Louise Harnby | Crime Fiction and Thriller Editor
  • Home
  • Resource library
  • Services
  • Courses
  • Books
  • Podcast
  • Blog
  • Training login
  • Contact
The Editing Blog: for Editors, Proofreaders and Writers

FOR EDITORS, PROOFREADERS AND WRITERS

Editing Cookery and Craft Titles (by Liz Jones)

28/1/2013

2 Comments

 
A note from Louise: The Parlour's series on Work Choices for editorial freelancers continues with this super post from my colleague Liz Jones. It's particularly pertinent given a recent discussion on the Society for Editors and Proofreaders forum about getting work based on particular subject specialisms.

​Several contributors made the point that it's not only the freelancer's education and career skills that come in useful, but also practical and hobby-based skills and knowledge. With that in mind, I was delighted when Liz suggested a guest article on editing cookery and craft titles. Read on ...

Liz Jones
When you’re thinking about potential areas of publishing to target or publishers to focus your attentions on, it’s worth considering the cookery and craft* genres. They account for a big chunk of the market, with hundreds of titles being published anew every year, or updated or repackaged. The two genres share certain characteristics and considerations.

*Under the banner of "craft" I’m including a range of practical subjects, including knitting, crochet, dressmaking, spinning yarn, quilting, painting, drawing, origami, calligraphy, jewellery making … the list is long.

Who can do it?
In the case of both cookery and craft books, while practical experience and a working knowledge of the subject are both helpful, common sense and a willingness to engage with the material are arguably more important.

​It is your editorial skill set that you’re being hired for, and any subject-specific knowledge is a bonus. If it’s a subject area that’s a little outside your comfort zone, by all means confess this to the in-house editor, but don’t necessarily let it stop you taking on the job.

Having said that, if you are passionate about any particular practical discipline, do draw attention to this when you approach a publisher in these genres. It’ll make you instantly more memorable – and employable.

Does practical experience help?
You don’t need to be a fantastic cook or a highly accomplished needleworker to successfully edit or proofread a book on the subject. However, some practical experience helps.

Take cooking: it’s desirable if you can picture what a pinch of salt looks like, or 4 tablespoons of flour, or 50 grams of butter. A basic understanding of the science behind baking a cake, or a working knowledge of how to make pastry will stand you in good stead. You might not be the next Heston Blumenthal, but you need to care about why a recipe might work … and why it might not.

It also helps if you’re into food – possibly even passionately so, even if you don’t do much cooking yourself. (In our house, my husband is the main cook, but we talk about food and recipes all the time.) Know your ingredients. Keep up with food trends. And read lots of cookery books!

If you love food, this won’t be a chore. By reading around the subject you’ll get a feel for how recipes are put together, what new ingredients are on the market, how different publishers present similar kinds of information, and what’s desirable in a finished recipe.

For craft, it’s important to understand how publishers like their instructional text presented, and to be able to get to grips with the specific jargon relating to the subject. Again, familiarity gained from reading the kinds of titles you’d like to work on is essential. Once you get to know the conventions of the genre, you are as equipped as anyone else to spot problems and inconsistencies in the text. This applies especially to proofreading, and once you’re more comfortable with the subject area it’s straightforward to move into copy-editing if you want.

It can be reassuring to know that for cooking, crochet and knitting titles, publishers will often employ a freelance tester or pattern checker who will make up the recipes or projects, as well as an editor and proofreader. 
​
What characteristics do these books share?
Both genres depend on the reader being able to understand a set of instructions in order to be able to exactly reproduce something at home. Therefore these instructions need to be unambiguous and clear. They should also be free from waffle – the reader does not want to get lost in flowery descriptions while they’ve got their hands covered in icing sugar or superglue.

It’s likely you’ll have to wrestle with units of measurement. Sometimes these are given in both metric and imperial, and many jobs therefore require a certain amount of conversion or checking of measurements, or adding-in of missing information. This may seem dull – but it becomes considerably less boring when you consider how much your reader is depending on these measurements being accurate.

