Mark Henrikson's Blog - Posts Tagged "line-editing"
Writing Process – Line Editing
I’m not going to lie to you, line editing a book really sucks. It takes a special kind of person with an exquisite eye for detail and knowledge of the English language to do it well. It is especially hard for the author to line edit their own work since they have just spent the last six months to a year pouring over and over and over the manuscript until they can almost recite it word for word. You are not changing much of anything on this pass, just spelling, grammar, commas, missing quotes . . .
If at all possible outsource this. It will save several months of your time and will result in a cleaner product. Seriously, if you are going to spend any money on your novel, put it into line editing first. My first novel, Origins, I published what I would have sworn up and down was an error free manuscript, but most definitely was not. The second edition came out with over 100 edit corrections both big and small. Over 120,000 words that is not awful, but it was noticeable and a lot of otherwise glowing reader reviews reflected it.
I was truly amazed at how open readers were to feeding errors they found back to the author. I suppose most readers have learned to treat indie books like Opensource software. They use the relatively inexpensive product, realize there will be bugs and then report any found back to the author for correction.
Other readers are not so accommodating. They will eviscerate your work just because of a few double words, tense confusion or missing commas while paying almost no attention to the actual story. It may seem petty, but it is a legitimate gripe. They are paying for it after all. Unfortunately some people just don’t comprehend that indie authors don’t have thousands of dollars dedicated to line editing like the marquee authors out there. That’s why their stuff is $9.99 for a digital download rather than a buck or two like the rest of us.
Take it from someone who has been there. It is really tough to work off those 1 and 2 star reviews posted based on the poor line editing job done. Do yourself a favor and have a professional line edit your work if your budget at all allows it.
Next up: Publishing
If at all possible outsource this. It will save several months of your time and will result in a cleaner product. Seriously, if you are going to spend any money on your novel, put it into line editing first. My first novel, Origins, I published what I would have sworn up and down was an error free manuscript, but most definitely was not. The second edition came out with over 100 edit corrections both big and small. Over 120,000 words that is not awful, but it was noticeable and a lot of otherwise glowing reader reviews reflected it.
I was truly amazed at how open readers were to feeding errors they found back to the author. I suppose most readers have learned to treat indie books like Opensource software. They use the relatively inexpensive product, realize there will be bugs and then report any found back to the author for correction.
Other readers are not so accommodating. They will eviscerate your work just because of a few double words, tense confusion or missing commas while paying almost no attention to the actual story. It may seem petty, but it is a legitimate gripe. They are paying for it after all. Unfortunately some people just don’t comprehend that indie authors don’t have thousands of dollars dedicated to line editing like the marquee authors out there. That’s why their stuff is $9.99 for a digital download rather than a buck or two like the rest of us.
Take it from someone who has been there. It is really tough to work off those 1 and 2 star reviews posted based on the poor line editing job done. Do yourself a favor and have a professional line edit your work if your budget at all allows it.
Next up: Publishing
