Hiring a professional editor to help you polish your manuscript is an exciting step in your journey as an author. A professional-quality edit requires a lot of time and a lot of skill and is vital to putting out a quality book, so you should expect to pay for the work. But there simple things you can do to bring the cost down and to make the process go smoothly.
The most important thing you can do to lower the cost of an edit is to go through your document several times yourself. The less work an editor has to do, the less it is going to cost you. If you are paying by the hour, you don’t want to pay for a couple of hours of routine spell checking and grammar checking when you could have done that yourself. Even if your editor bills by the project, he or she has most likely determined the editing fee by doing a sample edit on your document. If it is clear that a fairly heavy edit will be required, the fee will be higher.
Making sure your manuscript is the best it can be before turning it over to an editor also makes the process less painful for you. No matter how well written your manuscript is, you will probably be surprised at the number of corrections/suggestions your editor makes. Seeing all of that markup covering the words you labored over can be hard! The more you have done to make sure the writing is the best you can make it, the less of that you will have to see. I have had several clients who have written a first draft and then sent it me for cleanup. I will certainly work my hardest to polish up a first draft, but you will be faced with many more corrections than you would if you sent me your second or third (or fourth!) draft. You are also more assured of maintaining your unique voice that way. Editors work hard to suggest rewrites that correct problems without changing the author’s meaning or their individual style. The more an editor has to change, the harder that becomes.
Lastly, make sure you know what type of editing you are looking for and what type of editing each editor you are considering provides. If you are early in the writing process and are looking for someone to critique your plot pacing, story arc, and character development, you need a developmental editor. If you are confident in your story, but are looking for sentence and paragraph level edits of your word choice, clarity, and usage (along with grammar, spelling, and punctuation assistance), you are looking for a line editor/copyeditor. There is no point in paying someone to correct your comma usage if you will end up needing to rewrite large sections of the document for better plot pacing. Understanding the types of editing and knowing what you need can save you a lot of time and money in the long run. If you give your document to a line editor and they suggest that your document could still use developmental editing, strongly consider that advice. As a line editor, I assure you that I am not eager to turn you away as a client. If I suggest a developmental edit, it is because I strongly believe that a line edit/copyedit would not be worth your time and money at this stage.
I hope that helps! Let me know if you have any other questions about the editing process. You can contact me through Goodreads or through my website (www.ericaellisfreelance.com).
The most important thing you can do to lower the cost of an edit is to go through your document several times yourself. The less work an editor has to do, the less it is going to cost you. If you are paying by the hour, you don’t want to pay for a couple of hours of routine spell checking and grammar checking when you could have done that yourself. Even if your editor bills by the project, he or she has most likely determined the editing fee by doing a sample edit on your document. If it is clear that a fairly heavy edit will be required, the fee will be higher.
Making sure your manuscript is the best it can be before turning it over to an editor also makes the process less painful for you. No matter how well written your manuscript is, you will probably be surprised at the number of corrections/suggestions your editor makes. Seeing all of that markup covering the words you labored over can be hard! The more you have done to make sure the writing is the best you can make it, the less of that you will have to see. I have had several clients who have written a first draft and then sent it me for cleanup. I will certainly work my hardest to polish up a first draft, but you will be faced with many more corrections than you would if you sent me your second or third (or fourth!) draft. You are also more assured of maintaining your unique voice that way. Editors work hard to suggest rewrites that correct problems without changing the author’s meaning or their individual style. The more an editor has to change, the harder that becomes.
Lastly, make sure you know what type of editing you are looking for and what type of editing each editor you are considering provides. If you are early in the writing process and are looking for someone to critique your plot pacing, story arc, and character development, you need a developmental editor. If you are confident in your story, but are looking for sentence and paragraph level edits of your word choice, clarity, and usage (along with grammar, spelling, and punctuation assistance), you are looking for a line editor/copyeditor. There is no point in paying someone to correct your comma usage if you will end up needing to rewrite large sections of the document for better plot pacing. Understanding the types of editing and knowing what you need can save you a lot of time and money in the long run. If you give your document to a line editor and they suggest that your document could still use developmental editing, strongly consider that advice. As a line editor, I assure you that I am not eager to turn you away as a client. If I suggest a developmental edit, it is because I strongly believe that a line edit/copyedit would not be worth your time and money at this stage.
I hope that helps! Let me know if you have any other questions about the editing process. You can contact me through Goodreads or through my website (www.ericaellisfreelance.com).