by Richard Risemberg
There are four rules to follow if you want to self-publish a novel and not embarrass yourself, the publishing industry, and the English language. They are:
1) Write slowly. Write slowly, carefully, and vigilantly, always watching out for self-indulgence, which will betray your characters.
2) Rewrite. Because you will never be completely successful following the admonition in Rule #1.
3) Find an editor. No matter how careful you are in rewrite, you will miss some debilitating infelicities in your book.
4) Find a real editor, either someone who is trained in editing, or someone who has long experience in editing. And most important: it must be someone who does not love you. No friends, no relatives. (Unless they’re relatives you don’t get along with; that might work out.)
If you are lucky, the editor will just catch typos, misspellings, and inconsistencies–continuity errors, minor characters changing names, metamorphosing landscapes, that sort of thing. I myself stumbled over a minor error in a trade book by Ross Macdonald, when a handgun presented as a .32 revolver in the first third of the story re-emerged as a .32 automatic in the last third.
To anyone possessing even a cursory familiarity with weapons, and that would likely include most readers of a well-known mystery writer such as MacDonald, this jars the flow of the story. Especially as the gun ties together the plot. In other books I’ve noticed mountains that slide about the landscape, stunningly elastic neighborhoods, and even furniture that seems to testify to the presence of poltergeists. Editors, who are reading a story from outside the writer’s own head, are always on the lookout for such beasts
Nonetheless, I must confess that two editors and a proofreader, all well-trained pros, plus my own nine readovers, left a couple of fortunately very minor typos in my most recent book, Family Ties. They don’t harm the story, and I’ve seen worse, far worse, in trade books, but they irk the hell out of its author, and presumably annoy at least some readers. (Did you catch them?)
How do you find an editor? The easiest and most obvious way is to find a list of professional editors-for-hire, dig out one who works in your genre, and pay him or her to do the job. A site called Self-Publishing Review offers advice and lists in their article, Where to Find a Self-Published Book Editor. (And yes, that sentence itself could have used an editor, since it can be read as suggesting you find an editor who has been self-published, rather than one willing to work on self-published books. I myself have been an editor of short-form works, so that stood out to me.)
There’s also Emily Nemchick’s How to Find a Good Editor on this very blog, with good straightforward advice. Whatever you do, the criticism your editors dish out will make you wince, but it will make your book better.
Sure, you can find literate friends who are willing to edit a book for you, but I have read books edited by the author’s friends, and they suffered from too much kindness. Someone who is close to you will likely not be willing to forward any severe criticism your book may merit. My own editors are in fact people I know indirectly, but we have never actually met, shared a meal and a beer, talked about our kids, or engaged in any sort of real-world relationship. They are willing to tell me when I’ve let my story go flat. You’ve got to be sure your editor will not hide the bad news from you. Because your reviewers sure as hell won’t.
Find an editor, a good, hardhearted editor, before you go public with your book. It is easier to rewrite a novel than a reputation.
Guest post contributed by Richard Risemberg. Richard was dragged to Los Angeles as a child, and has been working there in a number of vernacular occupations since his teens while writing poetry, articles, essays, and fiction, and editing online ‘zines. He’s survived long enough to become either a respected elder or a tedious old fart, depending on your point of view, and is still at it. You can learn about his own novels at Crow Tree Books.
Indeed, having an editor is a must, specially one that doesn’t love you.
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Just hired a freelance editor for the first time to get some impartial, informed feedback on my middle grade manuscript before going through the querying process. It took a lot of research, but it’s comforting to know I’ll be getting some feedback and guidance from a pro who knows the industry and what makes a strong story. Thanks for the post!
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Reblogged this on .
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Reblogged this on The Kingdom of the Woodland Realm Trilogy and commented:
I am so in need of one of those. 😁 I cry over a letter I missed after the fact. But reading what will ultimately be 1000 pages…point is, I recommend this highly.
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Great post! Reblogged. 😊
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Thanks for sharing!
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Found a lot of use in this. Thanks, Richard.
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I read a book once that had errors still in the pages of the published book. I didn’t laugh. I didn’t criticize. I did wonder why the author didn’t take the book to an editor who would have found the Spelling errors, and grammatical, errors. It was too, late to correct the book.
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A timely and helpful post. Thanks for the links! @sheilamgood at Cow Pasture Chronicles
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I keep on seeing self published authors pay tons for editing and still wind up with errors. While that doesn’t bother me as much(but it should), what ticks me off is the grammar, content and sentence structure. Surely an editor needs to look at a manuscript objectively, as do the writer.
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The editor may not have been allowed to change sentence structure; if the author says, ‘Just fix the grammar and punctuation,’ the editor they hire can’t do anything except fix the grammar and punctuation. (I am speaking from personal experience here.) The editor may have been a developmental editor rather than a line/copy editor; developmental editors aren’t responsible for the line-by-line stuff anyway.
Also, even traditionally published books (edited by the publisher’s in-house editor, back when such creatures existed) contain errors. The industry standard is only to keep the error rate to below about one per page (five percent error rate). A novel with only a dozen minor errors in the whole thing is edited very well, not poorly.
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Ah okay. Thanks for clearing that up for me 🙂
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Reblogged this on Author Don Massenzio.
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Reblogged this on WILDsound Writing and Film Festival Review.
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Reblogged this on It’s Me, Lizzie! and commented:
Not all of the advice on this is true 100% of the time, but it’s still worth a read.
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Thanks for sharing!
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Thanks so much! That honest, clear and quality feedback from someone (who isn’t trying to be nice) is so helpful and needed!
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