You need to develop a sixth sense for those that seem "a bit off". Surely they can’t mean 15 kg salt? Why on earth would a patchwork skirt for a human take 35 metres of corduroy? How could a delicate beaded necklace possibly be threaded on wire 25 mm thick?

Practical texts are often integrated with images, often in the form of numbered step-by-step sequences. Sometimes the publisher will send you the pictures to look at, and sometimes they won’t. If you have the pictures you need to look closely at each one against the text it accompanies. In this way, especially for craft subjects, a willingness to engage with visual material is important.

With instructional text, editing can be about moulding the material to fit a publisher’s paradigm. Many craft titles are templated before they are written, with the author writing to fit a set of presentation layouts.

Finally, we’ve all been taught to reject the received wisdom that the passive voice is inherently evil. However, this is less the case when editing cookery and craft texts. The active voice is often preferred – some publishers will even specify this. And when editing instructions, the imperative is often used to get the point across quickly.
​
How should I approach a craft or cookery edit?
The heart of any cookery or craft book is the recipes or projects. These often break down into three parts:

  • an introduction
  • a list of what you need
  • the method or instructions

Editing the introduction is just like editing any other kind of text – try to retain the author’s voice as much as possible, as this is what gives the book its particular flavour.

Then there’s the list of ingredients, or tools and materials in the case of craft. This is where you need to start getting really picky about consistency. The publisher’s house style will often tell you what units of measurement they prefer – metric, imperial, by volume (spoons and cups), or some combination of these. It may also detail exactly how you should phrase the specification of particular items.

For instance, is it "a handful of chopped fresh parsley"? Or "a handful of fresh parsley, chopped"? It doesn't only look messy to vary this kind of information – it also makes a difference to accuracy.

The ingredients (or materials) should usually be listed in the order in which they are used in the method or instructions. This area often requires your attention, and it should go without saying that every ingredient listed needs to be mentioned in the method, and that every ingredient mentioned in the method needs to be listed.

The method or instructions for a dish or project are essential to get right. You need to weed out any ambiguities and inaccuracies; don’t leave the reader wondering what to do with that bowl of freshly melted chocolate, or one bead short of a pair of earrings.

Eliminate as much redundancy as you can so that the text is clear and to the point. If a process is repeated throughout the book, try to keep the wording that describes it the same or very similar each time, so the reader understands that it’s the same process.

Make sure you understand everything, and can picture what is meant to be happening, even if the subject matter is slightly unfamiliar to you. Don’t assume that an expert reader will be able to understand a description of a process that makes no sense to you. And do watch out for silly mistakes, such as an oven that gets preheated the night before the rest of the recipe happens.
​
What work opportunities are there?
In terms of the work you might be asked to do on craft or cookery titles, of course there is copy-editing and proofreading, as well as project managing. There is also plenty of work to be found if you can turn your hand to Americanizing or anglicizing text.

Cookery and craft titles, as mentioned, frequently feature units of measurement, and converting these into a format acceptable for the US or UK market is a bit of a headache. This is where you come in.

In this case, being prepared to work onscreen, in InDesign, can be a major benefit; publishers often make the UK or US edition of a book in a great hurry after the primary edition has gone into production. As well as the measurements, you’ll also need to adjust the grammar and vocabulary, of course. Both craft and cookery subjects feature a lot of jargon that is different in UK and US English (frying pan/skillet, coriander/cilantro, selvedge/selvage, double crochet/single crochet, cast off/bind off … etc.).

There are many specialist publishers out there, and it’s worth approaching packagers, too, who often produce complex, highly illustrated titles for major publishers and can be a great source of freelance work.
​ 
So … should I go for it?
Craft in particular might not seem the most highbrow area of book publishing (let’s face it, no one is ever going to win the Man Booker Prize for a book about painting watercolour flowers), but it can be interesting, and reasonably well paid once you get used to the subject matter. You’re also fairly likely to work on books that you’ll later see in your local Waterstones, which can be a buzz in itself. Cookery and craft books are often gorgeously designed and produced, which is nice if you’re a bit of a book fetishist (aren’t we all?). You might even have the thrill of working on a high-profile title that receives lots of media attention – though in this case, don’t necessarily expect to be able to tell anyone about it.

