Self-Publishing and Editing
Yesterday I started having a look at misconceptions involving self-publishing. It was started by this topic I found on Reddit:
I’m going through a list of the five self-publishing misconceptions in this week’s post. Those are:
- Self-published books have poor covers or no covers
- They contain no editing or poor editing
- Price competition – self-published books should be cheap
- Self-published books should have no reviews and self-published authors pay for fake reviews
- I don’t know the last point? Sneaky self-published authors masquerade as a publishing company or something?
Today, I’ll address editing, and how you can create a professionally edited product without the magical powers of a traditional publishing company.
First Stop: Should You Hire A Developmental Editor?
Editors fall into two categories:
- People who fix your mistakes (aka proofreaders or copy editors)
- People who try and make your book subjectively better
The latter group are given various names – but essentially they’re book doctors. They’ll say, “You need to include a love interest” or “this book could do with more of a focus on this theme or that theme.”
Now, elsewhere on the site and elsewhere in life, I’ve recommended only listening to people who know what they’re talking about. When it comes to crafting a book – whether it’s fiction, non-fiction, fake-non-fiction or the various other wordy pursuits – you should only take advance from people who’ve done it.
Most developmental editors have no track record of creating successful books.
Most creative writing lecturers have no track record of creating successful books.
Sadly, the majority of people in the publishing industry have no experience in creating successful books.
Ergo you shouldn’t listen to them. Forget their credentials. Forget the fact that they’ve studied all the classics and know what makes a book work or what is hot right now or any other stupid things.
Do not take advice from someone unless a) you’re experimenting or b) they absolutely know what they’re doing.
I’d go so far as to say that even then, there’s no guarantee that your developmental editor’s idea of “good” will be a match for your strengths.
In short, (and there are obvious exceptions to the rules) don’t hire a developmental editor.
Bonus points for this stupid idea. If you think hiring someone to make sure your words don’t offend people is a good idea, it’s time to either rethink that or put the pen down.
Copy-Editing and Proofreading: A Traditional Publishing Monopoly?
Let’s go back to the instigating topic. The guy who wrote the Reddit thread said that he could tell self-published books from traditionally published books due to self-published books having no editing.
Like yesterday’s post on book covers, let’s analyse that.
Is there anything a traditional publisher has access to that makes editing easier for them than a self-published person?
No. Essentially, they hire someone to check a book for errors.
You can do that as a self-published author and there are plenty of editors who will work for very little money. (Sadly, but that’s the freelance landscape.)
Now, aside from paying someone, let’s look at some of the things you can do to ensure your success on your own.
How NOT To Edit Your Work To A Professional Standard
There are things to bear in mind here. For stuff I’m charging for, I go through a particular process. I only do this for work I’m getting paid for – either as an end product or for freelance clients.
By end product I mean, “Is this what I’m selling?”
Plenty of authors – and publishing companies – consult editors at every single stage of a work.
You don’t need anyone to read your first draft unless that’s the one that’s getting sold.
You don’t need an editor to fix basic mistakes fresh from your fingertips.
Nor do you need someone to go through plot holes, research points or anything else you can do yourself.
Secondly, don’t waste time doing anything I’ll mention on freebies. If you’re releasing a lead-generation ebook or a short story for your newsletter subscribers, give it a basic once over for egregious mistakes and call it a day.
My blog posts are a great example – this is a hobby. I don’t charge anything for posts like this, and so readers can deal with the rambling. Concentrating on editing for something you aren’t getting a financial return on is a waste of your time.
Spending money for editing of drafts is stupid because you aren’t sending the material out so it’s just a lost cost that you’ll never get back.
How To Edit Your Work To A Professional Standard
Bear in mind two things:
- Your writing isn’t going to be perfect and doesn’t have to be.
- Editing is simple because the reader wants simple.
The main concern with editing a book is twofold:
- Mistakes take your reader out of the narrative/flow state
- Your reader won’t bother to comprehend long, boring and complex sentences
The average reader will read at the level of a fifteen year old if you’re lucky. Don’t make it hard on them. This is you or your editor’s major job. Get rid of complex sentences and replace them with simpler ones. Get rid of passive voice sentences and sentences where the subject is dubious. Finally, try and limit the weird phrases, rare vocabulary and other such nonsense.
That’s most of your job.
Errors are the other major thing. Spelling errors, printing errors, grammatical errors and the like are what you need to eradicate. There will be errors, no matter how finely you sift to get rid of them. It’s inevitable. (It’s why traditional publishers can have multiple editions of the same book; they update, change and otherwise make the book better after publication. You can do the same.)
Break up each section of your book and read it backwards. Use spell check on your word processor. Have a friend or trusted person who is good with that sort of thing do it. Better yet, get a handful of people to do it. Create a reader’s club or whatever.
There aren’t any magic tricks. It’s just a case of knowin what you’re doing and being conscientious about it. Spell check and the Hemingway app (it’s free and just a google search away) will get you most of the way there.
Final Thoughts
Editing is not a magical art. It’s a pretty scientific one. It’s also one you can teach yourself and apply yourself. It just takes time and/or money.
Most “editing” isn’t really editing at all – it’s trying to fit your book into a magical template that’ll give you billions of dollars or make your writing appeal to everyone. Trying to achieve this in the editing process is like hunting a unicorn. Don’t do it. It’s a waste of time and money.
Let your writing do all of that stuff. Concentrate on getting better at writing. Editing is an afterthought. It’s polishing the work you’ve created.
To that end, either hire someone or engage your brain for the editing period with single, concrete tasks. Fixing spelling errors. Checking page margins. Break those tasks down into their base form and do them one at a time.
That’s how you can edit to a level of detail that most traditional publishers can’t match.