Yes, You Do Need An Editor

You want to publish your book on Kindle and its brethren.  Meredith and I see a blizzard of digital books, and many are a mess.  More than 25,000 books are being published each week, and, yes, that’s definitely a blizzard.  Each snowflake is said to be unique and beautiful.  But yours is just one in the storm.  Among those 25,000, how are you going to get noticed?

THE EDITOR

The first step is to use an excellent editor.  There are several kinds of editors, and each gives your manuscript a different boost.  How do you tell one from the other?   Recently I got an object lesson on this subject.  A friend told me he had a good editor, a demon on spelling, punctuation, and grammar—his high school English teacher.

I didn’t swallow my tongue.  I think I swallowed a cow’s tongue whole.  English teachers may be proofreaders, but they’re not editors.  Neither is anyone in your writers group.  Nix, nada, forget it.  So let’s take a look at…

THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF EDITORS

• The Acquisitions Editor

She works at a big publishing house.  This is the full-boat service.  Even when you’re bypassing it, you should know what’s there, so that you can find others to help you pick up the pieces.

This savvy person is ideally a guide that you bring aboard when your story is still in gestation. Maybe you’ll meet her at a writers’ conference, or be introduced by a mutual acquaintance.  You sketch your idea for her and show her some pages.  If she likes what you’re setting out to do, she’ll make an offer to buy it for her publisher and negotiate the contract, complete with an advance.  (Contracts are another subject, and a minefield—we’ll get to them another time.)  Then she’ll set out to help you tell the story you want to tell beautifully, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction.

On the basis of the pages you showed her, she may be able to make suggestions, because she knows the market.  She can tell you if your proposed book is too short or too long for the genre.  She knows if your tale has a pulse.  Though she’s your facilitator, not your teacher or boss, she’s your key helper.  If you’re lucky, that relationship will last for years.

When you turn in your manuscript, on time, she’ll make sure you’ve set up your story in a way that grabs the readers.  She’ll make suggestions about where your tale is meandering or dragging.  If you’re writing fiction, she may have ideas about making characters more interesting, or point out inconsistencies in what your characters say and do, where to give your dialogue snap.

Whether the world of your books is the mean streets of a big city or a utopian colony on a planet in a far-away galaxy, she may want you to make it feel more real.  She’ll point out when the language is right for your purpose, for the emotions you want to evoke.  For the most part, she won’t concern herself with proofreading.  She’ll ask for some rewrites, and then—hallelujah!—she’ll accept your book.

Next step, she’ll start it through the publication process.  She’ll send it to a copy editor and make sure that job gets done right.  She’ll find a pub date intended to boost sales.  She’ll meet with the sales and marketing people to develop a plan so the book can reach the audience you’re aiming for.   She’ll help you come up with comparables, which are examples of books like yours that have succeeded recently.  She’ll help you get blurbs from other writers and experts.  She’ll write the copy that goes on your dust jacket.  In consultation with you, she’ll make suggestions for a cover, and approve the right cover when it comes.

Last, at most publishers, she’ll present the book at the house sales conference, lighting a spark among the men and women who work where the rubber meets the road, selling to chains and the thousands of book stores in fifty states, each with its own population and distinct reading interests.  What sells in glitzy Las Vegas doesn’t sell in cow-town Reno. She’ll talk to you about what you can do, and what the publisher will help you do, to promote the book.  And finally, she’ll send you your reviews.

This acquisition editor is the Rolls Royce of the editing biz.  In fact, she’s the strongest remaining argument for publishing a book in print, as opposed to online.

I did this job for fifteen years, and Meredith and I have had this kind of editor on thirty-three books, so I don’t speak idly. We’ve had a dozen good ones and two rotten ones.

Unfortunately, there’s a trend now for editors to put less emphasis on working on the manuscript, concentrating instead on acquiring books and then on sales and marketing.  Which hurts the writer, the publisher, the bookseller, and the reader.

What if you’ve decided to skip the long road to print publication and go digital?  That means you’re stuck with doing all the jobs above yourself, or finding help.

Here are the editors who can be your aides.

• The Freelance Developmental Editor. 

This fellow works on your completed manuscript the way the publishing-house editor does.  He doesn’t buy the book, doesn’t give you advance guidance, doesn’t ask for rewrites, doesn’t discuss marketing with you, and doesn’t shepherd your book through publication.

Whether you’re writing fiction or non-fiction, he looks at your manuscript for its storytelling values and its potential to hold an audience.  He tells you if the world of the book is vividly created.  If your characters are both real and intriguing, the dialogue good, the pace well-maintained, and so on.

Where do you find this guy?  Ads for editing your books have broken out like pimples all over the net.  Beware!  Most of these “editors” are not expert, and in fact don’t even know the difference between developmental editing, copy-editing, and proofreading.  To look where the real pros are is essential.  Unfortunately, so many people are advertising themselves as available that I can’t know them all, or even a majority.

I can only tell you about three established ones I have worked with:

   a) You can find skilled editors on the Editorial Freelancers Association site, where the available editors list their bios and credentials.  State what you want and you’ll get a number of applications.  If you’re writing young adult novels or fantasies, or a memoir or true crime story, you really want an editor with experience in those genres.

   b) Kirkus Media provides editors for writers who contact them.  You don’t get to choose an   editor you think suits you—they do that.  But they try for a good match and supervise the work of these editors well.

   c) LinkedIn lists jobs for writers and editors.  If you post what you want, editors will contact you with their qualifications.

Warning: If you work with a developmental editor who is less than a pro, especially a friend or a local writing group, you are jumping into deep doodoo.

• The Line Editor.

This workman occupies an in-between position.  He does some of what the freelance developmental editor does and some of what the copy editor does.  In short, he reads the manuscript, makes corrections within the lines, and may make some larger comments or ask questions about the larger issues of the manuscript.  I’d skip the line editor and get whichever you really need, a developmental editor or a copy editor.

• The Copy Editor. 

This woman looks at the details of the manuscript, not the larger matters.  If two people meet for a drink in your story, the copy editor will ask how it can be that they came in separate cars and are leaving in one car.  She will point out that you said earlier your exec Susan is thirty-two and now she’s thirty-one.  She will make sure that you spell out “thirty-two” and “thirty-one,” as is the rule for all numerals up to one hundred.  She will apply the style rules of the latest edition of The Chicago Manual of Style to your manuscript (she’ll change “grey” to “gray” and put your manuscript into conformity with the rules of where commas and quotation marks go).

Watch out for one tendency.  Sometimes zealous copy editors make your characters use “lie” and “lay” correctly, change “different than” to “different from” in dialogue, and attack “ain’t” and “he don’t” with a fury.  She’ll be correct, but characters don’t necessarily speak correctly.  Some are from the slums or from the hollers and some went to upper-crust private schools.  Make the dialogue fit the character, no matter what the copy editor says.

A good copy editor is a treasure.  But you’re allowed to overrule her.  It’s your book.

• The Proofreader. 

If you use a copy editor, you don’t need this functionary.  Period.

WHAT DOES IT COST?

Buyer beware.  Prices for developmental editing vary wildly.  Look at the hourly prices listed on the Editorial Freelancers site and ask Kirkus Media.  Expect to pay a good, experienced developmental editor, with solid references, several thousand dollars–they are worth every dime.  A good copy editor should cost several hundred dollars. —Win

Next week we’ll continue this series with the reasons why digital publishing is terrific, and the following week with the reasons it isn’t.

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