It’s a sad day when you realize that the editor you hired—the one to whom you’ve paid hundreds of dollars—is botching up your book instead of making it sing. Now what? You have to go back to the drawing board and your wallet and start all over with a new editor.
It’s darn difficult to find an editor who will do your work justice, treat you right, work on your schedule and who is knowledgeable in the area of book publishing and your genre. And then there are issues of personality…
There are degreed editors who repeatedly miss mistakes and overlook common problems in manuscripts. There are editors who are great with short piece—ad copy, for example— but who do a lousy job with an entire book manuscript.
Many editors believe that if they can edit students’ English papers, they can edit book manuscripts. Sometimes this just isn’t true.
Are you working with an editor? Are you planning to hire one? Again, I urge you not to take the cheap route. Don’t rely on your daughter’s friend, the English major, to give your manuscript a once-over. Avoid hiring a writer who has never edited a book, but has been writing for the church bulletin for three years. Stay away from someone who “used to do a lot of editing back in the 60s, 70s or even 90s.” Things have definitely changed since we produced our works using typewriters. Be wary of the “editor” who has numerous common grammatical and punctuation mistakes at his or her website. And please don’t expect the editors at your fee-based POD self-publishing services to do a good job of editing your manuscript. So how do you choose a good editor? How do you know that an editor is good until you start working with him or her?
In my book, The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book, I list common mistakes that writers make. In fact, this section is called, “Introduction to Self-Editing.” See pages 179-187. Here, you will learn about the new punctuation. If your editor still types two spaces after a period, leaves the em dash dangling between two words, underlines instead of using Italics, doesn’t know how to properly use the apostrophe and puts punctuation outside the quotation marks, these are red flags. It’s also a red flag if he or she allows you to write incomplete sentences, write sentences that are too long, use unnecessary words, repeat words in sentences, use clichés, write muddy sentences, use the passive voice too often and change tense and person too much and without reason.
You’ll be doing yourself and your pocketbook a huge favor if you will learn the basics of proper grammar, punctuation and sentence structure before hiring an editor. Make your manuscript the best that it can be. Of course, you can’t be objective—you still need to have it reviewed by a good editor.
When you go in search of an editor, check their websites and brochures for common errors. Ask for references and check them. Ask the editor to evaluate your manuscript and provide an example of the work he or she will do. You might even pay the editor to edit a few paragraphs to see if you like his or her style and skill-base.
Not every good editor is a match for every author and his or her project. There are a lot of editors out there and there is one for you. Do your homework. Be proactive. And choose carefully.
If you want to know more about self-editing and choosing an editor, order my book, The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book. http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html