Greg Ioannou

EDITORS, NEED SOME HELP?

Recently, I’ve had several projects where I’ve helped other editors with the parts of a project they couldn’t handle: distributing books and ebooks, accessible ebook formatting, localization. I can probably do the same for you.

So don’t say no to projects where you can’t do some of the tasks. Ask me about the stuff you can’t do!


MY (RELEVANT) RESOURCES

I own two companies:

Colborne Communications, at the time I named it, was on Colborne Street. I sometimes still park on Colborne Street out of some weird nostalgia.

Colborne is a writing and editing company, and we work on a wide range of stuff: websites, books, video games, government reports — pretty much anything. Our customers tend to be loyal: We worked on the
Lemon-Aid car guides from 1982 until 2012, and have edited publications and websites for Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts since the 1980s. (Yes, we understand SEO and accessibility and such.) Although most of our work comes from word of mouth and client referrals, we’re always on the lookout for clients who need ongoing writing or editing help.

Colborne’s website

Iguana Books was Canada’s first hybrid publisher — I started it in 1991, before hybrid publishing was really possible. Iguana is a mispronunciation of my last name. Iguana publishes fiction, poetry, non-fiction, kids’ books. If it’s good, we will publish it. Our books are distributed worldwide as ebooks and print-on-demand paperback and hardcover books. We also provide a full range of services for self-publishing authors. Many of the books we publish come to us from EAC editors who are trying to find a publisher for a pet editorial project, or even for their own books.

Iguana’s website

I used to be involved in romance publisher Tryst Books, but alas there’s no more romance (publishing) in my life. :o(

Those two companies currently have six staff between them (plus me).


I’m also a co-owner of In-Game Learning (IGL), a new company that produces educational video games. Colborne writes the games, and Iguana is IGL’s Canadian distributor.

IGL’s first game is The Plain Game.  (You have fun while you learn to write in plain language.)

In-Game Learning’s website

WORKING ON GAMES

So how did I land a gig like the In-Game Learning thing? Way back in 2000, I spotted a project on Editors Canada’s jobs board to check the information in a database. Sure, whatever. I applied for it and it turned out the work was fact-checking the trivia questions in Cranium, a new board game.

So we checked everything in the game. As my editors worked they couldn’t resist making the activities more entertaining. The Craniacs loved their work and we ended up writing new games for Cranium. We worked on 32 of them! Sadly they went out of business during the 2008 recession.  But four of the games we worked on won Game of the Year, and … I guess I wasn’t quiet about that.

I’ve also done tons of plain language work (more on that later), so when IGL were getting started an Editors Canada member told them that she knew this guy who’s worked on award-winning games and is a plain language expert — maybe he could help with developing the plain language game. The IGLers and I clicked big-time. 

(By the way, the project lead I’ve used for the game development is Paula Chiarcos, who I met years ago over lunch at an Editors Canada conference.)

(So far, this thing is promoting the association as much as it’s promoting me. So be it. More than half of my work over my entire career has come directly or indirectly through this association.)

We’ve written the first section of the game, and we’ll soon be marketing and distributing it to Canadian customers. We’re also editing material from an AI program that’s an add-on for the game, but I can’t talk about that yet.

PLAIN LANGUAGE

In early 1984, an Editors Canada member phoned me to say she’d recommended me for an Ontario government gig: editing a section of the 1984 provincial budget, which outlined major changes to how the government handled pensions. They wanted that section of the budget to be easy for pensioners to read and understand. My first plain language gig! And I was on a team of government editors who’d been doing plain language work on financial documents for a while. Such fabulous training!

For the next several years I was sort of passed from ministry to ministry, working on various long documents, making them readable. Eventually I was recommended for a contract at the Ontario Insurance Commission (OIC). I started there in 1991, rewriting all their public-facing documents into plain English. Since then, plain language has become one of my core editing skills.


I went to the second conference of PLAIN (the plain language association, which was started in Canada) in Calgary in 1997, and have stayed dimly involved, even remembering to renew my membership some years. But the IGL work drew me back into that community, and I’m now one of PLAIN’s representatives on the ISO working group that drafts international plain language standards. Cool, eh?

My best-ever plain language gig was at the City of Toronto (2006-2008), where we did everything we could to make all of the text the city produces readable by all of the intended audiences. We trained all of the city’s staff whose work involved writing (I can’t remember how many workshops that was, but I gave over 60 of them); we designed plain language document templates; we even helped them rewrite the city’s bylaws. 

What’s cool, all these years later, is seeing the city still using the document templates we prepared. And they still look fabulous!

TEACHING AND WORKSHOPS

One of the things I did as part of that OIC gig (which lasted about eight years and led to other insurance-related plain language work) was developing workshops to teach their staff how to write in plain language. Editors Canada’s plain language seminars were based on the OIC ones, and then a few years later so were the City of Toronto ones. 

Prior to that, I’d taught
Intro to Canadian Politics for a year (1976) at UBC, which was kind of comical because I’d only moved to Canada in 1973. But it gave me teaching experience and confidence, so soon after Editors Canada was formed in 1979 I started giving seminars on various topics. That led to teaching gigs at George Brown College starting in 1986 (on copy editing, which has never been one of my strengths), then Ryerson (now TMU — I taught Fiction Editing from 1990 to 2013), then back to GBC. 

I have also given corporate workshops on a wide variety of writing and editing topics. 

WORKING ON BOOKS

I’ve been editing books since 1977, on topics ranging from cannibalism to vegetarian cuisine, and from science fiction to how to design a helicopter. I’ve edited many writers you’ll never hear of, as well as some you might know about, including Margaret Atwood, Peter Gzowski, Robertson Davies, and (posthumously) Lester Pearson. I stopped counting when I’d worked on 4,000 books, which was years ago. I’ve also stopped counting how many books I’ve published.

WORKING ON MAGAZINES

The first magazine I worked on was
Time‘s Canadian edition, in December 2008. Time
ceased publishing a Canadian edition literally a week after they brought me in.

I’ve since worked on about two dozen magazines, some of which survived for a couple of years. But every magazine I’ve ever worked on ceased publication fairly quickly, and all three of the magazine publishing companies I’ve worked for soon went bankrupt. 

Please don’t ask me to work on your magazine!

WHAT TO ASK ME TO WORK ON

I have a relatively short attention span and bore easily. But I have staff, some of whom love routine stuff. What I really want to work on is something that’s new and challenging for me. When I used to phone around looking for editing work, I’d tell would-be customers “send me your nightmares.” It brought in some fabulous gigs. I still enjoy other people’s nightmare projects. 

But also, send me your books. I’m really proud of the quality of the books we’ve worked on. I was trained in book editing at Doubleday in the 1980s, and the books Colborne and Iguana produce are every bit as good as the classics that Doubleday produced in their prime.