How Words Get Good

'A masterpiece' - Daily Mail'A fascinating and funny look at what really goes into the making of a book' Sunday Times'Inject this straight into my veins!' Lucy Mangan'Engaging, informative, and fascinating!' David Bellos, author of Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Once upon a time, a writer had an idea. They wrote it down. But what happened next?Join Rebecca Lee, professional word-improver, as she embarks on the fascinating journey to find out how a book gets from author's brain to finished copy. She'll learn the dark arts of ghostwriters, uncover the hidden beauty of typesetting and find out which words end up in books (and why). And along the way, her quest will be punctuated by a litany of little-known considerations that make a big impact: ellipses, indexes, hyphens, esoteric grammar and juicy errata slips. Whoops.From foot-and-note disease to the town of Index, Missouri - turn the page to discover how books get made and words get good.Or, at least, better.

Engaging, informative, and fascinating! Rebecca Lee's book is a whole education, drawn from her long experience of making books better., Inject this straight into my veins!, A revelatory account of how books get made, and a delightful hymn to human collaboration. No really: you'll be entertained on every page!, Bibliophiles will really enjoy this ... Rebecca Lee takes you on a journey - a book's journey - and there's never a dull moment. She moves skilfully back and forth between fascinating book-making history to delightful modern-day anecdotes from both her own experience and other experts in the book-publishing profession., A bibliophile's paradise, a trove of inside stories and fascinating facts. The journey made by words, from the mind of an author to the printed page, is surprisingly complex and often hilarious, and Rebecca Lee is the perfect guide.

Rebecca Lee is an editorial manager at Penguin Random House. She's spent twenty years managing hundreds of high profile books from delivery of manuscript to finished copies, signing off millions of words as fit to go to print with only the occasional regret.

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