Which Editing Services Are Right For You?

As a writer, do you need editing services? After all, you write. You must know how to edit, right?

Perhaps not as well as you wish.

Today's competitive market demands you prove yourself first. A catch-22. If you haven't sold a novel, you can't sell a novel. Much like trying to get hired for your first job. You have to "have experience" to get the job, but where do you get experience if you can't get a job?

Big publishers often won't even look at submissions from unknown authors. If they do, it's to glance at the cover letter, then toss the submission and send a form rejection. Unless you really catch their attention.

How do you get past this roadblock?

By making every word count. Both in your novel and in your cover letter or query.

How do you make every word count?

By having it read and revised by a professional editor.


Types of Editing

If you want to employ editing services, you should first understand what kinds of options are offered. Do you need help making sure your style is consistent, your "facts" are accurate and your format appropriate? You need a copy editor.

Copy editing is sometimes considered synonymous with proofreading and line editing, though all three have slightly different meanings (depending on who you talk to). Line editing checks word usage, reading level and matches your style with the intent of the piece. This is very important. You don't want a technical manual that sounds like a first-grader wrote it, nor do you want a children's story to sound like a technical manual.

To differentiate, proofreading generally is the last step that should happen, when you're "proofing" your galleys (the final copy done before the print run). This means looking for spelling errors, punctuation errors, odd spacing and even the fonts (kinds of type) being used.

Novelists might profit most from substantive editing services: editing the substance of their novel. Here you pay attention that your style and format match the genre you're writing in, as well as aspects like your plot and characters intertwining correctly.

Whatever type of editing services you wish to use, or feel you need, try to find someone who will not only give you notes for corrections but explain why the changes make sense, and give examples of how to improve the writing. If you're going to have someone improve your writing, why not learn all you can from it, so next time, you do it better to start with?

One more suggestion for editing purposes: create a style sheet for yourself. What's a style sheet? Simply a guide for your specific novel or book that lists spellings of unusual words, how you want your chapter breaks and section breaks to look, the style and placement of page numbers and such.

You may not have any say in the layout of the novel (and thus chapter or section breaks), if you have it published at a regular publishing house, but you can certainly make sure they have a list of any unusual terms or other items that need to be proofread more carefully.


Do I Really Need to Spend Money Before I Publish?

Ask big publishers what they think of self publishers. It's still a mark of "amateur", even when you join the ranks of Mark Twain and Margaret Atwood.

The reason for this? Now that self publishing is so easy and available to anyone, thousands of amateurish books are being published. One look at them - one page read - and you'll know why many people think you're a bad writer if you publish your own books.

On the other hand, if you go through all the steps, do your work diligently, then have your work professionally edited, you're much more likely to sell your book either traditionally or through self publishing channels. If you want to compete, it better be good. You won't get a second chance.

So yes, you need to spend the money for good editing services before you try to publish. Do your research, look for someone who offers inexpensive "sample" edits of a short portion of your work. Make sure you're getting a good editor and that you can work with the person you're considering hiring - before you shell out hundreds of dollars.

Then go ahead. Bite the bullet and have it done. Your work will be better for it. And so will your profits!