Editing digital texts

The speaker at our March general meeting will be Pamela Hewitt, a freelance editor at Emend Editing.

You can attend either in person or via a Zoom webinar. Please register on this Trybooking page if you wish to attend in person.

(For details of upcoming meetings, scroll to the bottom of the page.)

About the presentation

Digital publishing is a moving target. Not only does the technology change but content on websites and apps is constantly updated, corrected, expanded or completely revamped, sometimes rapidly. Content may be accessed across multiple platforms, formats and devices, incorporating images, audio and video. It’s important for editors to develop the skills to navigate the evolving writing techniques and business models of the digital space.

In this presentation, Pamela takes a critical look at what the gurus say, showcasing some landmark examples of digital presentation and suggesting practical means for editors to collaborate with clients, including publishers, organisations and writers.

The focus of this presentation is editing for onscreen delivery but not technical aspects like tagging, markup languages or coding.

The presentation will cover:

• What the digital revolution means for publishing – blurred boundaries between processes, shorter chains of production and a device-agnostic approach
• Editing for digital audiences – how to handle the transition from print to screen, the rules and when to break them, chunking and linking, parallel content, rich assets and interactive texts
• Evolving business models – advances and royalties, self-publishing, digital rights management, partnership payments and crowd funding
• Brave new world – while acknowledging transferable skills, we’ll consider new approaches to reading and marketing text, and emerging collaborative publishing models.

Pamela will also talk about innovations in interactivity from fiction, websites, blogs, vlogs, apps and enhanced eBooks, including video, audio and other media.