On Writers and Their Editors
Writers desperately need editors, but their relationship can be delicate.
I have been doing a ton of late-stage book edits lately. Some are for American History 2nd edition. Some are for The Death of Religion? Nones, Others, and the Flourishing of Faith, co-authored with my Baylor colleague Byron Johnson. Both are with B&H Academic, both due out in 2026. And of course I have published about 15 single-author books. Let’s just say I’ve gone through a lot of edits in my career!
Each press has its own system for edits, but in general book editing focuses first on content, then style and prose, and finally technical issues like typos, extraneous spaces, inconsistent capitalization, etc. There are at least three rounds of edits involved with any published book, but often there are more.
That may seem like a lot of editing, and obviously some books and authors require more editing than others. As I have noted before, doctoral students often are not attuned to issues such as passive voice - they’re just trying to get their ideas down on paper and don’t necessarily think much about style.
But even the most experienced author needs an editor, because no one ever turns in a manuscript that a good editor can’t improve. Editors simply have a different perspective on prose than authors do. Even experienced editors who write a book themselves need to work with an outside editor!
But both authors and editors should adopt practices and attitudes that keep their working relationship congenial. Sometimes their relationship can become difficult because authors tend to be touchy about their projects. Senior professors, in particular, rarely have anyone tell them that their writing stinks (or “could be improved,” to put it more nicely).
My editorial experience is quite limited compared to my authorial experience, but I know editors get tired of correcting the same problems over and over and over (passive voice, unclear references, etc.). To editors, these errors or infelicitous ways of writing can become annoying, and thus their corrections can come off as blunt or patronizing to authors, who don’t like being spoken to as if they are in a freshman writing seminar.
Here are just a few suggestions that can make the author-editor relationship easier for both:
Authors need to get really comfortable with the idea that their writing needs editing, and that it always will need editing.
An author’s default response to an editor’s edits needs to be to ‘accept’ without quibbling, unless the correction patently makes the prose worse, or introduces an error.
Editors should resist the temptation to mess with sentences just because they can. Don’t make changes unless they correct or improve the prose in a tangible way (passive to active voice, etc.).
Editors should keep in mind that while a particular editing job may take them a week or two, the author has probably been working on the book for years. A certain respect for the author’s relative investment in the project is warranted.
Most of these suggestions fall into the ever-reliable “golden rule” category. If you were the author, how would you want the book to be edited? Or if you were the editor, how would you want the author to respond to edits? Applying these principles (to yourself first) will clear up a lot of the potential friction in an author-editor relationship.
We introduced a new emphasis in church history in Midwestern Baptist Seminary’s doctoral program.