WORKING WITH AN EDITOR by Jennifer Silva Redmond

WORKING WITH AN EDITOR by Jennifer Silva Redmond

Most writers have a phobia about editors. Editors are seen as some alien race—bred to be persnickety and snippy—who sit around looking for errors in everything they come in contact with, from advertisements to love letters.

My friends always apologize about errors in their emails to me, as if I will reject them outright for having spelled wired as weird. In fact, I make plenty of mistakes in my emails, in my Facebook and IG posts, and in my tweets. Why is that, you say? Because those things are ephemeral—here today, gone tomorrow—in short, they will never be published. Why should I spend my precious brain power on spell-checking a comment on a retweet?

Now, as far as a book goes, that is a different thing altogether. A manuscript goes through quite a few levels of editing, hopefully, and yet I find errors in printed books all the time. I would go so far as to say that I have never read a published book that didn’t have at least one typo. Publishing a book means that error will stay an error for the rest of your life, unless the publisher cares to take the time—and spend the money—to correct it. A good book will be in print for at least ten years, maybe twenty or more, with that same error on page 18. And the ebook will live on, with that same page 18 error intact, unless it is spotted and corrected, living on digitally, forever.

I once spoke to an author who said he published his books as ebooks in order to raise money to publish his books hard copy. I read one of his ebooks, and have never read another. Why should I? I have better things to do than to read an author’s rough draft for free, wincing at every misspelled word or missing comma. After all, that is what I get paid to do.

You want to be published, I get that. And you have been working on your manuscript for years, and everyone who has read it loved it, so, why not e-publish it? It doesn’t cost much to publish an ebook, and there’s free cover art available on the internet, so it won’t look too bad, and who knows, maybe it will become a runaway bestseller on Kindle and pretty soon, a publishing house will knock on your door and…

No. Just no. This will not happen. I don’t mean that it has never happened, but it will not happen with a book that has never been edited. It just won’t. (I must say that there is a one in ten million shot here, so yeah, it could, but still, no, it won’t.) There are too many good books out there that have been carefully rewritten and also gone through the process of workshopping and editing, plus been copyedited and well packaged, for someone to take change on reading your ebook with the homemade cover and the typo on page 1. Why would we? Life is too short to read poorly edited books.

What we are talking about is, in the words of Michael Steven Gregory, aka MSG, of the Southern California Writer’s Conference (SCWC), is premature e-publication. Sounds nasty, doesn’t it? “If you suffer from premature e-publication, try our new drug, Editrixian…”

But, seriously, this is a real problem...I moderated a panel on this subject at SCWC, with two top agents and two fine publisher/editors, and there was one thing we all agreed on: too many writers get so excited about being able to publish easily/cheaply that they don't worry enough about publishing a well-edited, well-designed book.

All too often new e-books, on Kindle and other ebook formats, have been rushed to "press" with no obvious effort having been given to what we in the biz call give the initials EDP—Editorial, Design, and Production.

Not only do they suffer from terrible, uninteresting covers—which can be the death of a book marketed solely through online networking—but the editing is either amateurish or is a step which appears to have been left out altogether. Yes, it's exciting to have a book published—but wouldn't you rather have your book be well received and well respected for years?

I advise every author who aspires to publication to think of themselves as a one-book publisher—whether they plan to self-publish or not—and to think of the time/money they spend on research and refining as an investment in their career and the future of their work.

Do your homework, take time to edit and polish your book, and to learn about and truly know your audience. If you do self-publish, you'll be ready to take the world (meaning your specific niche) by storm; if you find an agent or editor is interested in your manuscript, they will be impressed with all your preparations. Put together an imaginative, workable, and inexpensive marketing plan, and your publisher will be forever in your debt!

So, the first step, after writing (and rewriting) the manuscript, is to get some other authors to read it. Sure you can have your honey-pie read it, and your mom and your best friend, but don’t assume that their praise will be mirrored by the rest of us. Those people can be your Alpha readers, but you definitely need Beta readers.

Like a new computer software, a manuscript has a Beta phase, where you invite other writers, and any friends you have that are really discerning readers, to read and critique it. This can also happen at your local read and critique group or writers group (you belong to a writers group don’t you?). This Beta stage is to make sure that your precious MS can, and should, actually become a book. Some cannot and never should. Some of my own first drafts couldn’t and never did, but that is neither here nor there.

Beta readers work for free, which is to say, for your undying gratitude. Or for a $25 gift card should you like. You will, of course, read their MS for them, when the time comes, and that is the quid pro quo. Beta readers can be super helpful by pointing out that your character’s husband was named Scott until Chapter 23, when he became Dave. Or that the character’s child suddenly disappeared in Chapter 14, never to be mentioned again. Or that it was spring when the story started and yet it was autumn on page 3. And, most especially, that there is a story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be done. Your Beta readers will tell you that.

I much prefer to read manuscripts that have already been to Beta readers, unless the author is a really diligent worker who is fastidious about their own self-editing process, like my friend and client Gayle Carline, who I’ve worked with on seven or eight books. It is your choice whether to bring your MS to a professional first or after the Beta readers, but my advice is always to have writers go through the Beta process first; so I don’t have to spend time (and money) telling you about Scott and Dave, the missing kid, and the spring/autumn issue. If the big problems have been eliminated, I can concentrate on the story and character arcs, plus any serious structural flaws.

Authors should always self-edit their first (or fifteenth) draft as much as they can prior to sending it to their friends or Beta readers. Try to get as many eyes on the manuscript as possible before you start spending on an editor.

Not only will it save you money and time, but we editors can do a much better job if we are not hired to simply improve something that is clearly flawed, but rather asked to make something good into something great.

This next point should be obvious, but getting more eyes on a project is especially important when one is self-publishing!

NOTE: People always want to know how much editing costs and how long it takes. Nowadays, that is nearly impossible to say, since there are a million overpriced editors out there. I can only tell you that the average MS that I edit for content and structure costs around $1000, and the second pass, the line edit, usually runs $1500 to $1800. My first pass, the content and structure edit, takes about a month, and line editing can often take twice that long.