I decided to get back into the A to Z fray again in 2018, and after changing my theme three times—right up until mid-March—I settled on trying to convince people that hiring an editor isn't an option. I was inspired by my oldest son (who also does the challenge for his music blog) as he rattled off things like, "A, all good books are edited; B, but really, you need an editor; C, can't you see why you need an editor; D, don't be one of those people who doesn't get an editor," and so on. He had such hilarious titles and I forgot most of them by the time I wrote my posts, but the idea was set in my brain. So here's my 2018 A to Z Challenge:
Short & Sweet Reasons Why You Need an Editor
A = All the Best Books Have Been Edited
All the best books have been edited. Seriously. Of Mice and Men? Edited. Little House in the Big Woods? Edited. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Artemis Fowl, Pride and Prejudice? Edited edited edited.
Basically, there's no getting around it. If your book is edited well, it stands a much better chance of making you rich and famous—or perhaps simply getting your ideas across clearly. Quality of the writing also counts, of course, but this post is to convince you to hire an editor, so we'll talk about your writing another time.
The Time Traveler's Wife . . . edited . . . The Help . . . edited . . . To Kill a Mockingbird . . . edited . . .The Little Prince . . . edited . . . The Hobbit . . . edited . . . The Hiding Place . . . edited . . .
B = Bestsellers Have All Hired Editors
Bestsellers have all had editors at one point or another during the process. In fact, many of them have had multiple editors. More editors don't always translate into more book sales, but without ANY editors, you are almost guaranteed low sales and no repeat customers.
Have you ever read a book that "could have been" great, if only it had gone through a round or two of copyediting?
C = Copyediting Makes People Happy
Copyediting makes people happy.
Okay, copyediting makes copyeditors happy. It's what we do, it's what we love, and it makes us feel like our universe is in alignment.
But copyediting also makes readers happy. They may not know what's been done, but they know when it hasn't happened—when something is "off," and they can't get through the story because the errors keep pulling them out of it.
Take the time to do it right. Copyediting means happy readers. Happy readers make happy households. Happy households make for happy communities.
Getting your book edited could make the world a better place. It's really that simple.
D = Developmental Editors Want to Talk to You
Developmental editors love to talk about your stories. Really! If this doesn't give you an ego boost, I don't know what will.
No more searching for random cocktail parties to attend, hoping for the opportunity to discuss your latest WIP. (That's "work in progress" for all you cocktail-less nonwriters.) Developmental editors willingly meet with you to hear all about it, from concept to characters to drafts, as you describe the big picture.
In short, developmental editors actually want to read what you have, and they're pretty good about telling you how to make it better.
You don't even need to bribe them with quality hors d'oeuvres.
E = Everyone Needs an Editor
Everyone needs an editor. I am not kidding, nor even exaggerating here. Your grocery list may not need editing (unless you can't read your writing, or have forgotten to add something vital like ice cream), but anything you're throwing out there for public consumption needs an editor. This is especially true if you expect people to pay for what you're offering.
If you're a blogger, have a grammar-wise friend read your posts before you make them live. If you write business letters, have your smarty-pants coworker read them before you send them.
My other job is at a church, and our communications department and pastors run their correspondence, bulletins, promo material, blog posts—everything, right down to letterhead changes—through a handful of people for editing and final proofs.
Every detail speaks volumes to people about who and what you are, and you don't want to give anyone an excuse to think "what" you are is "inept."
F = Feedback Is Needed Before You Publish
Feedback—the helpful kind—should always come before you publish, not after. Feedback from your readers in the form of book reviews is a wonderful thing . . . unless it isn’t wonderful feedback.
Everyone’s reading preferences are different, but if a book has not been edited, you can almost predict the type of feedback you’re going to receive on Goodreads, or Amazon, or any number of reviewing sites. Get your feedback nice and early from beta readers and editors, and at least you’ll know you’ve paved one more avenue toward a positive review later.
It never, ever hurts to have more sets of eyeballs on your work before the paying customers have their turn with it.
G = Grammarly Is Not Enough
Grammarly is not enough. Not by a long shot. In fact, many (most?) editors will argue that it's possible to do more harm than good to your work when relying on Grammarly. And it's not because we like getting paid, because . . . duh. Everyone likes getting paid.
The problem with any grammar program is that artificial intelligence can only take you so far. It will never pick up on the same nuances a human being will catch. (And don't even get me started on MS Word's grammar suggestions that are guaranteed to destroy you AND your gray cells.)
