Joys and Nightmares of a Tech Editor

Obviously, there was a lot of interesting things I did during all of those years since I more or less abandoned this blog. And filling in all holes would be more or less useless (since time had definitely changed). But there are some exceptions (as usual :-) ) - and one of those exceptions is that in 2019 I was pulled back to the book-publishing process! I am still to lazy to write something on my own (although, I have a couple of good drafts, so, well, "never say never") - but I don't mind looking over somebody's shoulder, especially if I care about the topic.

Frankly speaking, over the years I had mixed experiences - people are different, and not all authors take comments/critique in a friendly manner. But this time I lucked out - up to the point that I feel proud that I participated in the first book by Joh Heller (I bet, you may recognize this name from various extremely useful posts on StackOverflow)

But why I decided to write a post about my experience... Because working as a tech editor in Oracle technology space is a very tricky job, and lessons that I learned may be useful to other people. Let's do bullet points (prepping up for conferences!):

1. Anybody who've spent at least some time with Oracle tech stack knows that the most common answer on any question - "It depends!" I.e. there are different answers that could be valid within specific ranges of applicability. So, one of the main tasks for the tech editor is to keep the author from providing "universal" answers - only answers+conditions. 

2. Tech editor must always remember that it is not his book! The author has full rights to have his/her own opinion/style/favorites. As long as they are not factually incorrect, it is OK to not agree with the author - your role is to keep the author honest in front of the audience. I.e. you can point that something doesn't add up (or in some cases there are other approaches), but whether to follow this route - not your choice!

3. Even the best authors are sometimes very sensitive. So, treat them the same way you would talk to your teenagers :) - no direct orders, no harsh comments! Only suggestions, only very polite hints that this-and-that could be better. 

4. As you all know, teenagers can be VERY irritating from time to time - in that case you speak directly with the publisher (luckily, in this project I didn't have to use that "big hammer", but I had different experience too). Tech editors are hired by the publishing house, not by the author - so, your role is to be a safety check against bad quality books with technical errors.

Anyways, that was definitely fun - and here is a link on the current edition (yes, it is a hint :) ) 

Jon Heller, Pro Oracle SQL Development: Best Practices for Writing Advanced Queries