When you work with an editor, it is lovely when you sing her praises—tell others about her work, hand out her business cards and so forth. We editors really appreciate it. But please, please do not give your editor credit for work that she hasn’t done.
Here’s what I mean. Yesterday, a client showed me a package she had sent to an agent she met at a writer’s conference. She introduced me in her cover letter as her editor. Nice. I was pleased. That is, until I read her sample chapters.
She had written over me. In other words, after I did my preliminary editing on her first draft some months ago, she did a bunch of rewriting. Without having me look at it again, she sent it off to this agent. The agent marked all over the manuscript, pointing out misused apostrophes, typos, misspelled words, a missing dash (which I had edited in and she didn’t use) and all sorts of other problems. He even made a note on the cover letter next to my name, “Editor? How so?”
Needless to say, I was embarrassed and a bit miffed. I know that this author did not do this maliciously. In fact, she was trying to give me credit. But I had to tell her that you never, NEVER write over an editor in any large measure and then give your editor credit. Your editor doesn’t get credit until the manuscript is in its final stage and you have accepted most of her edits and suggestions. If you rewrite the manuscript or large portions of it, without running this by your editor, and then you credit your editor, you may not be doing her any favors. In fact, you might even put a black mark on her reputation.
Learn more about how to do self-editing and how to work with an editor in my book, The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book. http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html