Meet the DAP Team: Editorial

This week we offer an inside look at the daily workings of DAP. Today, meet the editorial team!

Cody Wootton, Managing Editor

I'm Cody Wootton, and I'm the managing editor at DAP. My focus is developmental editing, which looks at each manuscript on a "macro" level, considering the work as a whole, how the overall plot functions, and if certain characters or even entire chapters need to be cut, condensed, or replaced. I'm with every book, every step of the way, from submission to layout to publication. It's also my job to ensure that the quality of our books increases daily, and that requires going over and over the same words many times. My team uses CMOS (Chicago Manual of Style) as a guide for grammar rules, but there are countless situations where CMOS falls short and we have to make our own in-house rules, so constant communication for the sake of consistency is critical. Most of my work is reading, thinking about what I read, and determining if there are ways to improve or clarify anything. I take great pride in seeing my name in our books as a job well done, but I derive the most satisfaction from helping authors reach their higher potential. Driving those words to be more, to achieve more, is why I do what I do.

Ashley Crantas, Editor

Ashley Crantas is a University of Mississippi grad who has been professionally editing for over two years. She always knew she wanted to be involved with storytelling in some way, and decided to pursue her love of reading and writing in the publishing industry. Her day-to-day consists of in-depth discussion and collaboration with her teammates, advocating for the Oxford comma, conferring and brainstorming with authors, and staring at a single paragraph for hours at a time.

Willy Rowberry, Editor/Proofer

I work as the main proofreader at DAP, and I am also the co-head of distribution. On a standard day, I come into the office by 9:00 a.m. and begin with working on distribution duties - which include booking shipments, responding to emails, and working on anything I can that I think will help better our distribution department as a whole. After finishing my daily duties for that department, I can start proofreading my current project.
Proofing takes place while a manuscript is still drafted in a Word Doc, after it is put into a printable PDF, and once a physical test copy of the book is delivered to the office. We have all eyes on the manuscript throughout the publishing process, but I only see it once the text is near-finalized - and I see it multiple times before we get to printing the final version.
Editors are known for having an inside scoop on a book before it's published, but as a proofreader, rather than witnessing the evolution of a manuscript over time, it's more like seeing a book and fine-tuning it, again and again until it reaches near perfection. It's a lot of, "I should have caught that last time, ugh."

Stay tuned for more episodes of “Meet the DAP Team” this week! Coming Wednesday - inside distribution, author relations, and the DAP bookstore!