Do you need a professional editor? After months or years of work, your book is finally finished. Now, it’s time to design the covers and get your book into print. Well, not so fast. You still need to edit a book before you can consider it finished. Editing is the most important part of finishing a book. Now that you’ve completed yours, it’s time to set it aside and let a professional editor look it over.
- 1. It’s Hard to Edit Yourself
- 2. Get an Unbiased Opinion with a Professional Editor
- 3. Make Your Book More Professional with a Professional Editor
- Choose Your Professional Editor
- Costs for a Professional Editor to Edit Your Book
- How Long Does It Take for a Professional Editor to Edit a Book?
- A Professional Editor Is the Final Step
1. It’s Hard to Edit Yourself
Should you edit your book yourself? While that can work for some writers, those are typically writers who already have a strong background in journalism, publishing, or editorial work. They may have the skills to edit and proofread their work. If you’re new to writing, you may not realize that editing is an entirely different thing. It requires its own set of skills and knowledge. If you don’t have experience as a professional editor, you won’t know what to look for when you edit a book.
It’s hard for authors to edit themselves. That’s why most successful writers rely on a professional editor to make sure their words are clear and their plots make sense. That includes writers with years of experience and dozens of best-selling books under their belt. They count on editors to make their books better. You deserve the same advantage.
2. Get an Unbiased Opinion with a Professional Editor
A professional editor doesn’t know anything about your hopes, dreams, or struggles when writing your manuscript. That’s an advantage because they don’t have an emotional investment in it. When a professional editor looks at a manuscript, they do so as a detached professional who can give it an unbiased opinion.
Can you look at your book with the fresh, open eyes of a new reader? You probably can’t. You’re too close to it. A professional editor, however, can view your book with truly clear eyes. They can point out mistakes and prevent you from going into print with an error-ridden book. Line editors and development editors can spot plot inconsistencies, sloppy organization, or unconvincing characters.
3. Make Your Book More Professional with a Professional Editor
If you read reviews of self-published books on digital publishing platforms, you may see one type of complaint pop up repeatedly. That’s a complaint about the spelling, grammar, page breaks, and layout of a book.
Before you dismiss those criticisms as minor, remember, that layout is what makes a book readable. A reader wants a book with an attractive layout, superior design, good grammar, no spelling mistakes, and without long, boring blocks of text. Those aren’t minor issues. They’re mistakes about professionalism. They make your book amateurish.
Readers will drag you for:
- Spelling mistakes
- Sloppy grammar (do you know the difference between “lay” and “lie”?)
- Word usage mistakes, like mixing up the words its and it’s, or using there and their incorrectly
- Long, unbroken paragraphs of text
Again, don’t dismiss these as minor or these readers as overly picky. These mistakes will make readers quit your book and call it sloppily produced. They’ll drag your reviews down and make your book look unprofessional. Why should readers take you seriously, if you don’t take yourself seriously enough to offer them a finished, professional product?
You can avoid these mistakes by hiring an expert to edit a book. If you’re working with a small budget, hire a professional proofreader and a book designer. Together, these professionals will make your book achieve the minimal standards that a reader expects from a published book.
Choose Your Professional Editor
There are many types of editorial experts. Although a professional editor can have different titles, they all have the same goal: Making a book better. There are many ways to edit a book, and there’s an editorial expert for each approach.
- Beta readers: While they’re not professionals, they should be part of your editing and marketing efforts. Beta readers are regular book buyers who read widely in the genre you’ve chosen. They read your book before you write the final draft. They won’t edit or proofread, but they will tell you whether you have a winner or a loser on your hands. Beta readers are aware of what book buyers want, and they’ll give you an honest assessment of your story. Most work for a small fee.
- Acquisitions editors: Sometimes called executive editors, they are clued into what traditional publishing companies want. These experts decide which manuscripts should be considered for publication. If you want to go down the route of traditional or commercial publishing, you will probably work with an acquisitions editor.
- Development editors: A development editor is sometimes called a content editor. To edit a book, this expert will check out the way it flows, how the dialogue reads, and how it builds to a resolution. This expert focuses on the big picture. Some development editors will also perform in-depth editing of your words and scenes. Their goal is to help you produce a book that looks and sounds professional. The more help you get, the more it will cost.
- Book designer: This expert looks at a book’s internal layout, typography, graphics, and covers. A book designer goes beyond the basic formatting you get from online programs.
- Copy editor: A copy editor focuses on the consistency of setting, descriptions, and characters. They also correct factual mistakes. Copy editors are essential in nonfiction editing because they check footnotes and references. They also improve titles and subheadings.
- Proofreader: Proofreaders correct mistakes in spelling, grammar, and word usage. They don’t typically provide higher-level editorial support. That’s not their job, and it’s above their pay grade. If they offer suggestions about the manuscript, however, consider them. Most proofreaders are avid readers, and they may have good insights.
- Production editor: Once your book is ready to be printed, the production editor guides it through every stage from pre-press production to final, published hardcover or softcover book. If you’re self-published, you will do this yourself.
Costs for a Professional Editor to Edit Your Book
If you want a professional review of your book, you must hire a freelance editorial expert. You can find these experts online or through an online publishing platform that provides referrals to proofreaders, editors, and others.
For a standard book of 80,000, to 100,000 words, your costs will typically be the following. If your book is long, highly technical, or otherwise specialized, your costs will go up.
- General editorial opinion to decide if your book is publisher-ready: $2,000 and up
- Development or line editing: $3,000 and up
- Copy editing: $2500 to $4000
- Proofreading: $1,000 to $3,000
How Long Does It Take for a Professional Editor to Edit a Book?
The timeline depends on the length, subject, and complexity of the book, but for a typical novel or nonfiction book of 80,000 to 100,000 words, here’s what you can expect.
- General assessment: Two weeks to one month
- Development editing: Six weeks to six months
- Line editing: One month
- Copy editing: Two weeks to two months
- Proofreading: One or two weeks
A Professional Editor Is the Final Step
Finishing a book is an accomplishment. Once you’ve hit that goal, make sure the book you worked so hard on is the best it can be. The right editor can make an enormous difference. So can the right printing company, which is why you should choose Dazzle Printing for your book.