Grammar checkers will consistently point out things that aren't actually wrong, trying their best to convince you to change whatever you've written. They may be an okay starting point, but for someone who doesn't know better, sole reliance on any grammar program may lead to disaster.
Trust a human being who knows not only the rules but the language usage as well.
Happy readers buy second books. Facts are facts. If a reader likes your book, they'll be inclined to buy your next book.
If they don't like your book, they may or may not give you another chance.
BUT . . . if the reason they don't like your book is that it's badly written, unedited or poorly edited, the likelihood of them giving you a second chance is slim to none.
You get one chance to make a first impression. One. Don't blow it! Most readers won't even bother to download updates and revisions on their Kindle if they've already decided a book isn't worth their time. That's a sad fact, but unfortunately true.
Make your readers happy! Remember what I said at the end of my letter C post: happy readers make the world a better place. Your book could change the world . . . but only if it's edited.
If you don't care about your book, why should your readers care?
Hear me out on this one. I've spoken with writers who have published unedited books, and their thinking always amazes me—and not in a good way. Their book gets slammed on review sites like Amazon and Goodreads, and they want it fixed by a copyeditor.
I'm fine with the fix, but what stuns me is that every one of them has admitted to knowing they needed an editor and publishing anyway. Every one of them.
I've heard everything from "I just didn't want to wait" to "They should understand I'm an indie and can't afford edits." Yet these same writers expect readers to give up good money (something the reader values) to purchase an unedited book (something the author did not value).
Rule Number One: if you don't value your own work, no one else should be expected to, either.
Joint partnerships are better than being a loner. Let's face it, no one can do it all, and everyone has a different skill set they bring to the table. Your strengths may be someone else's weakness, and vice versa.
This is where a good editor comes in.
Good editors will cheer for you! This is a wonderful bonus to hiring the right editor, regardless of what level of editing your work needs. We want your work to turn out in a phenomenal way, and we love helping you get there.
Why wouldn't we cheer? We're almost as excited as you are when we see the end results.
Killing your favorites isn't a new concept. Stephen King advises authors to "kill your darlings," using a phrase written in 1916 by author Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (the original was "murder your darlings") and modified by William Faulkner ("in writing, you must kill all your darlings").
Killing doesn't happen in every book. Not in the murderous sense, anyway. But there are times—murder or not—when it's best to get rid of a particular character for the betterment of the story. This might mean outright death, if it fits the plot, or it might mean that a character just goes away. Completely, as in "this book has never, does not currently, and will never contain a character named Joe Smith."
It's hard to chop ruthlessly if we've become attached, but a good developmental editor with a fresh eye can see what's clogging up the works. The editor who advises that a darling gets the ax is often only confirming what the writer already knows, deep down.
Allow an editor to help you make the tough decisions.
Killing doesn't happen in every book. Not in the murderous sense, anyway. But there are times—murder or not—when it's best to get rid of a particular character for the betterment of the story. This might mean outright death, if it fits the plot, or it might mean that a character just goes away. Completely, as in "this book has never, does not currently, and will never contain a character named Joe Smith."
It's hard to chop ruthlessly if we've become attached, but a good developmental editor with a fresh eye can see what's clogging up the works. The editor who advises that a darling gets the ax is often only confirming what the writer already knows, deep down.
Allow an editor to help you make the tough decisions.
Lagging sales just might be your fault. Or not. But it might.
Readers are fickle, and what sold yesterday might not sell today. Everyone jumps on the latest "Paleo Vampire Transformer finds love with Backwoods Awkward Nuclear Space Genius" trend, and all of a sudden, the market has a glut of the stuff.
Or . . . maybe nobody's written that plot, and there's a reason for it.
A decent editor might be able to tell you how to make your plot stand out as unique. Or they might point out how your plot is SO unique that it's incomprehensible to the average human.
At the very least, they can make sure your lagging sales aren't due to a high error rate because of a lack of editing. A surprising number of new authors blame readers when the real issue is that they've not had their books edited.
Once in a while, it's the reader. But every once in a while . . . it's not.
Readers are fickle, and what sold yesterday might not sell today. Everyone jumps on the latest "Paleo Vampire Transformer finds love with Backwoods Awkward Nuclear Space Genius" trend, and all of a sudden, the market has a glut of the stuff.
Or . . . maybe nobody's written that plot, and there's a reason for it.
A decent editor might be able to tell you how to make your plot stand out as unique. Or they might point out how your plot is SO unique that it's incomprehensible to the average human.
