Writing and Publishing News

Do you have a proposal ready to send to a publisher or a manuscript ready to publish? Don’t go it alone. Don’t be so confident or in so much of a rush that you neglect a very important step in your presentation—editing. I know it’s hard to let someone else read what you’ve written. You aren’t crazy about having your work critiqued. You’ve worked hard and don’t want to have to make changes. But I’m telling you—you need that extra set of eyes or four or six.

Selling authors hire editors. A good editor can make you look so much better than, perhaps, you are. She will notice mistakes and problems in your manuscript that you can’t see—until she points it out.

I remember, years ago, being told to read my manuscripts backwards—from the bottom to the top. That was in the old typewriter days, when you could get by with misspelling a word without a red line appearing below it. Looking at a manuscript from a different angle such as on the printed page or from the bottom up, helps us to see things differently and, perhaps, spot problem areas. So does reading it through from your reader’s point of view. Well, consider an editor someone who is viewing your manuscript from an entirely different angle than you are. Believe me, even someone with an untrained eye will see something you have not noticed.

Hire someone with a trained eye and editorial skills and you have given your work a much better chance of being published and of being enjoyed by the reader.

Don’t neglect this step in the process of preparing your manuscript for publication.

Now, where do you find a good editor? Through word of mouth. Join online and face-to-face writers groups and ask others who they hire to edit their work. Contact leaders within the publishing community for recommendations. Search online for an editor or online directories listing editors. Contact me at PLFry620@yahoo.com

All writers need another set of eyes. If you haven’t figured out how to grow them, you’d better consider hiring an editor for your marvelous manuscript before considering publishing.

Sure, if you’re going with a traditional publisher, they will have their editorial team go through your book. But they expect your manuscript to be clean and accurate through and through before they will even consider it for publication. Always hire a good book editor before submitting your manuscript to any publisher or publishing service.

You’ve probably already found out that most pay-to-publish companies will edit your manuscript for an additional fee. But I have to tell you that from what I hear and observe, these editors do little more than run your manuscript through spell-check. I would not trust them with my manuscript.

Hire your own editor—someone who is accustomed to editing book manuscripts. Preferably hire someone who is also familiar with your topic/genre and the whole publishing field. You’ll get a whole lot more for your buck.

It’s not cheap to engage the services of a good editor. An editor will charge anywhere from $500 to $5,000 (or more) to edit a manuscript of 30,000 to 150,000-words depending on the shape of it. I suggest getting an estimate and a sample edit from several editors. Asking for references is always a good idea.

Hiring a good editor is so important that I recommend authors start saving up money before they start writing the book so they’re prepared when the time comes to shop for a good editor.

How many times should you self-edit your manuscript? When can you consider it finished? I’ve learned that there is no exact answer. As with many projects, it takes as long as it takes. But you’d better be sure that it’s ready before you go to publication.

A book manuscript is a large and complex body of work. It involves many, many words, punctuation and nuances. There are emotions tied to those words—emotions designed to evoke thought, memories, inspiration, ideas, tears, laughter and so forth. And it is important that you, the author, give the reader the best experience possible.

When you present your book to the public, you are taking on a huge responsibility. I urge you to take that responsibility seriously. Before rushing out to publish that book, scrutinize it from all angles. Make sure your readers don’t have to stumble through a plethora of errors, muddy writing, unnecessary rhetoric and unbelievable scenarios. Be true to your profession and be true to your readers.

How many times should you edit your manuscript? Five, fifteen or twenty-five? Edit until you can leave the manuscript alone for a week or more, pick it up and read through it WITHOUT making more than a handful of changes. THEN turn it over to a professional editor.

Yesterday we talked about some of the things we miss when self-editing and how crucial it is to have a fresh set of eyes for your manuscript. If you doubt this, just turn yours over to a trusted and astute reader or editor and ask for an honest evaluation. They are likely to point out places where you’ve left off periods, had two periods at the end of a sentence, used a comma instead of a period, misspelled someone’s name, called the car a Corvette in one chapter and a BMW in another, had a character eating lunch in one scene and suddenly she is stopping off for breakfast, said in one chapter that an item costs one price and change that price in another chapter…

The thing is, we spend a lot of time with our novels and nonfiction manuscripts. We go over and over and over our story and our chapters and we make changes along the way. We change our mind—we change the minds of our characters. We add things, remove things and when we do, we sometimes forget to change everything related to the initial change.

