What's a "Book Doctor?"

. . . Book doctor is a term from the publishing business, which I was in before I got into the used book business.

The term means, basically, an emergency editor. A book doctor gets handed bad manuscripts -- ones that the publisher has already paid for -- and has to fix them up in fast time. I was in the business of nonfiction so when one of these messes was handed to me, I would check and fix any misspelled proper names, check and correct any incorrect facts, and so on.

A similar term in showbiz is a script doctor.

Now, if you thought I was someone who fixes old, damaged books, sorry, I'm not. For that you need a bookbinder or a document restorer, not a book doctor.

My bookstore: http://www.gwenfoss.com/

My colleagues: http://www.tomfolio.com/

(Please note: Because this blogsite was forcibly taken over by another blogsite, my earlier posts have been squashed down to the infinitesimal size of about 0.000001-point type. I have given up trying to fix them. You can still see them down there. So I am going to repost some of my earlier posts. This is one of those.)

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