At the very least, they can make sure your lagging sales aren't due to a high error rate because of a lack of editing. A surprising number of new authors blame readers when the real issue is that they've not had their books edited.
Once in a while, it's the reader. But every once in a while . . . it's not.
Manuscripts aren't meant to be sold in their raw form. Unedited drafts are only worth money if you are dead and were already famous before you died. This doesn't mean that you should leave your crappiest work in a locked drawer for "someday" as a means to providing an inheritance for your descendants.
The fact is that manuscripts only become books if they're edited, and putting forth your drafts (whether it's the first draft or the tenth draft) for someone to purchase is never a good idea.
Readers want a finished product that's been edited, formatted, proofed and presented with a decent cover. Not the equivalent of a paperclip-bound stack of printed double-spaced Times New Roman with a "pls read this, ty" Post-It note stuck on top.
The fact is that manuscripts only become books if they're edited, and putting forth your drafts (whether it's the first draft or the tenth draft) for someone to purchase is never a good idea.
Readers want a finished product that's been edited, formatted, proofed and presented with a decent cover. Not the equivalent of a paperclip-bound stack of printed double-spaced Times New Roman with a "pls read this, ty" Post-It note stuck on top.
Nobody likes to waste their hard-earned money. Not even people who inherited theirs and didn't actually earn it.
When the average person spends their dollars, they expect to receive a quality product in return. If the product is shoddy, we call the company. We write an email to describe what's defective/broken/poorly made, or attach a photo of the garbage product. We usually attempt to return it.
But books are different. In most cases, we are stuck with what we've purchased, even if it stinks. Don't get me wrong: if you bought a book you just didn't end up liking, it's not the author's fault. But if you bought a book that was poorly written, there's not much you can do about it other than leave a negative review.
And if the book is that bad, there's zero chance the reader will waste any additional money on another book by that same author.
Don't be that author. People will only waste their money once, and then . . . well, you're essentially dead to them. True story.
When the average person spends their dollars, they expect to receive a quality product in return. If the product is shoddy, we call the company. We write an email to describe what's defective/broken/poorly made, or attach a photo of the garbage product. We usually attempt to return it.
But books are different. In most cases, we are stuck with what we've purchased, even if it stinks. Don't get me wrong: if you bought a book you just didn't end up liking, it's not the author's fault. But if you bought a book that was poorly written, there's not much you can do about it other than leave a negative review.
And if the book is that bad, there's zero chance the reader will waste any additional money on another book by that same author.
Don't be that author. People will only waste their money once, and then . . . well, you're essentially dead to them. True story.
Offering anything other than money for a professional to edit your manuscript is insulting. I’m just going to put that right up front and add that this post is dead serious, no joking, no snark.
The reason your work needs a professional editor and not “a good looking-over” by your next-door neighbor is because we are . . . professionals, trained in a specialty skill that requires strict attention to detail. We, like all who work, do it to pay our bills. To buy groceries. Offering “a share of royalties” or “exposure” is not only impractical, it’s astoundingly insulting. Your doctor doesn’t want you to spread the good word of how well he did your surgery; he wants you to pay your medical bill.
I’ll put it in practical terms: it takes me roughly 60–100 hours (sometimes more) to copyedit a book, depending on the level of editing needed. If you were to walk into your workplace tomorrow morning and your boss asked you to work the next week or two without a paycheck, would you say yes? What if he promised to tell everyone that your work was exemplary?
If you have ever done this to an editor, or are considering it, please stop immediately. Exposure bucks are not accepted in the marketplace.
“Polite” is something most editors strive for, even while telling hard truths. We actively seek out kind ways to tell people, “Your book isn’t good . . . yet.”
We know that our job often entails the telling of bad news in a good way. It’s still bad news, but it should never make you feel bad. Part of what drives us to be honest even when it’s difficult is this simple explanation: you’re not the only one who wants your book to be great. So do we! And we’ll do our best to get you there, one edit at a time.
Many authors have no idea how much angst goes into a typical editing evaluation, and how stomach-churning it can be to write a summary letter that may not be received well. It’s a far cry from the “tough editor just telling it the way it is” image, isn’t it? Try more of a nail-biting, chocolate-bingeing, anxiety-ridden waiting period, where we wait and wonder if we were too harsh, if we got our point across, if the author will understand why it will cost x amount, or if we’ll never hear from them again.
We really do try our best to be kind, so always assume good intentions.
Querying agents with an unedited manuscript will get you nowhere fast.
