Reading between the Lines: Alyea Canada on Editing
the Nonac: What was your journey into the book industry? How did you break into the editorial side?
Alyea: My path into publishing was a bit meandering. I didn't know that I wanted to work in publishing until after I graduated college. As a rather rudderless, underemployed twenty-something, I applied to an internship at Afterimage, a nonprofit art publication and realized that I have a knack for editing. Afterimage was super nonprofit and there were no full-time career opportunities, so I left to get my master's degree at the New School. With some other students in my program, I started a short-lived interdisciplinary online magazine called et al., which made me realize I preferred the longer timeline of books to the rapid pace of magazines and journals. Once again graduating unemployed, I worked at Barnes & Noble for awhile until I was hired out of my internship with the Feminist Press.
As far as breaking into the editorial side, I honestly haven't done anything else. Once I realized that I wanted to work in publishing, it was pretty clear that editorial is the best fit for my skills. It just felt natural to me. Although in hindsight, that I spent a lot of high school editing my brother's college papers should have been a clue to my future career. I think a lot of people when they say they want to work in publishing, they say they want to work in editorial because it is the most well-known part of the industry, which makes it hard to break into. If you think you want to work in editorial, really research the industry and reflect on what makes you want to work in publishing and make sure that editorial is actually the best fit for you.
the Nonac: What's your editorial process?
Alyea: My editorial process is pretty simple and still evolving. The first thing I like to do is a cold read of the draft without talking to the author too much about it first. Because of the nature of acquisitions, I either have never read a full manuscript or it has been months since I last read it, so I like to approach a manuscript with a fresh pair of eyes. During this first read, I will mark places where I got lost in the manuscript or have questions or any plot holes, as well as start to map what seem to be the key themes and characters/people. After that, I talk to the author about how they came to write the book and what are the main ideas or messages they want to communicate to the reader and share my thoughts and any suggested cuts or changes on the macro level. Once the author and I have a plan, I give them the longest turnaround I can at this stage. After I get the new draft back, I will do more line-based edits, suggest corrections for anything that still isn't working, and try to get in as many of these types of back-and-forths that I can before it has to be turned over to production. The process changes a bit if I'm working with memoir or narrative nonfiction and again if it is a translation, but that’s the basic process.
The most important thing is to establish trust with the author. In the end we both want the best for this book but I also understand that a lot of care and energy goes into writing a book, so I’m always respectful of that when I suggest changes. My deeply flawed analogy is that I understand your book is your baby and I'm telling you to cut off its arm, but we have to trust each other that it's for the best. Along those lines, this work involves a lot of choosing battles. I often ask myself if I can live without one change if it means I can get a bigger or more important one somewhere else. I also know that as an editor I'm reading significantly closer and more sensitively than the majority of readers, and so some more nitpicky changes have to be sacrificed. If I'm really having a hard time getting a change through sometimes I will leave it and see if the copy editor notices. If they do, I will broach the topic again and if they don't, I will accept that I was wrong.
the Nonac: Given the amount of books you've edited, which 3 books were your favorite to work on?
Alyea: That's a tough one. My three favorites are probably Tenemental by Vikki Warner, Ain't I a Diva? by Kevin Allred, and U Up? by Catie Disabato. Tenemental was the first memoir I ever edited and it was such a fun story to be trusted with. It also felt especially prescient that I was in my late twenties unsure if I knew how to do my job working on a book about a woman in her late twenties unsure if she knew how to be a landlady. Ain't I a Diva? was my first acquisition and Kevin was so trusting as I proceeded to suggest cutting over a third of his manuscript and completely revamping his book. U Up? is just the most fun I've had with a manuscript. If I can sneak in a fourth choice, Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge and translated by Jeremy Tiang is also high on my list, but I didn't do much editing as it is a UK conversion.
the Nonac: You also write for Asymptote, a site focused on world literature in translation, and have personally translated world literature in the past. How has translation shaped your editorial process? Can the process look different for an English-language book versus a work in translation?
Alyea: I actually don't translate in any official capacity, but it is the majority of what I read. I think more than my editorial process my fondness for translated literature has more directly affected my acquisitions process. Reading in translation has really pushed me to decenter myself as a reader. When acquiring and editing, a book may not speak directly to my experiences or even interests, but that doesn't mean that it isn't good or isn't marketable. Indigenous readers and readers of color already have a lot of experience with this approach, as we so rarely see ourselves in books, but it never hurts to remind ourselves. It is really easy to get caught up in thinking about how a book will sell or how large of an audience exists for it—obviously we want our books to sell—but we also can't just keep replicating the same stories or preventing readers from the opportunity to discover something new. For example, I would love to see more genre titles or comedic books get translated, but because the industry has slotted translations into the "literary" category it is much harder to acquire those types of titles.
The editorial process for a translation is different from that of an English language book. From the beginning, publishing translations are exercises in trust. You are often acquiring based on a brief translation sample and a reader's report unless you can read the original language. There is also the fact that the book is done. How faithful a translation must be to the original is a whole fascinating debate among translators, but for the most part my role as an editor is more clarifying ideas or smoothing out wording than it is digging into the plot.
the Nonac: Advice for an aspiring book editor?
Alyea: Really make sure you want to be an editor. Reach out to editors and ask if you can grab a cup of coffee and ask them a few questions about their job. A lot of people think that being a book editor is closing your door and diving deep into a manuscript and that is so little of what I do. Honestly most of my day is spent on data entry, contract negotiations, cold-emailing blurbers, and so so many meetings. Most of my reading is done on nights and weekends. If you still want to be an editor, I highly recommend talking to the editors of books that you really enjoy. Editors are usually named in the acknowledgments and generally enjoy talking more about the books they've worked on.
Along those same lines, be clear on what type of publishing you want to work in. It seems like it would make sense to start in academic publishing if you want to work in serious trade nonfiction, but they are actually quite different and it is hard to crossover. Similarly if you want to work in YA or children's don't take a position in adult publishing and expect to easily switch. This industry is small but it is also pretty siloed. Once you have chosen your silo, be careful of waiting for the perfect job at your dream publisher. The reality is that you will not always be working on books you love because editors are assigned projects all the time. Even if you don’t love every book a publisher puts out, you will gain something valuable by working there. Definitely don’t take a job at a publisher that goes against your values, no one wants to be the liberal at a right-wing press, but just watch over-romanticizing the industry.
Finally, just apply for the job. Obviously, make sure you're generally qualified, but don't weed yourself out of a candidate pool because you don't meet every single criteria. This approach is how I got my current job and it is probably how I will get my next job and it is how most men got their jobs. Just go ahead and apply, the worst they can say is no.
Alyea Canada is an editor at Melville House and assistant editor at Asymptote. She is always on the hunt for unique stories, diverse voices, and pop culture criticism. Previously she worked at the Feminist Press and cofounded a literary magazine, et al. Her master's thesis was on gender, technology, and patriarchy in The Stepford Wives, and she is always ready to discuss the nuances of the Godzilla franchise. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY, with a pretty awesome polydactyl cat.