At the end of the day, you’re not helping to disseminate information that will one day bring about world peace, or a cure for some terrible disease. But you will have the satisfaction of knowing that the books you work on are helping to make a lot of people happy – or, if you mess up, extremely frustrated.

Copyright Liz Jones 2013

About Liz: Liz Jones has worked as a full-time freelance book editor and project manager for the past five years, following ten years as an in-house editor for four different publishers – the last of which was a packager specializing in practical art and craft titles. Her work has two distinct strands: highly illustrated non-fiction books, and educational resources. When not editing she is usually playing with her children, playing the flugelhorn or writing. Visit Liz Jones Editorial Solutions for more information.
2 Comments

CurrencyFair: A Cheaper Way to Transfer and Receive Funds (by Averill Buchanan)

18/1/2013

3 Comments

 
A note from Louise: Receiving payment for editorial freelancing can leave us editors and proofreaders feeling a little down in the mouth when we see chunks of our hard-earned cash being swallowed up by transaction and currency-conversion fees.

​Only recently I had to add £15 to an invoice for a Canadian publisher in order to cover my PayPal fees â€“ not something I felt good about, considering this client is a vibrant start-up with a fair-trade policy for its authors. Lloyds TSB also charged me over £13.60 for the privilege of receiving a payment from a Spanish client. For an invoice of approximately £200 this felt like a kick in the teeth. 

Picture
I'm therefore delighted to welcome my editorial colleague Averill Buchanan to the Parlour with her excellent guest article about CurrencyFair. From their website: "Our unique, new peer-to-peer marketplace ensures big savings on exchange rates and fees ... an efficient and safe alternative to ridiculous bank and broker charges." Interested? Read on ...


I've just completed my first set of transactions using CurrencyFair, a peer-to-peer marketplace that allows you to exchange and send funds in a wide variety of currencies, and thought that others might be interested (especially after hearing some horror stories about PayPal freezing people’s accounts).

I needed to pay a membership fee to an organization in Dublin who don't offer PayPal as a payment option (because it costs them too much). So I set up a business account with CurrencyFair (CF), transferred money from my sterling bank account, exchanged it through CF (they make the process very easy), after which it went into my CF euro account. I was then able to pay the organization their membership using IBAN from my CF euro account. The entire cost to me was €3.

I finished an editing job for a client in Ireland and invoiced him in euros. I gave him the details of the CF account in Dublin along with my CF reference number. He paid online using his regular bank interface on Thursday (presumably at no cost to him) and I received the money in my CF euro account the following Tuesday. I then exchanged it to sterling (for a fee of £3) and transferred it to my own bank account on the same day.

Had I invoiced and been paid by my client through PayPal it would have cost me at least £20 more, and PayPal doesn't allow you to shop around for the best exchange rate. They process payments in and out of the US, just like any other currency. They charge a flat fee for each transaction – 3 units of whatever currency you are exchanging to/from.

As a freelancer, you are required to set up a business account with CurrencyFair (something to do with money laundering), but a business account doesn't cost you anything – it’s just the same as a personal account in every other respect. They will want to see scans of passport and other documents proving your address – just as if you were setting up a regular bank account – and it takes a day or so to set up a new account.

But what I’m most impressed with about CurrencyFair is the personal attention. Tim Porter, an Associate Director, took the trouble to phone me at a time that suited me, to answer all my questions, and he’s been on the end of emails all through the process. 

Should anyone else like to try CurrencyFair as a replacement for PayPal (and I highly recommend it), Tim is quite happy to speak to you about it. His email is [email protected]. If you want to read more about the benefits, the website gives some live examples of what you can save by using CurrencyFair instead of a regular bank or broker.