There’s a bit of misconception among newer authors that it “doesn’t matter” what the manuscript looks like because a publisher is going to take care of editing anyway. This is a huge misinterpretation of the process.
In actuality, you should always hand in the cleanest copy possible, hiring a copyeditor for the final polish before querying. Putting your best foot forward is a solid step in the right direction, because an agent is unlikely to want to slog through the rough stuff to see if there’s a possible diamond in there.
If you get picked up by a publisher, then yes, their editor(s) will have a go at making the book even more shiny, complete with a proofreader once the typesetting is done.
In the meantime, though, the buffing is up to you. Shine it up!
Really bad books are everywhere.
When I first got a Kindle, years and years ago (2009, if I recall correctly), I discovered a thing called “Top 100 Free Books.” Not only could I get classics for free, but I had a list of 100 books at my twitchy, download-eager fingertips.
I naively loaded a bunch of them without even bothering to read some of the descriptions—because my Kindle, the newest of its type that Christmas, was equipped with “experimental 3G connection” that was convenient for speed but didn’t lend itself to any kind of decent book cover graphics (think one-inch thumbnails). It was the precursor to the Paperwhite, except mine had a tiny (tiny!) push-button keyboard to navigate, and no touchscreen capability. Hot stuff that Christmas, old news the following year.
I soon discovered that “Top 100” only meant “downloaded more than others.” At least 97 of those 100 books were absolute garbage, unedited and filled with writing that was worse than what a grade school child could put together.
You don’t have to search for bad books. Just don’t let yours be one of them.
Scamming editors gets you blacklisted, just like the post title says.
Honest people may be stunned to hear this, but there are actually writers out there who try to scam the system to get free edits. How, you ask?
The writers contact a variety of professional editors from a particular group. They may approach members of the Editorial Freelancers Association, Society for Editors and Proofreaders, people on LinkedIn, or similar. They then ask for a free sample edit, which most will provide. However, these scammers will give a different portion of the work to each editor in the hopes that eventually, they’ll cover enough ground to get an entire book done, free of charge.
Unfortunately for them—as is the case with most petty thieves—they don’t realize how obvious they are. When red flags go up, editors talk to each other to see if anyone else has recently received a request from someone with the initials XYZ, and sure enough, at least a handful in the group have . . . all with the same suspicious email, evasive answers, and changing word count (to avoid suspicion, I suppose).
One editor told a group of us how an author kept changing his email address and the name of his characters to try to get different portions of the same book edited by her over the course of a year. Bad enough to try to scam her, but to think she was enough of an idiot not to recognize the same manuscript over and over? Almost laughable if it weren’t such a waste of time.
Don’t be “that” person whose name gets passed around as a “Do Not Respond” because you thought you could beat the system.
Thinking you’re exempt from the process everyone else goes through to get published is foolish.
I almost titled this like one of those clickbait articles: “Editors Hate This Guy Because He Knows the Secret to [fill in the blank],” except that there really is no secret to publishing success that allows someone to skip steps.
People go about their writing journey in many ways, but the common theme still holds true. Every successful author needs to learn as much about the craft as possible, and put forth the best work he or she is capable of. It may involve a writing course or a handful of them. It may involve a critique group. It may mean that you read just about every book out there on the craft of writing and how to do it well. Maybe you’ll take an editing course to see how much self-editing you can do to keep your costs down.
Whatever path you choose, you’ll end up following the same general process: idea (plot), research & development (writing, learning, fact-checking, rewrites), test marketing (beta feedback), final production (editing, formatting, cover design), and releasing to the public (publishing).
Thinking “I know a way around that” is a slippery slope. I wouldn’t trust a product that skipped safety testing, so I wouldn’t want to put out a product that isn’t structurally “sound” either, even if it’s a book that won’t technically hurt anyone if it's produced poorly . . . unless you count the wallet pain you feel when you realize you’ve been ripped off.
Ouch.
Undervaluing the work leads to disaster.
I understand that most people are not independently wealthy and therefore don’t have money to throw, all willy-nilly, at their book project. However, beware the race to the bottom when it comes to hiring an editor. There are “editors” on places like Fiverr who can’t string a coherent bunch of words together to advertise their own services. And yet people still hire them, perhaps in the hope that they’ll get something decent for almost nothing.
Unfortunately, most of those situations end up causing more harm than good, and the authors who get stung end up hiring someone else to fix things.
