by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
I’m thankful for the rise in dystopian fiction (my son’s favorite genre and one that was difficult to find before the Hunger Games gained prominence) and e-readers. Believe me, we’d tapped out our county library system before getting a Kindle. In fact, I was sending purchase requests weekly to the acquisitions librarian until they instigated a limit on the number of requests a patron could make.
Before ebooks, I ordered books online, drove across town to the bookstore, visited the second-hand store—and we still kept running out of books.
We got some relief from our problem when we bought a Kindle. Finally we had instant access to thousands of books. But recently, we’ve found that we’ve quickly plowed through the traditionally published YA books that are available. Since I’m his personal librarian (he only really wants to read the books…he doesn’t want to find them), I started looking at the self-published YA books on the Kindle.
There was one series that I kept running across. It had several books already available (practically a prerequisite when it comes to books for my son) and a lot of reviews…not the handful of 5-stars that you so frequently find with self-published books. I started reading through the reviews.
From all the reader accounts, the plot and characters were very sound—but there were a lot of errors in the books, (mostly typos but also continuity errors).
At this point we were pretty desperate. He was between books and the sequel to Divergent wasn’t coming out until May 1. I went ahead and downloaded the first of the books in that series. After all, I thought, we’re talking about a 15 year old boy. It couldn’t bother him too much.
But it did. He came back downstairs later that evening. “I finished the book,” he said. Then he looked at me funny. “You know, the story was good and I liked the characters…but there were so many mistakes. It was totally distracting. I’ve never seen typos like that in a book.”
Because he’d never read a self-published book before.
This is the main problem with self-published books. You can either get a fantastic book (frequently from an author’s backlist) that’s well edited or you can get a book that’s a complete disaster. It’s a minefield.
It’s easy to find a freelance editor. Yes, it costs money to hire an editor. This post by Meghan Ward gives an idea of what expense you could be looking at. This is the part about self-publishing that everyone has to get over…the books have got to be edited. I paid editors to work on the two books that I’ve self-published. It was worth it. They found plenty of errors that I’d missed.
It will cost you a lot less money if you first go over the book yourself and then get a beta reader to read it over for you. If an editor has got to correct a lot of errors on a page, it will cost you more money because it’s taking up more of the editor’s time that they could be spending editing other people’s books. Most editors charge an hourly rate instead of a flat fee.
There are different types of editors you can hire. You can find a substantive editor who will read for story and character arc, POV, and other global issues. You can find a line editor who will read for mechanics, style, and consistency. Sometimes you can find editors who cover all of these things. This post on the Novel Editor blog explains the different types of editors and their duties.
But you don’t have to get editors that suggest major revisions, if you feel your story is fairly sound (try to be objective here…is it sound?) At the very least, though, you need to find a professional proofreader who can fix typos, glaring grammatical errors, and other basic problems that will trip readers up when they read your book.
We put so much time into writing these stories….we owe it to ourselves (and our readers) to ensure our books are readable.
If we know we’re writing a book that we plan to self-publish, we can go ahead and start the process of looking for an editor while we’re still working on the book. Word of mouth/referral is a good way to find someone, or we might know editors from the blogging world—many freelance editors blog. Agent Rachelle Gardner has also listed freelance editors that she’s worked with in the past. I also host a free directory of ebook professionals, which includes freelance editors: click here.
But you’ll want a good editor. How will you know if an editor is any good?
Again, word of mouth is helpful. Editors should also be able to supply testimonials from clients. Thursday, Porter Anderson did a great wrap-up of posts on ebooks and editing. He referenced Victoria Strauss’ blog, where she listed ways to vet an editor.
Once we find a freelance editor we’re happy with, we’re usually set. The next time we have a project to be edited, we don’t have to go through this process…we just send it over.
If you’ve hired freelance editors, how did you find them? As a reader, how many mistakes are you willing to overlook when you read? How distracting are they?
Post image by Mad African on Flickr
Great information.
My daughter read a free downloaded book for her Kindle by a 80-90 year old woman. She said the editing and flow of the story was not good, but she couldn’t pull away from the story. She said the story was good and still lives in her head.
