In my opinion, getting an editor to work on your book is not an option. It is a mandatory requirement. An editor provides another pair of eyes to read your manuscript. If you think your manuscript is perfect, it isn’t. It doesn’t matter how many times you went through it to dig out typos and polish sentences, it still needs an editor. An editor will find a lot of mistakes, typos, incorrect usage (‘to’ instead of ‘too’ or ‘two’). A good editor will also find plot gaps or inconsistencies (in fiction works), clumsy sentence structure, repeated words and other mistakes. Errors like these, if not rooted out, will make the reader think she bought a book written by an amateur. If you want to produce a quality book, it has to be edited. Always remember, your name will be on the title page and the cover, so you want the book to be as perfect as possible.
Don’t give the book to your wife or brother to edit unless they are also writers. If they aren’t, they may find a few typos, but they aren’t skilled at identifying gaps in plot logic and clumsy sentence constructions or incorrect usage. Professional editors are worth the money they charge.
If you don’t know any editors, ask in one or two groups on Linkedin. When you get a few names of editors, send them an email describing your project and ask for a price and when the editor can begin working on your manuscript. Most of them will quote a per-word cost or a per-page cost. This allows you to get a firm price for the editing. Some other editors will give you a flat rate. If you don’t know the editor, be suspicious of this flat rate, especially if the flat rate is much lower than the prices of editors who give a per-word or per-page price. The flat-rate editor may be giving you a low-ball price to get the business. Later on, you may get a message that the editing is more complicated then anticipated along with a demand for more money. In this instance, you could end up paying more than you would have with a per-word or per-page editor.
Editing will probably be the most expensive cost in your publishing process. Make sure you account for this in your budget.
You should get the editing underway as soon as possible because it will take time for the editor to do her job, especially if she has other projects in front of yours.
There are several different types of editors available. Content editing is the most challenging. Content editors consider the entire manuscript and try to find character flaws, illogical plot developments and other basic story design problems. If you can get several good critiques, you have essentially replaced the need for a content editor. Content editing or critiquing should be done prior to starting the publishing process. This is because the content editing will take time and so will the revisions to the manuscript.
Line editors scan your manuscript as a whole. They are invaluable for finding plot gaps, illogical plot developments, poorly developed characters as well as misspelled words, missing commas and other punctuation problems. These are the type of editors I look for. I want an editor who can punch holes in my story and who can tell me where my sentence structure is clumsy, my explanation obscure and where I’m using repetitious phrasing or words.
Another type of editing is called copy editing and these folks concentrate on cleaning up the language and writing.
Planning on self-publishing a book? Uploading files to a packager isn't the entire scope of work. That's actually the easiest task, but there are many more necessary tasks to be done.. This book explains the entire self-publishing process. It breaks up the publishing process into four timeframes starting four months before the availability date. This spreads the workload into easy-to-manage chunks.
The book describes the complete process necessary to self-published a book. Unlike those who maintain that self-publishing a book consists of simply uploading the cover and manuscript files, this book details all of the necessary preliminary tasks that have to be finished before uploading the files.
It’s a complete roadmap to get a book self-published. It’s organized by timeframes to break up the workload into manageable chunks.
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Genre - Non-fiction: how-to
Rating – G
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