The real problem with undervaluing the work of a skilled professional (whether it’s an editor, formatter, or cover designer) is that there is always someone who will argue, “I can get someone else to do it for half that much.” Well . . . all I can say is, go ahead. I wish you the best but don’t actually expect it, and that’s unfortunate. Each professional invests a certain number of hours into the work, and trying to do it for a living wage is often a challenge when there is always someone out there, waiting to lowball a bid to secure the job.
In general, you get what you pay for, though a lower cost doesn’t necessarily negate quality. Just don’t let the dollar be your deciding factor if the quality is not there.
Volumes are spoken by what you DON’T do.
There’s a reason for the idiom “actions speak louder than words.” You can talk until you’re blue in the face, but in the end, it’s what you do or don’t do that speaks for you. And of course, we’re on letter V and you should get the idea by now that I’m going to tell you how and why this relates to needing an editor. You can probably guess, but it’s my post so I’m going to do my A to Z duty and tell you anyway.
If you don’t put out the best product you can put together, people will know, and they will call you on it. I’ve seen reviews that start off with something like, “Too bad the author didn’t bother to hire an editor,” or “What a shame that the writer didn’t bother to have anyone read this prior to publishing.” They don’t care about your personal backstory or why you didn’t do these things; they only care that you didn’t bother, and that makes them not want to bother with supporting your book.
What just happened here?
Have you ever said that to yourself while reading? I’ve said it plenty of times, though I will be quick to tell you that most of those times were during the editing process. That’s when it should happen, to be honest. You don’t want your readers wondering what in the world is going on in the paragraph they’ve just read, when you swear you’ve written it clearly.
Part of an editor’s job is to remove confusion from the manuscript, whether the confusion arises from typos, verbiage, or descriptions of people or actions. When I’m editing something that’s a little rougher than usual, I enjoy the process of figuring out how to make it clear so that someday down the road, a reader won’t be left scratching his head and wondering what, exactly, just happened.
X-Rated scenes show up in a variety of novels. They can be blatantly descriptive in erotica, or they can start off steamy and finish behind closed doors, so to speak.
Regardless of which way a writer chooses to go, these scenes need to be done well or they shouldn’t be included at all. There’s nothing worse than a love scene that feels awkward to read or sounds cheesy.
I’m not talking about deliberately cheesy, like someone saying, “Do you believe in love at first sight, or should I walk by again?” Yeah. Definite cheese happening there.
But if the writer’s intent is for some serious love to be going on, or dialogue that makes the reader grab a fan and some ice water, then cheese is off the menu. If you fancy yourself a writer of all that’s steamy, make sure you hire an editor who specializes in it so you’ll get the best . . . uh . . . bang . . . for your buck.
You may think you can do this book thing alone. The truth is, you can't. Perhaps the underlying truth is, you shouldn’t.
There’s not a person in this world who can’t benefit from the wisdom of someone who’s gone through the same experience, learned the same skills, or tripped over the same obstacle. This is why mentors are so valuable.
To ignore good advice is worse than not seeking advice at all, and yet people do both on a regular basis. If you never look at what successful people do, you may never learn how to be successful—or it simply might take you a whole lot longer than it would have, had you sought advice.
I recently dealt with someone who received feedback from a publisher. He asked me to evaluate the writing, and I (unknowingly) told him the same as what the publisher said. I even referred him to a few other editors so he could get unbiased evaluations. They told him the same things, and yet he kept insisting that they were not qualified to give that feedback—the reasons varied from “this person has the same education level I do and therefore doesn’t know anything more than I do” to “this person didn’t ever mention [particular writing structure] so he clearly doesn’t understand what I’m doing here if he never even used that particular word.”
The actual problem was that this writer didn’t want to even consider the fact that his writing might need work. To insist on working alone is the height of narcissism, and never turns out well for anyone. Embrace good advice, filter out bad advice, and accept that everybody needs some advice at some point. It’s not a failing; it’s just life.
“Zounds!” shouldn’t be in anyone’s dialogue anymore.
Hiring an editor can prevent you from having a modern-day character saying something that old-fashioned, and can also prevent you from having your heroine say, “That’s pretty cool,” in your novel about ancient Egypt.
We’re trained in various style books so we know that a novel will be edited and presented differently than a nonfiction academic journal. We know there are differences in how sentences are edited in the US v. the UK. We understand the rules and not only how to apply them, but why—and when they can be broken.
And we understand that word usage changes constantly.
One of the editing groups I’m in frequently has members asking, “If I say this particular word, what comes to mind? Please state your age and where you’re from.” A word often means something completely different in one part of the world than another, and a decent editor knows it. We follow the language, not just the rules.
