To Hire an Editor or Not to Hire an Editor

You have done it! You have a book in your hands you're proud of, or as proud of it as you can be, and you're ready to share it with the world. Perhaps you've even run it through a beta group or two and tweaked it a bit to take into account what they thought. Now, you're ready to publish, right? You're ready to send your baby out into the world and try to find an agent, or even look for a small publishing house to take it on. Or maybe you're ready to really step it up and try the big publishing houses. Your goal might even be to just publish it yourself.

Hold it! Stop right there! You're not ready. "Why not?" you might ask. Well, it's because you've become blind to your own work. You no longer see those sentences that just don't work. You don't see those random typos that snuck in. You aren't seeing those few spots where you accidentally typed "he" instead of "she." You don't see where your story line took off and ran into a dead end. Don't fret, we're all that way. Heck, I'll hit publish on this blog post and immediately find something wrong with it and have to fix it.

Nope. Your next step is to hire an editor. Don't expect a big publishing house to do it for you. That isn't how the game is played anymore. The margin between profit and expenditure is getting smaller and smaller and they aren't wanting to take the risk of putting more money and effort into a book than necessary. Small publishing houses have such a narrow margin between sink or swim that, while they might have an editor on staff, even they can only do one pass through on a book before it goes out. If it's too big of a mess, they won't even want to bother.

So! What do you do? Well, you go out and find an editor yourself, that's what you do. Start thinking about that at the beginning and start budgeting for one. They don't come cheap. There are also about 4 different kinds of editors out there. Each one specializes in something. The first editor you'll want is a developmental editor. They'll work closely with you to bring your vision to life and make sure you don't have any plot holes or ideas heading off into la-la land that shouldn't be there.

Let's say you did that. Your book is ready, right? Nope! Stop right there. You know that wallet? Reach into it again and at least hire one more editor if you can. The one that worked hand-in-hand with you for so long to help your book reach its potential is now as blind to it as you are. They love your book as much as you do, never forget that. However, in my reviewing opinion, you need at least one more editor. The all-important proofreader.

The proofreader isn't there for the content. They read it purely to look for typos and mistakes in grammar. That's their job. Good ones aren't cheap. I did a quick search one day and found they can usually ask about $30 for every 9-15 pages of a manuscript. The better they are, the more they charge.

If you can get in with a publishing house, it's possible you don't need the proofreader. The publishing house 'should' do that step for you. But never forget you can find a typo or grammar error in any printed book out there, even the ones with Penguin, Tor, or Bantam printed on the spines. If you're going the self-publishing route, absolutely, definitely, without a question, hire a proofreader.

I realize this all costs money that you might not have. I was recently out on Kickstarter and saw a lot of people running campaigns to help them raise the money for this step. I can't say how many of them actually make their goals, but it's worth a try, especially if you're working as hard as you can and living paycheck to paycheck.

While debating the wisdom of my words, check out this post on the myths and truth of editors. I'm not making all of this up, I promise.

When your book is out there, be sure to look me up at A Drop of Ink Reviews! If it falls within my fairly wide range of what I'll read, I'd be more than happy to give your book a review.

A Place I Can Think...

Ha Ha! Gotcha with the name of my blog, didn't I? Well, too bad. You won't find book reviews here. To see those, head over to my actual book review site: A Drop of Ink Reviews. Naw, this is mainly where I can ramble about whatever books I'm getting ready to read, hoping to read and whatever I learn while reviewing books. Exciting, right?

Sometimes, I just want to talk about what I'm doing without cluttering up my actual book review blog or spamming the snot out of my Facebook feed. My blog is doing pretty good, too. I'm rather excited about that. And I've been reading some really great books.

See, I decided to start reviewing books because of the NaNoWriMo Facebook group. I was sitting there reading how all of these people are struggling with their stories, finishing them, publishing them and it made me feel bad. I'm what I'd like to call a frustrated writer. I enjoy writing, but I don't have the drive or the determination to see the process through to the end. I then decided that feeling bad about how these people were making it and I wasn't was fairly stupid. I figured I could use my writing skills to help lift them up! Sure I can't finish writing a novel and make it through the editing process without wanting to run screaming down the street, but I CAN read and I CAN write reviews. So, that's what I do now. And you know what? It's quite rewarding. I'm glad I decided to do it. Nothing makes me feel better than to have an author thank me for doing a good job reviewing their book.

I'm loving my new "job." I read books like they're going out of style. My husband jokes that books scream in fear when they see me coming because I go through them so fast. I love reading. And being a book reviewer only gives me more reason to keep reading to my heart's content. Not only that, but it's forcing me to expand my boundaries and read books I normally wouldn't. Not only that, but from reading traditionally published books and zooming off into the territory of indie authors, I'm learning a lot. I'm hoping to use this blog to share some of the things I'm learning in the hopes it can help other authors during their publishing process, no matter which direction they decide to go.

So hang on! I'm fairly crazy, but I'm sure a few gems will appear now and then. ;-)