No doubt there are other providers offering similar services, so if you know of any that you'd like to recommend or share your experiences about, please leave a comment.

Copyright 2013 Averill Buchanan

Bio: Averill Buchanan is a freelance editor, proofreader and book indexer.
3 Comments
    BLOG ALERTS
    If you'd like me to email you when a new blog post is available, sign up for blog alerts!
    Proofreading stamps
    ALERT ME!
    WHAT DO YOU NEED?
    • Training courses
    • ​Books and guides
    • Editor resources
    • Author resources
    • ​Monthly newsletter
    Picture
    SIGN ME UP
    PDF MARKUP
    Proofreading stamps
    AUTHOR RESOURCES
    Proofreading stamps
    EDITOR RESOURCES
    Proofreading stamps
    BOOKS FOR EDITORS AND WRITERS
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    MORE BOOKS
    TRAINING COURSES FOR EDITORS
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Blogging for Business Growth course
    MORE COURSES
    TESTIMONIALS

    Dare Rogers

    'Louise uses her expertise to hone a story until it's razor sharp, while still allowing the author’s voice to remain dominant.'

    Jeff Carson

    'I wholeheartedly recommend her services ... Just don’t hire her when I need her.'

    J B Turner

    'Sincere thanks for a beautiful and elegant piece of work. First class.'

    Ayshe Gemedzhy

    'What makes her stand out and shine is her ability to immerse herself in your story.'

    Salt Publishing

    'A million thanks – your mark-up is perfect, as always.'
    TESTIMONIALS

    CATEGORIES

    All
    AI
    Around The World
    Audio Books
    Author Chat
    Author Interviews
    Author Platform
    Author Resources
    Blogging
    Book Marketing
    Books
    Branding
    Business Tips
    Choosing An Editor
    Client Talk
    Conscious Language
    Core Editorial Skills
    Crime Writing
    Design And Layout
    Dialogue
    Editing
    Editorial Tips
    Editorial Tools
    Editors On The Blog
    Erotica
    Fiction
    Fiction Editing
    Freelancing
    Free Stuff
    Getting Noticed
    Getting Work
    Grammar Links
    Guest Writers
    Indexing
    Indie Authors
    Lean Writing
    Line Craft
    Link Of The Week
    Macro Chat
    Marketing Tips
    Money Talk
    Mood And Rhythm
    More Macros And Add Ins
    Networking
    Online Courses
    PDF Markup
    Podcasting
    POV
    Proofreading
    Proofreading Marks
    Publishing
    Punctuation
    Q&A With Louise
    Resources
    Roundups
    Self Editing
    Self Publishing Authors
    Sentence Editing
    Showing And Telling
    Software
    Stamps
    Starting Out
    Story Craft
    The Editing Podcast
    Training
    Types Of Editing
    Using Word
    Website Tips
    Work Choices
    Working Onscreen
    Working Smart
    Writer Resources
    Writing
    Writing Tips
    Writing Tools

    ARCHIVES

    June 2025
    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    October 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    June 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011

    RSS Feed

Alliance of Independent Authors
Picture
Picture
CIEP Advanced Professional Member
The Publishing Training Centre
INFO ABOUT ME
About Louise
Bio page and business profile
Contact form
Louise's fiction
​Portfolio 
Privacy policy
Professional Practice Code
Qualifications
Terms and conditions
INFO FOR INDIE AUTHORS
​Why choose Louise?
Editorial services
Books and guides
Contact form
​Free resources
​Order form for books
Self-editing book
Testimonials
Transform Your Fiction series

Want to sign up to my monthly newsletter, The Editorial Letter? 
INFO FOR EDITORS
​1:1 business consultations
Books and guides
​​Business Skills for Editors series
Free resources
Order books and courses
​The Editing Podcast
​The Editing Blog
Training courses
Transform Your Fiction series
Gift vouchers for editors and proofreaders
© 2011–2025 Louise Harnby
  • Home
  • Resource library
  • Services
  • Courses
  • Books
  • Podcast
  • Blog
  • Training login
  • Contact