On Editing – Comments Wanted & Needed (Honestly, as I don’t know the TYPES of Editing)
Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you get two or three types of edits in one. Before anyone starts yelling at me, hear me out. My first editor edited my ms before I turned it in as my thesis for my MFA in Creative Writing. She has a Doctorate in English so I trusted her completely. She looked for typos & other errors, plus repetition and times when I changed a name, etc.
That was good enough for my thesis. Later when I asked her how to improve my ms for publishing, she suggested I add a whole other layer to the story. She wanted that story to be 500 years earlier. Needless to say, I didn’t do that. (Though that’s not to say that I won’t someday write that story she suggested! ;->)
I continued to edit the ms myself 4 or 5 times. BUT one should NEVER trust him/herself with THE FINAL EDITS. People have told me “You’re a teacher. You can edit it yourself.” I would never do that job! Not for a million dollars! It is the hardest job in the world.
As Ronnie says, do not trust a friend, no matter how educated and learned they are, no matter how many books they’ve even written. There’s a reason we don’t call ourselves “Editors.” It is very very difficult job with a HUGE skill set. Find someone you don’t know, but get a sample edit of maybe your worst writing in the entire book, definitely NOT the first 5 pages. So, finally, I hired a Canadian guy who went through the ms TWICE for 2/3 the price an American would charge to go through it once. Again, hear me out. I had gotten prices from several American editors & they all were in the range of 3 cents/word. This guy charged 2 cents a word.
Now you might think that is enough editing for one ms, but after I sent the ms to be formatted (also by a non-American at a very reasonable fee). I was under the impression I still had one more chance to look over the ms before she uploaded it to Amazon, etc. I found approx. 10 more mistakes & sent them to her.
She sent me a not so kind e-mail back saying the document had already been uploaded so I would have to pay her more to download it & make the changes.
Of course, I said “DO IT!” There’s no way I wanted my first-born out there with mistakes. (Sadly, I have discovered that many self-published authors don’t mind readers finding even a mistake/page.) In fact, I know someone who spent several hundred dollars for the perfect cover, but did not spend a dime on editing. Yes, sad but true.
You can always get a great cover cheap, but excellent editing is priceless. If you are short on cash, spend ALL the cash on editing!! You can always change the cover if you want. Though there is lots of great stock art out there so even that can be done right.
You can never get the reader you re-read a badly edited book. Or get them to keep reading OR read the next book you write.
Do your due diligence and DO IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME!
There, you have my opinion. If anyone disagrees with me, I am very afraid to read your book. Very afraid.
Peace,
Sherrie Miranda
Author of “Secrets & Lies in El Salvador” (available on Amazon & B&N)
Sherrie Miranda’s historically based, coming of age, Adventure novel “Secrets & Lies in El Salvador” is about an American girl in war-torn El Salvador:
http://tinyurl.com/klxbt4y
Her husband made a video for her novel. He wrote the song too. You can go to her Home page to watch it:
https://sherriemiranda1.wordpress.com
Or you can see it on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P11Ch5chkAc 
