What Editors Can Learn from Marketing
Marketing is focused on finding a book’s most interesting points and framing them in a way that appeals to the intended audience. Editing needs to take similar ideas into account: What are the readers going to see from this book? What is the most interesting part of this book to readers? Which characters appeal to readers, and which bore them? Are the themes in this book suitable for the intended audience? While you don’t need to tailor the book to a specific audience, it is important to see where the book shines (not just what you like about it), and how those elements merge to create the final project.