One aspect of my job is supposed to be slightly glamorous, I think. This is the acquiring editor part – wherein you’re sent books by agents, sign them up after the hype and gamesmanship of an auction, and then launch the things on the great, voracious public. This is the part that involves parties, and lunches. Or used to. It has its appeal, and when my boss asked me to be an editor, it was the prospect of these things that got me excited. What I’ve discovered, though, is the strange allure of the supposedly more humble aspects.  

After I’ve bought a book, it’s my job to edit it structurally. This is the stage that’s easily lampooned, the one where the editor is an interfering tyrant, tells the author that the title should change, as should the name of the lead character, who is perhaps the wrong sex, and should maybe die halfway through the book, etc., etc. Does this ever actually happen? I can’t believe it does. Why would you commission the book when you want a completely different one? My rule, so far, is just to make sure that the book is doing everything it wants to do, successfully conforming to its self-established internal conventions. This means that all my ‘edits’ – suggestions that we cut lines, shift scenes, etc. – become just that: suggestions. And the author can more or less do what they like with them. In practice, what tends to happen is that a suggested edit is not accepted directly but acts as a kind of spur, and the author begins to rewrite or add passages. It’s weird and thrilling when authors you read at school start enriching their text after conversations they’ve had with you. But it’s dangerous. I guess if you go seeking this thrill you’re on the way to becoming that interfering tyrant.

However, some manuscripts are, for one reason or another, in a state when they hit my desk and need serious attention. This is difficult work – and the hardest part of it is knowing when to let the book go, understanding that only so much can be done within a certain time frame. It is impossible in some cases to iron out every imperfection, and it’s a truism that after having read the same book two or three times even the most energetic, well-meaning editor will become stale. It’s at this point that you have to bite the bullet and send the thing off to the copyeditor (more on them in a tick). But that’s easier said than done: there’s a large part of us invested in every book we publish, and when things aren’t absolutely how we want them to be, it niggles.

 This perfectionist impulse has a cousin: the pedantic urge. Since beginning work as an editor I’ve discovered my inner pedant. This is copyediting’s fault. Copyediting is where you cut your teeth as an editor. My heart sank when my boss sat me down many moons ago and explained what this would entail: checking all the spelling, grammar, facts, making sure everything is consistent. So, for example, if somebody spells ‘realize’ ... well, like that, then I’d have to make sure that everything that could end in ‘-ize’ did. I figured I'd end up signed off with a tasty strain of boredom-induced mania. What could be worse than trawling through 500-plus pages of a manuscript, on the lookout for errors, and – more worrying than that – knowing that if things were missed it was going to be your fault, not the author’s? You’d sign a book off and then wake up in the middle of the night, worrying about page 63. Yes, page 63, where, in the third paragraph, a minor character is sentenced to seven years for the theft of a pineapple. But it is 1893, and we’re in Paris, and you’re suddenly thinking that you really should have checked the relevant judicial manuals. And were there pineapples in 1890s Paris? 

Anyway, after having got a few copyedits under the belt, a curious thing happened. I started to enjoy the copyediting. It got easier. I found that authors tended to make the same mistakes, so learnt what to look out for. It dawned on me that those French legal guides weren’t required – that unless something was egregious, the author deserved a little trust. And then, weirder still, I began to take a quiet, perverse pleasure from the process. There was something about the crispness, the incision of those little pencil marks I was making; there was a voyeur’s rush when you knew that very august men of letters struggled with the consonants of ‘accommodation’. One night, as I jabbered about the profound glories of a perfect bibliography, a good friend fixed me with her best glare and I realised that my inner pedant was now very much out.

But there is a rich and serious pleasure to copyediting which goes beyond those of the pedant. There’s a perception that it’s the lowest rung on the editorial ladder, but when you’re lucky enough to have the time to copyedit well, you develop a unique, intimate knowledge of whatever it is you’re working on; you start to see patterns, structures, traits, secrets, and feel that for a week or so you’re closer than any reader in the world to the strange, alchemic magic that makes a book great. It’s not as glamorous as sashaying at parties – but then my gait precludes sashaying – but for a book lover it's an absolute privilege. 

Alex Bowler, editor, Jonathan Cape