As a writer you can clearly see how easy it is to make a change on a whim and then never look back. You might decide that Auntie Jane is no longer driving her husband’s old pickup; you’ve now given her a sleek Buick to drive or she no longer has allergies, it’s arthritis she’s dealing with. But you neglect to stay true to those changes—your decisions.

Don’t get caught in an authors’ lie. Make sure that if Sam is six foot three in the beginning of the story, has green eyes and red hair down to his shirt collar, that when you describe him again in Chapter Seventeen, unless he has had a surgical and personal make-over that he is still six, three and still has red hair and green eyes. If his hair is in a butch style now—at least tell readers that he got a haircut. “Sam, now sporting a butch haircut, sprawled his lanky frame across the Naugahyde sofa.”

Can you say for certain that your completed manuscript has no flaws—that it is ready for publication? Maybe it is. But if you haven’t invited at least a couple of sets of fresh eyes to look it over, you could be making a huge and potentially embarrassing mistake.

If you’re unsure as to whether your manuscript is ready, contact me. I’ll give you a free evaluation and sample edit. PLFry620@yahoo.com

I used to be hesitant to turn my completed manuscripts over to an editor, proofreader or even a friend to review because I didn’t really want their ideas mixed up with mine. I was afraid they would suggest changes to suit their own tastes—try to get me to write their story, article or book.

In fact, I’ve known authors who have rewritten their books numerous times after listening to various critics, editors and casual readers.

Now, however—after years and years of time spent writing, revising, self-editing my own work and also editing for other authors, I realize how extremely valuable and critical those extra sets of eyes can be to our projects.

Just this week, I did some editing for a client. She has been working on her book for years—writing, rewriting and self-editing. She hired a professional team of editors recently and felt as if she was good to go. She came to me for help creating a marketing plan and suggested that I read her manuscript to give me a feel for her project. She said something to the effect of, “Please let me know if you see anything out of line.”

Welllll, in the course of reviewing her marvelous manuscript, which was basically well-written and carefully edited, I found a problem here and there—too much space between sentences, a comma instead of a period, a missing quotation mark and a few places where I became confused about who was speaking. THEN, I started getting rather confused about dates. This is, after all, a true story with an important chronology. It must be important because every incident, every entry, every chapter is dated. But the dates started making no sense to me. So I went through the book a second time and wrote down each date and each incident. Everything seemed okay, until…

There it was—the author had jumped a full decade off track—hit the wrong number key, I guess. Doesn’t matter, this was a critical mistake and it had to be corrected.

These are the types of things a second, third and eighth new set of eyes can spot before a book goes to print. While your friend may not notice the extra a in Barbara or that Simon is sometimes spelled Simone or that you’ve used the word “angle” instead of “angel,” if you have enough people taking a look, you’re bound to find most, if not all, of the most glaring mistakes.

Ask, beg and coerce friends and acquaintances to read through your manuscript. PAY editors (yes, sometimes it takes more than one) to edit it. I guarantee you, you will be surprised at some of the errors or oversights they’ll discover and that you WILL want to fix.

Not everyone will notice that you refer to Doreen as Mrs. Sharp sometimes and other times, Ms. Sharp. But someone in the group of proofers will. And what about when an author has a character greet a stranger with, “Hello Mrs. England,” when it’s obvious that character has no idea if the woman is married or not. In fact, in today’s world, “Ms.” is the common choice.

Creating or recreating a scene is touchy business. It takes a whole lot of concentration and the keen ability to visualize every single detail—to get inside the characters’ heads and truly understand where they’re coming from and how they would potentially act or react.

Even with the holidays nipping at our heels, many of us are still writing stories, blog posts, articles, chapters. Heck, I wrote a poem this morning to present at our holiday gathering of 20 family members. It’s 20 verses long. That’s what they get when they invite a writer to share a story. And I expect plenty of critique. After all, the poem features each of them.

