Question:

Hi, I'm reviewing your wonderful book for Natural History magazine. As an editor I was intrigued by the uniformly high quality of the chapters. I began to wonder how you got such readable text from so many different contributors. How much editing did you have to do? Or was it the ground rules you set? I'd be curious to know but feel free to answer either for quotation or not. I'll respect either choice.
Best,
Diana Lutz

Answer:

Hello Diana,

I'm glad you're enjoying the book!  Please feel free to post a comment on the site and I can then respond to you by email if you have any more questions.

Ted and I exchanged story edits several times with each author, working with them on scope and length.  I think the quality of the stories reflects the willingess on the part of our contributors to invest time on the edits beyond the first draft, their understanding of what we were looking for, and our committment as editors. 

Our goal was that every author would be completely comfortable with their edited story, even if it did change considerably from the early version.  We wanted every author to retain their own voice.  There's no question that the editing process was a learning one for all of us.  For me, personally and professionally, it was great.  I'd be up early every morning in Africa, looking forward to every story revision that came in over Email during the night.  Thank goodness for the Internet!

We also used the first finished story, the one I wrote about Mohan, and excerpts from several that we used in our book proposal, as a model to share with contributors.  We of course also have a terrific literary agent, Jody Rein, and equally great publishing editor, Danielle Perez.  Their advice and direction was excellent--both helped me and Ted stay on track as editors.

Finally, as you can see on the dedication page, this book never would have happened without the encouragement of my mom, Mary Spelman.  She is a published author of several non fiction books, including two for adults (Mary Lockwood) and a dozen for children (Mary Towne), and an experienced writing instructor and editor (she worked for several years for the Institute for Children's Literature).  Her guidance and support has been invaluable.