T
Elizabeth – Oh, you are so right about editing! I’ve seen self-published books where characters’ names changed, even. It’s very difficult to keep a reader really engaged in a book if there are those kinds of errors. One or two typos don’t usually bother me, especially if I know what the intended word is. But I don’t like too many of those kinds of problems. As I tell my students, when you write, you communicate. Editing is a part of making that communication clearer.
I read through this entire post. What an interesting topic.
It makes sense that some self-published authors don’t bother to get an editor, due to the amount of money involved, but since you have to pay for some of the services traditional publishing provide for free, it’s a trade-off for freedom.
$1000 minimum? I guess I’ll be looking around a little once I’m done with my WIP.
When I wrote my first book, I spent a lot of time editing, spell checking, and proofing my work before submitting it to my acquisitions editor. After 2 weeks, he turned my manuscript over to my productions editor, who did a quick look-through before she sent it off to the proofreader. When I received my proofed pages, I had very few rewrites and corrections to make. I was able to finish up in 2 days, and my first volume went to press in less than 3 weeks after final submission. When I wrote my second book, I rationalized my lack of self-editing by thinking that my work was going to go through 3 different editors, so I could lighten my load by doing limited self-editing. I trusted that at least one of the editors would pick up my mistakes. I can be such an idiot at times. What actually happened is that my acquisitions editor checked for content, and he let the mistakes pass by him. I submit camera ready copy, so my productions editor only searched for formatting issues. Then my poor proofreader got stuck with all my mistakes. She made it through the first 2 chapters before writing the comment “Spellcheck??” in the margins of my manuscript, and she stopped correcting my typos and grammatical errors after that. I was then stuck with making the corrections myself, as well as numerous rewrites, before meeting an incredibly short deadline. I was exhausted by the end of it all. This is all to say that even if you do have a large publishing house behind you, you will still need to spend the extra time editing, editing, and more editing. So important.
One more thing: in college, we were required to take editing classes. All students had to edit several books in different genres for credit–and the service was free to the authors. It was also quality editing because the edited work was submitted for a final grade. If you have a community college or university near, you might want to see if they offer editing classes, so that you can save some money.
I imagine it will make you more money in the end because an edited book will sell more.
Hi Elizabeth – this is a very good post. I can’t imagine why anyone would go to all the incredible work of self-publishing and not edit their manuscript to bits! I hired an editor to do a substantive edit on my novel, True, just so I wasn’t sending out my misguided notions of commas into the world for agents and publishers to hoot at. I found her because she is a client so we trade services. She had never edited fiction before but I had never had a book edited before so…we worked so well together and it was a great experience. As soon as I get The Rock Walker in order I’m hiring her to edit it. I’m afraid I’d be like your son – hard to keep lost in the fictive dream when mistakes are glaring.
Maybe I’ve just been lucky when it comes to self published books because most of them that I read might have a few typos but that’s it. Maybe it’s because a lot of them I hear by word of mouth or buzz online. But I always read a sample too before purchasing.
And if there are slight formatting issues that doesn’t bother me at all.
Hopefully, my lucky streak will continue.
Alex–Right. And we recoup the money we’ve invested in the book.
Jan–That’s what’s so surprising to me…we’ve already invested *so* much time and energy in the book…why not finish it off with a professional edit? It really stumps me. That’s fantastic that you had your book edited before it was even queried! And very nice that you could trade off services like that.
Journaling Woman–Interesting! If a reader notices story flow being off, it’s probably pretty off!
I’ve been lucky that the self-pubbed books I’ve read have been by friends that write well and put a lot of time into getting the story perfect. I haven’t seen any really glaring errors in those books.
Laura–That’s what we should have done…read a sample. It was such an inexpensive book that I just went ahead and bought it…but if I’d known it would bother him so much, I wouldn’t have gotten it.
Formatting issues don’t bother me at all unless it means the book isn’t readable.
Margot–That’s a good way of putting it. And we can be so blind to our own errors that an outsider can really help.
Chihuahua–Exactly. It’s a trade-off, for sure. And I’ve seen errors in traditionally published books, too…just fewer.
