Edits on the Record is driven by a love for books and authors, and a commitment to attentive editing. This project is made possible by the University of Virginia Libraries and The JeffersonTrust, an initiative of the U.Va. Alumni Association—and it all starts with a mission to find “the right book.”
Here’s the Idea
Book editing typically happens in private, before the public has a chance to buy copies. Drafts, emails, edit letters, discarded chapters, alternate storylines—all these and more are usually just deleted. But these are important parts of the book’s backstory.
Our Mission
We’re launching Road Trip Press to publish a book, so we can document the editorial process in real time.
If you’re wondering what this might look like, you might check on NPR’s Planet Money podcast, and their projects to publish a song and make a T-shirt (and study the industries along the way).
In our case, we’ll be publishing a first edition in both a traditional paperback (for sale) and an open-access ePub (for free download, along with all the support files along the way). If funding continues for a future year, we also hope to produce a limited run of artist’s editions.
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Still Want to Know More?
An Explanation from Our Publisher and Senior Editor
When I (Heidi Nobles) worked for Hachette Book Group back in the mid-2000s, we were still working with a lot of hard-copy drafts, as well as digital copies. Ideally, we retained every draft for 3-5 years. The digital materials were saved to internal drives; the physical materials were locked in file drawers. At the end of the retention period, those files were destroyed, mostly just to free up space. It kind of broke my heart.
With Road Trip Press, I want to work with one author on one book, where we all know going in that we’re trying to document the process of how that book takes shape. We’ll work through each of the major editorial stages together—developmental, substantive, and copy editing—sharing what ifs? and queries and drafts along the way. We’ll also work through the choices of book design and manageable marketing/PR efforts.
We’ll retain the materials in a public repository—titled “Edits on the Record”—so others can see a transparent version of the editorial process, all the way through and past publication.
The author will have the opportunity to work with an attentive and energetic editorial team along the way to having finished books available in-hand and for sale. I will serve as the lead editor; we will also have contract editors and designers to step in along the way, and our wonderful assistant editors will shadow and learn through the process.
In the end, all the process materials will be preserved in an open access repository, and digital copies of the book will be available for free download, but we’ll also print physical books (traditional offset paperbacks) and work through independent booksellers for distribution. If funding continues for an additional year, we plan to produce a limited run of artist’s books, created by University of Virginia students with mentoring from local bookmakers.
This project seeks to celebrate editing at its best—that is, editing that supports an author’s creative process and the strongest possibilities of a manuscript; editing that takes time with a manuscript’s overall shape and with its details; editing that navigates the current publishing landscape without letting commercial pressures unfairly diminish the book or the author’s experience.