Part 3 – Learnings about writing and publishing a book Series – Editing
Editing is where I really started learning about producing a quality and professional book. When I was writing the book, when I was finishing the book, I thought that I would read it over a dozen times myself, make corrections and carefully edit the book. I had no intention of spending any money. I would write the book and do a careful job myself and that would be that.
Basic Editing
The first edit was just a couple rounds of spelling and grammar. I used Microsoft Word’s spelling and grammar check to weed out some of the most obvious and egregious errors.
Next, I installed grammarly and ran it though once. Grammarly has an interesting bonus-feature in that it counts how many words you’ve written in a particular week. The week I installed it I had over 120,000 words written, which put me in the very highest writing group. Obviously I had written those words over years but they were new to Grammarly, so I enjoyed that.
Self-Editing
I had a plan for self-editing and I executed it. First, upon finishing the book, I was going to read the book for obvious errors. I read it out loud for the first time to my daughter (who was too small to understand) and by virtue of reading it out loud, I was able to flag a number of areas where the book simply didn’t make any sense or was impossible to read through. Reading out loud is a great way to catch a lot of mistakes.
The next level was when I noted that I was saying the same thing too much. I started a lot of sentences with words like, “However, so, thus…” and I hated how it sounded so I read the entire book again focusing just on the start of each sentence.
Each time I read the book I tried to be conscious of my own stylistic issues and clean them up. I also noted sections that I didn’t enjoy reading. Some felt clumsy, some just didn’t have the right feeling, and others needed an injection of description. I also had my wife read it and she told me when she couldn’t picture what I was describing. One example was when I described the seat-cushion boat at the start of the book, I didn’t describe it effectively and had to re-write it a couple times to get it right.
Eventually, I got the book to a place where I thought it was about as polished as I could get it.
Hiring an Editor
I did a lot of research online about self-publishing and it became clear that a professional editor was worth the money. I decided to put out some feelers to see if anybody in my network knew someone who might be interested, and I did some research online and found a few potential editors.
I wanted to find somebody local, and I found a few that felt like good fits. I got a few from www.editors.ca who were interested in my genre. It is important that your editor be somebody who actually is interested in your genre and style. I sent out some queries to the top three and got back a surprising diversity of responses. I truly appreciated what they said.
The first one said that the style in which I had written the book would not jive with her own. Readers will recognize that I use a distinctive voice similar to Jonathan Swift, this is not a typical style or voice for today’s writings and she didn’t feel she would be the best editor.
The other two provided quotes and sample of editing and the one I chose, Bobbi Beatty, responded with just excellent comments. I signed up with her and let her read my book, the first person not in my family to read it through.
It took about a month, but it came back with thousands of edits. I highlight this not to make myself look bad, but just to emphasize the value of a good editor. Some edits are more important and others were stylistic notes. I think that I accepted all but about three changes or notes. She also did a final reading to make sure that nothing got missed the first time.
A note on how important hiring an editor is. If you go to OnlineBookClub.org and look at recent reviews you’ll see that the reviews usually penalize errors quite harshly. You can lose a star just by having ten mistakes. That is ten spelling/grammar mistakes out of perhaps 100,000 words, an error rate of 0.01% is unacceptably high and can cost you a full 1/4 stars.
Hiring attitude
I loved communicating with Bobbi. She was friendly and helpful and provided great notes for me. I told her up-front that I wasn’t working towards a deadline and didn’t need her to rush… I actually told this to each contractor I hired along the way. Nevertheless, she came in on budget and before the deadline she set for herself.
If you hire an editor, and I strongly recommend it. Hire somebody who ticks these boxes:
- Is interested in your genre
- Is responsive to your messages
- Provides a sample edit of your work that aligns with your expectations
- Gets good reviews
- Is a professional
- Actually wants to work with you
Don’t just jump for the cheapest edit. You are going to get what you pay for, and if you want your book to be something of which you can be proud, and that gets quality reviews, spending the money up-front is worth it.
Recommendations
You need to hire an editor. Every minute of time you spend editing, and ever dollar you spend on a professional editor will save you a great deal down the line. It isn’t even a question for me now, while I thought I would just do it myself at first, On Swift Wings wouldn’t be anything like it is now without my editor. I appreciate Bobbi’s work so much. (Thanks Bobbi)
Tomorrow: Cover Design
Brett Wiens 