I’ve found proofreaders for a lot less, Chihuahua. I think the problems come up with a book with many errors and a need for developmental or substantive editing…but if you just need someone looking for typos in a fairly clean book, I think you could find the cost goes down to a few hundred or even less.
Yes, all too often this is the step self-published authors skip. Yes, it does cost between $5 & $50 per 1000 words depending on the level of editing. But tossing out a poorly edited book only damages an author’s reputation.
Diane–Exactly. And damages it for years.
J. Hall-Swadley– You’re right…we’ve got to make our manuscript as error-free as possible before handing it over to editorial (whether it’s editorial we hire or editorial at the publisher.) At a traditional house, they don’t want writers who need tons of editing…time is money for them. Sounds like you had a rough time but something good came out of it!
Great idea about seeing if student editors might take on our books.
I lucked out – my mother is a professional editor (freelance now, but up until just a month ago she was the main editor for a theological publishing house), and she is very willing to be paid in baked goods as long as I am willing to wait until she has free time from her paying-in-money clients. It’s a pretty sweet exchange, and it means that I get to include “professionally edited” in my queries even to traditional publishers and agents.
Louise–You’re very lucky! Sounds like a very sweet deal. :)
I’ve found about about a few editors via the blogging community, like Reece Hanzon and checking out the blog The Bloody Red Pencil.
As someone looking to self-publish, those small errors are the things I hope to avoid. Self-publishing allows for a lot of ownership…including ownership of the things that don’t go right as well.
I need my work to be edited to death! I wouldn’t trust sending it out to the world without people much smarter than me picking it apart :/
Angela–Good point. If our books don’t work on any level and they’re *self* pubbed, then we can’t blame anyone but ourselves!
Julie–It’s just *so* easy to miss a mistake, isn’t it? I read over one sentence a million times and never noticed there was a *word* missing in it. My mind automatically filled in the blank.
I believe it is imperative to have your book edited before publishing. I don’t mind an occassional typo or format error – but I do find that self-published stories all too often contain a lot of errors. Some books I have just put aside as it was too hard to read.
I don’t expect any book to be perfect. In traditionally published books I have found typos and major errors (ie: incorrect name used).
I have my stories read by my daughters first and then send it to a professional editor that I met at a Sisters-in-Crime meeting. Then I offer it for sale thru epublishing.
Ellie
Sadly, I think solid editing is a step that gets glossed over by some in the slap dash rush to get a story out there. Ignoring it dulls the shine of your work.
I have a few self-pubbed buddies who have hired editors before setting their babies out into the world. I think it’s worth the cost too!
I just hired an editor for my first self-pubbed work. I’m so excited. Editing is so important.
Ellie–It sounds like you’ve got a great method!
Leslie–Everyone is in a huge hurry, for sure. But they should consider that we make more in the long run if the book isn’t full of mistakes…hard to keep sight of sometimes.
Jemi–Sort of an investment in our work. :)
Ciara–It sure is. Congratulations on your book!
This is such important advice, even though I know a lot of authors self-publishing will continue to ignore it because they don’t want to shell out the money. It’s too bad, because poorly edited books give self-publishing a bad name.
I have just invested two years in writing my first novel based on a true story. I knew that I would need an editor as after six months of tightening and honing my writing, I was over it!
I was so lucky to find her, my editor who has been an absolute angel to work with. We made sure she was the right fit for me and slowly formed a good working partnership. I live in Australia and my editor lives in the USA. I am now reviewing her edits and she is making me work hard in bringing my book to a professional finish. As she said to me “I will make your writing shine” and you cannot ask for better than that. And true to her word, she truly is following through on her offer. Her name is PL Como and I highly recommend her services to new and not so new writers. Wishing you all a great deal of success and happiness in your writing.
J.C. Wright
Patricia–They do. And I’ve read some great self-pubbed books…but I knew the authors. And I knew what kind of time they put into their books because they were blogging about it! They were great reads. Now I know that when I vet books for my son, I’ve got to read the samples (which honestly? I don’t technically have the time to do, but I’ll make the investment. :) )