Get an Editor – For Everything You Write!
This evening I groused about the number of mistakes I was finding in a trilogy that I promised myself I would read while waiting for my fourth book’s manuscript to come back from its second round of editing by my editor. My husband, who previous to the Covid virus rarely read a book for pleasure, laughed and mentioned that even he was finding mistakes in the published versions of big name authors such as Lee Child, Robert Woods, and others. And he said it was not just one or two per book it was often dozens! Let that information sink in.
Are the publishers thinking that after supposedly writing so many books that the authors can edit their own works? Obviously they can and should. But why are publishers allowing those manuscripts to be published without at least one other set of eyes look it over? My husband’s remark reminded me that I had noticed about fifteen or more years ago, a similar decline in quality of writing coming out from long time authors. There was a noticeable lack of appropriate editing. It made me realize that I, as a very small independent publisher, was paying closer attention to what I was producing than the big name publishers! I was producing better works. I had heard that back then many corporate publishing houses were pink-slipping their editors to save on costs and time. Well, I noticed and my husband has noticed. Have you?
I am so glad I have a great editor! At the moment, I am in the middle of reading a trilogy by another independent author and I am saddened and embarrassed to see so many editing errors. Misspelled words, incorrect spacing and punctuation, inconsistent layout, missing words or phrases, noticeable places where the author change their mind about how a sentence should be and both the original and the edited parts are still there. And there is so much more in just one of the books that I’m almost to the point that I don’t want to read another 125,000 words. I know for a fact that said author does their own editing. So should we all. I do not know if she/he has others look at it. They should.
Please, please, if you are planning to publish anything, edit on your own to the best of your ability and then hire a good editor (most of the time the cost is more than worth it) who is familiar with your genre. Be sure to go through more than one editing cycle with that editor – you both will miss things the first time around – and the second . . . You’ve taken the time to write something amazing, take the time and funds to make it the very best. Believe me when I say that readers will notice. And you don’t really want that kind of notice, do you?