Authors often ask me what type of editorial services I offer. “What kind of editing do you do? My response: “Whatever I feel your manuscript needs.”

Sometimes an author will come to me for proofing. “All I want is for you to proof my manuscript.” So what is proofing? In my world, it is whatever the manuscript needs.

Whether an author hires me to proof his work (check for errors) or do complete line and content editing, he’s going to get pretty much the same thing—whatever I determine this particular  manuscript needs.

First, I provide a free sample edit/proofing and estimate. So the author understands from the start the type of problems I see going on in his or her manuscript and how I plan to approach them. While some manuscripts are pretty clean—they don’t require a lot of editing, others need a lot of help in many areas. The author may not understand how to properly use the apostrophe and the em dash. She might have a habit of writing run-on sentences or use clichés. Her story might need a facelift to make it more interesting and I might have some ideas for her. If so, I generously lay them out. Some authors repeat words, are inconsistent in presenting facts and information, don’t have a knack for fleshing out their characters, etc. I try to help in these situations.

I’ve worked with authors who paid me to proof their manuscripts, even though I provided strong editorial feedback. One, in particular, didn’t believe he needed an editor—just a proofreader. So I hired on as a proofreader and edited his manuscript. By the way, it was in dire need of editing. Not ready for proofing. The thing is, I don’t care what you call it—proofing, editing, critiquing, altering, revising, correcting… If you bring it to me, your manuscript will get what I think it needs and I believe that’s how most editors work. Who would hire on to proof a manuscript and neglect to point out editorial errors?

Do you need an editor or a proofreader? If you’ve written a book and you’ve already done hours and hours of self-editing, it’s time to turn it over to a book editor. Before you hire an editor, you might ask some of your more astute friends and family members to read your manuscript and provide honest feedback. You’ll learn a lot through this process. Based on this feedback, do another several rounds of self-editing. Then contact one or more editors and ask for a sample edit and estimate.

What’s it going to cost you? Anywhere from $800 to $3,000 or more depending on the size of your manuscript and the shape it’s in. Contact me for a free sample edit and estimate: PLFry620@yahoo.com

Some authors resist hiring a book editor for their manuscripts. “Too expensive,” they say. Or “Just don’t want to take the time to have it edited—want to get my book out there NOW!”

I advise authors to start saving up the money for a good editor as soon as you decide to write that book for publication. And don’t be in such a hurry that you short-change your chances of a publishing contract or that you bring out a book that isn’t ready.

What are some of the signs that you need a book editor? Here are a few:

• You’re not sure where or how to use apostrophes.
• You’re unclear about just where commas go.
• You get mixed up about using their, they’re, there.
• You struggle over what to capitalize and what not to.
• You find that your manuscript has inconsistencies throughout.
• You repeat words rather than try to use creative means to eliminate repeats.
• You write weak—passive sentences.
• Some of your sentences are kind of muddy.
• You don’t know that it is now one space between sentences.
• You’re confused as to where paragraph breaks should be.
• The story drags—doesn’t flow nicely.
• You’re having trouble organizing your nonfiction books.
• You’re too wordy.
• You have too many staccato sentences.
• You find many small problems such as omission of closed quotes.
• You’re not sure how to handle dialog.
• English is your second language.
• You don’t know when to capitalize Mom, Daddy, Grandpa, etc.

If you’re not sure whether an editor can make a difference in your manuscript, get an editorial evaluation. Many editors will take a look, tell you where the problems are in your manuscript and give you a sample edit and an estimate.

This is something that authors often ask themselves. Sometimes they ask me if I think they need an editor. The answer is usually yes.

Traditional publishers want to receive a completely edited manuscript. Yes, they will have their editing staff spend some time with it before it goes to publication, but they still want the manuscript in good shape when they get it.

The owners of most pay-to-publish companies don’t care much whether the books they publish are edited. Most of them do offer editorial services for a fee, however. And most of the authors I talk to say these editing services aren’t worth the money. Professionals recommend that you hire a good book editor before approaching a pay-to-publish company.

If you plan to establish your own publishing company and produce the book yourself, you definitely need to have a credible editor look over your manuscript.

So who needs an editor? The answer is: every author.