Allan
asked
Michael J. Sullivan:
Hi Michael! I've read your story of your publishing journey before, and I've been debating going through a similar process of Self-Publishing (getting a good "press package" together, hitting the blog circuit), but I know my book is in need of a good edit (aside from the edits/rewrites I've done): How did you go about the edit process initially?
Michael J. Sullivan
Hey Allan, Thanks for writing. So, I have a few pieces of advice.
#1 - I don't recommend doing a big "marketing push" with just a single book released. Your time is much better spent writing the next book. I say spend only 5% - 10% of your time marketing when you have less than three books out. Once you have three, then you can do marketing. The reason? It takes a lot of effort to acquire a reader, and if there is only one book for them to buy it's a bad ROI (return on investment). Once you have three, then capturing one reader will, if the book is good, get you 3 sales.
Okay with that done, let me talk about editing.
There are several kinds of editing and people often confuse them: I'll give you my definitions:
* Structural (or content editing) - this is a person who is looking at "the big picture" they aren't going to correct grammar issues or the like, but they'll give you a report (on potential plot holes or problems with character motivation. Personally, I don't think you should try to "buy" this kind of service as a self-pubsilhed author. Why? Because it's really expensive and hard to find. That's not to say you shouldn't get this kind of feedback, I just suggest you get it from other sources. Generally 5 - 6 beta readers and 1 - 3 critique partners can provide what you need for this kind of editing.
* Line editing - is looking at the individual words and making adjustments to improve the writing as a whole. This may mean removing excess adjectives, finding repeated words, tightening sentences. A good line editor will keep the author's "voice" intact while significantly improving the easy of reading of the text. Many "editors" do both "line editing" and "copy editing - usually at the same time. But you need to check to see what they do and do not do.
* Copy editing - is the very detailed work of both (a) correcting grammatical errors and (b) bringing a manuscript inline with a standard style guide (usually CMoS (Chicago Manual of Style) for novels, but AP (Associated Press) is also fairly common. These people take the "subjective" aspect of the English language and standardize it. Some examples include subjective comma uses (Oxford comma, how small of an introductory proposition is offset with a comma, whether "too" at the end of a sentence has a comma or not. They also take the "non-subjective" aspects of grammar and fix them. Things like noun-verb agreement, misspellings, run-on sentences, and sentence fragments. This is the most common form of editing that a self-published author engages in. And it should NEVER be skipped.
* Fact checking - is another form of editing, and is necessary even in fiction. Does the stand age of the character change? What about their hair color. Does some stand up and walk across the room, and yet is still near the window? Again this type of editing could be caught by any of the three above, so you may not have to hire it separately, but a good "copy" or "line editor" will catch these things. If you don't have someone explicitly looking for those things, you should find someone who can.
Okay, now that we've talked about the kinds of editing, lets discuss where to find editors. There are many good resources for finding good editors. You can ask some self-published author who they use (they are generally willing to share that information because they want their editors to make money), use can place a free ad on ACES (the job site for the American Copy Editor Society), you can even make a posting at Gurus.com, freelancer.com, or post an ad on Craig's list.
Okay, once you have access to a bunch of editors, here's the process I recommend. You'll get a ton of responses (several hundred I suspect). Take five pages from the middle of your novel, add a few "easy errors" - like using it's instead of its or missing a quotation on a piece of dialog, and send those 5 pages to people as they email you. Tell them to edit as much or as little as they think is necessary to get a feel for their style. Oh, and why pick 5 pages in the middle? Because you've probably polished the opening of the book so pages in the middle are more likely to have a greater number of errors.
You'll get a wide range of responses. Some will act like "ghost writers" and change just about everything you write. Which may be good or bad depending on what you want. Some will do a "light edit" and again that may be preferable depending on your voice and style. But they will definitely find errors (and not just the ones you intentionally put in.
When they return the samples, tell them that the full manuscript is xxx words long, and based on this yyy word sample how much do they anticipate to edit the full manuscript.
In general, you'll get amounts all over the place. For a 100,000 word novel expect some as low as $50 and others as high as $5,000. When I was starting out I generally chose two editors in the $350 - $400 range and got good results from that. These days I pay $1,200 an edit, but I'm using highly-paid professionals (the same ones used by my publishers). If anyone wants to charge you more than that, they are probably overpriced.
Make a spreadsheet with the amounts for each and note which errors they found and which ones they missed (no editor will catch them all). Then pick the candidate that fits you best. In general I say go or two "less expensive" people than one "really expensive" one. As I said, no one is going to find everything, so two eyes are better than one.
Whew, that's a lot...I hope it helps, an if you have further questions, you know where to find me.
