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Reason I ask is because I am going to be in the market for a seriously good editor soon, and I realized I would need to break open the piggy bank for the best. Any help or referrals would be appreciated. "
I didn't know of any good editing companies at the time that would accept my work so after a lot of research I went to a website called Scribendi.com. I picked them because they were Canadian, and that was a big plus for me.
You give them a book description and then their huge group of editors from all over the world can pick which they want to edit so that you get someone that matches your style.
I can't say that every editor there would do as good of a job as the one I got, as I may have gotten very lucky, but for me it was excellent service.
On their website is a cost calculator to find the price, and they will do a free 'chapterish' edit for you to test before you buy. Their prices were better than anything local I could find and reasonable for the industry as far as my research could tell.
I've never actually paid for editing but rather traded work for it to someone I know who had a transcribing service. That person is now too busy to do editing.
What I plan to do in a few weeks is to send maybe half a chapter to a several different editors at fiverr.com and see how it goes.
Most of what I write is the behind the scenes copy on automotive websites but I recently finished my first novel and got a friend to read it, then we spent a couple hours in a coffee shop listening to his critique which I found extremely useful.
I also used a couple different editing software programs but don't really trust them.
I plan to go over my novel again and resubmit it to Amazon but only after I get more feedback. I write in Scrivener.
My novel, "A Shadow Moving in the Forest" is really my first big piece of writing, (53,000 words, big compared to my articles) and it has pictures. To my surprise I find many people think it's another vampire book or something scary. It's about a man who raised his daughter Anna after the loss of his wife, and needs a break. Much of what happens to him takes place in the forests and mountains.
Anyway, hope this helps.
Charles
What I plan to do in a few weeks is to send maybe half a chapter to a several different editors at fiverr.com and see how it goes.
Most of what I write is the behind the scenes copy on automotive websites but I recently finished my first novel and got a friend to read it, then we spent a couple hours in a coffee shop listening to his critique which I found extremely useful.
I also used a couple different editing software programs but don't really trust them.
I plan to go over my novel again and resubmit it to Amazon but only after I get more feedback. I write in Scrivener.
My novel, "A Shadow Moving in the Forest" is really my first big piece of writing, (53,000 words, big compared to my articles) and it has pictures. To my surprise I find many people think it's another vampire book or something scary. It's about a man who raised his daughter Anna after the loss of his wife, and needs a break. Much of what happens to him takes place in the forests and mountains.
Anyway, hope this helps.
Charles
CB wrote: "Chris wrote: "CB wrote: "I would be curious to know who you used to edit your work. Maybe refer us to a professional editor we can trust that edited your work? And how much did you pay for his/her ..."Thank you very much :)
Chris wrote: "I would be curious to know who you used to edit your work. Maybe refer us to a professional editor we can trust that edited your work? And how much did you pay for his/her services?..."Chris: we recently found an excellent editor (our first 3 books we did ourselves, with some free help). I have a reputation for "resisting" editing (among the editors at my former day job), and our writing tends to be "difficult" and "idiosyncratic" (sentence fragments, crazy run-on's, archaic constructions).
She took it all in stride, figured out our quirks, and sent back a cleaned up draft I was extremely happy with -- our voice preserved and readability enhanced. She did convince me to tone down the weirdness in few places, with suggestions I liked, and she great at fixing our bad habit of using too many passive constructions. We will be using her for all future work.
Our cost for a light edit was 1 cent per word. She does some content editing as well, but we have not used her for that. Her website is: http://www.karenrobinsonedits.com/
Another resource for editing you might want to investigate is Indie Books Gone Wild: http://www.ibgw.net/ .
Owen wrote: "Chris wrote: "I would be curious to know who you used to edit your work. Maybe refer us to a professional editor we can trust that edited your work? And how much did you pay for his/her services?....."Thank you Owen. I will definitely check it out. Sounds great.
Howdy Lora!I was just about to mention that having a computer program read to you is a great strategy, but it looks like someone already did! I'm an editor myself, and I always use my trusty program to help me catch things other people might miss. It comes in really handy.
CB wrote: "Chris wrote: "CB wrote: "I would be curious to know who you used to edit your work. Maybe refer us to a professional editor we can trust that edited your work? And how much did you pay for his/her ..."Rather than paying for professional editing services, I've found being a member of a critique group to be extremely valuable. There are about 10 members of our group and we normally meet every two weeks with regular attendance of 7-8 authors at each meeting. Each author reads their work (6-8 pages) out loud to the group who have printed copies which they mark-up with corrections and suggestions. It seems that different people catch different things during this exercise. Sometimes it simply typos, other times it's plot holes. We have one member who has over a dozen books published and she is a master of dialogue.
Mod
That is a good idea. I go to a writer's group and we read aloud, but I never thought to bring copies for people to mark up!
I think to be a good editor, it's hard. I've heard of writers leaving a publisher due to edit issues. There needs to be 'constructive criticism', not personal attacks, eg 'The writer is stupid and never listens.' Call it tough love. The writer and editor need to be able to work well together as a team or the whole thing will not work out. Finding a good editor is hard i think. And edits need doing right or the writing/book/poem looks very very bad.
Charles