Preface

I have always been motivated by a snippet I once read in a newspaper: “taking India’s best to the world and bringing the world’s best to India”. So, how did I translate this philosophy into reality? “Very few people know about copyediting. It would be great to have a book on copyediting,” I thought to myself. The year was 2009. LinkedIn groups used to be very active at the time, and I floated the idea in several LinkedIn groups and received an overwhelming response from all over the world. Even a few chapters were written, but my full-time job (and a 5-hour commute), lack of experience with the publishing process, and lack of team members for the project left little time for me to pursue the authors and look for a publisher.

In 2016, I tried again to get the book going but the time was not ripe yet. In 2021, I floated the idea one more time and the end is now in sight – third time lucky! We set up a four-member editorial committee with Abha Thapalyal Gandhi as the chair and Anupam Choudhury, Murugaraj Shanmugam, and Preeta Priyamvada as members. The committee reviewed and approved proposals (sometimes reviewed even revised proposals), peer-reviewed each chapter twice (at times even three times), helped authors with surveys and questionnaires, sent regular progress bulletins, and remained in contact through WhatsApp chats, phone calls, and video calls.

Most of the authors are also from ICF (Indian Copyeditors Forum) and are specialists in their respective fields. For some sections in the book (e.g. credentials in copyediting and allied services), I wrote to editing associations in the United Kingdom and Canada and they responded graciously and agreed to contribute chapters. I see endless possibilities of collaboration (cross-training), growth, and compounding because of the multi-person effort that this project grew into. These possibilities do not arise when working alone.