#1 - I don't recommend doing a big "marketing push" with just a single book released. Your time is much better spent writing the next book. I say spend only 5% - 10% of your time marketing when you have less than three books out. Once you have three, then you can do marketing. The reason? It takes a lot of effort to acquire a reader, and if there is only one book for them to buy it's a bad ROI (return on investment). Once you have three, then capturing one reader will, if the book is good, get you 3 sales.
Okay with that done, let me talk about editing.
There are several kinds of editing and people often confuse them: I'll give you my definitions:
* Structural (or content editing) - this is a person who is looking at "the big picture" they aren't going to correct grammar issues or the like, but they'll give you a report (on potential plot holes or problems with character motivation. Personally, I don't think you should try to "buy" this kind of service as a self-pubsilhed author. Why? Because it's really expensive and hard to find. That's not to say you shouldn't get this kind of feedback, I just suggest you get it from other sources. Generally 5 - 6 beta readers and 1 - 3 critique partners can provide what you need for this kind of editing.
* Line editing - is looking at the individual words and making adjustments to improve the writing as a whole. This may mean removing excess adjectives, finding repeated words, tightening sentences. A good line editor will keep the author's "voice" intact while significantly improving the easy of reading of the text. Many "editors" do both "line editing" and "copy editing - usually at the same time. But you need to check to see what they do and do not do.
* Copy editing - is the very detailed work of both (a) correcting grammatical errors and (b) bringing a manuscript inline with a standard style guide (usually CMoS (Chicago Manual of Style) for novels, but AP (Associated Press) is also fairly common. These people take the "subjective" aspect of the English language and standardize it. Some examples include subjective comma uses (Oxford comma, how small of an introductory proposition is offset with a comma, whether "too" at the end of a sentence has a comma or not. They also take the "non-subjective" aspects of grammar and fix them. Things like noun-verb agreement, misspellings, run-on sentences, and sentence fragments. This is the most common form of editing that a self-published author engages in. And it should NEVER be skipped.
* Fact checking - is another form of editing, and is necessary even in fiction. Does the stand age of the character change? What about their hair color. Does some stand up and walk across the room, and yet is still near the window? Again this type of editing could be caught by any of the three above, so you may not have to hire it separately, but a good "copy" or "line editor" will catch these things. If you don't have someone explicitly looking for those things, you should find someone who can.
Okay, now that we've talked about the kinds of editing, lets discuss where to find editors. There are many good resources for finding good editors. You can ask some self-published author who they use (they are generally willing to share that information because they want their editors to make money), use can place a free ad on ACES (the job site for the American Copy Editor Society), you can even make a posting at Gurus.com, freelancer.com, or post an ad on Craig's list.
Okay, once you have access to a bunch of editors, here's the process I recommend. You'll get a ton of responses (several hundred I suspect). Take five pages from the middle of your novel, add a few "easy errors" - like using it's instead of its or missing a quotation on a piece of dialog, and send those 5 pages to people as they email you. Tell them to edit as much or as little as they think is necessary to get a feel for their style. Oh, and why pick 5 pages in the middle? Because you've probably polished the opening of the book so pages in the middle are more likely to have a greater number of errors.
You'll get a wide range of responses. Some will act like "ghost writers" and change just about everything you write. Which may be good or bad depending on what you want. Some will do a "light edit" and again that may be preferable depending on your voice and style. But they will definitely find errors (and not just the ones you intentionally put in.
When they return the samples, tell them that the full manuscript is xxx words long, and based on this yyy word sample how much do they anticipate to edit the full manuscript.
In general, you'll get amounts all over the place. For a 100,000 word novel expect some as low as $50 and others as high as $5,000. When I was starting out I generally chose two editors in the $350 - $400 range and got good results from that. These days I pay $1,200 an edit, but I'm using highly-paid professionals (the same ones used by my publishers). If anyone wants to charge you more than that, they are probably overpriced.
Make a spreadsheet with the amounts for each and note which errors they found and which ones they missed (no editor will catch them all). Then pick the candidate that fits you best. In general I say go or two "less expensive" people than one "really expensive" one. As I said, no one is going to find everything, so two eyes are better than one.
Whew, that's a lot...I hope it helps, an if you have further questions, you know where to find me.
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Trine Lise
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I'm exited that we’ll get another Riyria book this year, and I already know what I'm getting my dad for Christmas. There’s one thing I haven't seen you mention about the issue, though: an audio book. Would it be possible to release the audio book in 2016 since the book is already out, or does it count as an individual competing work? If so, might it be produced after Rhist comes out? It’s just not Riyria without Tim.
Adrienne
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Michael J. Sullivan:
I read Legends, Rise and Fall, then Revelations. I noticed that in the Empire books the elves all have blue eyes (Nolyn and Sephryn having the first? green eyes), but the elves introduced in Heir of Novron have green eyes. Is this just an error in continuity or does it signify the elves in Revelations are not "pure" somehow? Also, thank you so much. I was delighted I discovered your books from my library app!
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