will receive a package containing a coursebook (50 pages), a self-review booklet for the three exercises  (7 pages), and a final send-in assignment (6 pages). If you prefer to edit on screen, the coursebook tells you how to obtain electronic files of the exercises and final assignment. The only other materials you’ll need are a computer with Microsoft Word or a similar word processing application in which you can track changes, or, if you prefer to copyedit on paper, a pencil (a bright color is recommended) and an eraser.

Method

In Writing Effective Author Queries, first you’ll read and absorb some information, plentifully illustrated with examples, and then you’ll put your knowledge into practice with a short exercise. When you’ve completed the exercise, you’ll correct it yourself, using self-review materials included in the course package. After reading more information, you’ll do and self-correct two more short exercises, to practice what you’ve learned. Finally, you’ll read about a few more aspects of querying, and you’ll do a final assignment that you’ll send to the instructor to review and return with comments.

Schedule

Correspondence courses let you work at your own pace. That said, you’ll benefit the most from this course if you concentrate on the related reading with each exercise. That way you practice what you’ve been reading before a lot of it has slipped out of your mind, and the practice will help you retain the information. Then you can take a break, if needed, before reading each next section and the exercise related to it. For the last batch of reading and the send-in assignment, keep in mind that assignments will not be accepted more than one year after you register for the course.

Zipporah Collins has been a freelance copyeditor and project manager for more than 30 years. She has worked for Bay Books, Chronicle Books, KQED Books, McGraw-Hill, Pomegranate, Tricycle Press, Wadsworth, and many other publishers, handling a variety of trade, text, and technical books. She has taught courses in various aspects of publishing through Bookbuilders West, Media Alliance, and UC Berkeley Extension, as well as through Editcetera.

Course Manual Contents

Questions and Answers

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