For many years, publishers have asked me to provide consultancy services for them. This usually happens when a non-fiction book warrants having an expert eye cast over it; this can be at any stage in the process but typically happens periodically – perhaps at the early stages to look at concept and plan, then mid-way once pencil illustrations are in place and once more near the end of the project. But timings can vary and, sometimes, I only get one look at a project.
Many science/natural world books for children are written by people who would never describe themselves as experts, so they value having someone double-check their work. This avoids embarrassing errors creeping in and saves editors much hassle, and can save money too. When I’m consulting I am looking at overall themes to check a topic is being covered in a balanced way and is presenting a modern approach. I also check facts and figures, using primary research sources as much as possible and providing comprehensive references. This is easiest when an author has supplied their own, quality, references (but that is very rare!). More often, this is a lengthy task that requires some degree of stamina and perseverance to try and corroborate an author’s facts – my hope is that I can support and validate their writing rather than find fault with it. My own books are also usually placed in the hands of a consultant to check, so I know how invaluable this role is and I’m always grateful to any consultant who spots a careless error before anything goes to print. I am often asked to check illustrations and photographs as well, to ensure they are accurate.
Just a general note that may be of interest: some publishers prefer to just feature the name of an illustrator on the cover of a book, and you need to look inside the book to find the author’s name; if you didn’t know better you might assume the illustrator created and wrote the book. I don’t know the reason for this, but it can be a little demoralising after spending much time planning almost every single thing that goes into a book, providing all the references for the editor, compiling a list of references and detailed instructions for an illustrator, and then writing all of the text, to be unacknowledged as author on a book’s cover. Sometimes not acknowledged as an author at all, but to be listed as ‘editor’ or ‘consultant’. Thus, in some instances you won’t see my name on the cover of these books, or I’ll be identified as consultant or editor, when in truth I wrote the thing, from cover to cover.
One of my favourite books to consult on recently has been Hamza Yassin’s book: Hamza’s Wild World. Unusually, he is a zoologist who knew what he was talking about and that made it an absolute joy to read and work on. It is a big book, packed full of facts, so it took many hours to complete the consultancy and I hope my input improved what was already a truly lovely book. On the flipside, I’ve consulted on two children’s books written by a well-known ‘science writer’ that was littered with many spelling errors and mislabelled diagrams that had been missed by both author and editor. Sadly, the manuscript revealed that the author had a fundamental misunderstanding of various topics, including the decibel scale, photosynthesis, evolution, food webs, basic taxonomy and cladistics. Various ‘facts’ were simply incorrect and numerous calculations and dates were wrong. When I investigated the author I was surprised to discover that they had no academic background in the sciences, which probably explained their confusion. When the author was asked, by the editor, to provide references for their facts so I could investigate further, they were unable to do so, confirming my suspicion that much of the content had simply been lifted from the internet.
On another highly illustrated project the editor was planning all the spreads and writing the text. I got a first look at the manuscript far too late in the day: the book was all but ready to go to the printers with full colour illustrations, which were highly complex, all done and dusted. I had to tell the editor that the illustrator mistakenly thought that rivers flow inland from the sea and had thus got all her many waterfalls going the wrong way, with salmon getting to leap down a waterfall to spawn, instead of up. The water in the rivers was shown flowing up mountains… and no one had spotted that this was incorrect over the many months the book had been in production. I would like to say a catastrophe was avoided, but it was too late. I believe the book went to print anyway, but I did insist my name did not appear on it.
In some instances a ‘consultancy’ is more of a ghost-writing job: someone famous has been asked to write a book, or series of books, but they don’t really know the topic in depth. Then I, or someone like me, is brought in to do a lot of the donkey work. You won’t find my name on those books, and the financial rewards for such work make it unappealing – but I will sometimes take these projects on to help out an editor.
I normally undertake consultancy work on an hourly basis: this is the fairest solution I think, as it means the fee reflects the workload. Here are some of the books I’ve worked on in the last three years. For obvious reasons this collection does not include the books mentioned above!
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