“What do you do as an editor?” This is a question I get fairly often. “What can you do for my manuscript?”
My typical response is, whatever your manuscript needs.
My main concern with your manuscript is readability, flow and consistency. I want to make sure it is organized logically and that we catch any typos, grammatical/punctuation errors and spacing problems. I look for cumbersome and/or muddy sentences, repeated words, misused words and more. As I wrote in a post earlier this week, I attempt to help you break any bad, annoying and/or obvious writing habits that tend to weaken your story or devalue your nonfiction book.
Authors ask what my fee is. Some disappear upon hearing that I charge $50/hour. I wonder what they end up doing about the editing they need. Actually, I know what many authors do. They either look around for someone they know who will “take a look” at their manuscript and maybe do a little light editing or they decide to publish (or seek a publisher) without editing. Such a shame. One author who thought I was too high (having no idea of the value I could offer her manuscript), chose to go with someone who claimed to be an editor. This individual advertised that he/she charged $150 an hour, as I recall, and that he/she could edit a 200 page manuscript in something like three hours. The author went for it. Later, she told me that she made a foolish decision. She said it was obvious that all this person did was run a spellcheck on her manuscript.
It seems to be human nature to take the shortcut to success. And we learn over and over again that this isn’t a very effective plan. If you were a pilot, you would not skimp on your plane’s maintenance and your preflight checklist. If you were a doctor, you would make sure to keep up on the latest treatments and remedies. If you were preparing for an audition, you would rehearse. Why would you decide to become an author and then skimp on the final edit of your book? Don’t you think your audience will notice—not to mention any publishers you might approach…
Some authors worry that an editor will steal their voice. I doubt that has happened to many authors. It would take a total rewrite to change the voice of a story. I’ve been accused of changing an author’s voice, when all I did was clean up some extremely muddy sentences. I don’t think this author ever understood how much clarity my edits afforded his story.
I have a lot of editorial stories. I guess an editor collects stories like a fisherman, psychologist, skydiving instructor, door-to-door salesman or anyone in any profession does.
I just finished an editing project yesterday. A few hours after I sent the cleaned up manuscript to the author, he called me to thank me for the wonderful job. Now that’s a happy ending for me. And I hope that my happy ending results in a happier ending for the author and his book.
For more about my editing services visit my newest website: http://www.patriciafry.com
Also check out this site: http://www.matilijapress.com