If You're a Writer, You Need an Editor. Here's Why.

If you’re self-publishing, you shouldn’t try to do all the heavy-lifting yourself. 

You’ve written a book or an ebook, and you’re happy with it. You’ve poured months or maybe years of time and energy into what you hope is a masterpiece.

You understand, moreover, that the publishing world’s undergone a seismic shift in the past few years.

No longer do writers seek out agents and hope to land a big deal with Simon & Schuster. Especially not if they’re in any kind of a hurry, which most of us are these days.

They go instead to one of any number of the self-publishing platforms out there: CreateSpace.com (owned by Amazon), Xlibris, iUniverse, others.

But there’s a price.  

You have to do a lot more heavy-lifting yourself. Pretty much all of it, in fact. That’s what we need to talk about.

Marketing’s an obvious one, but there’s a big hurdle to clear before you ever get to the stage of trying to market your masterpiece.

Let me talk just about editing.

Before I say more, go to your bookshelf, find something published long ago. A Stephen King novel, for example. Or maybe it’ll be Tom Clancy. Take it down, open it, start rereading.

One of the things you’ll not see is typos, grammar mistakes, and other distracting faux pas.

Back in the day, professional editors went over manuscripts and got rid of such things. The editors might have worked for big publishing houses like Simon & Schuster. Or maybe the author’s agent.

Those guys are still around, but they’re a thousand times harder to connect with.

There are, after all, more manuscripts flying around today than ever before!

There are probably more writers alive today than have ever been alive before!

And more outlets for them. The new outlets rely on the DIY (Do It Yourself) principle. You do your own editing, that is. Many writers either like it that way or don’t give the matter a second thought.

Okay, time out!

Bad idea, being your own editor.  

Why?

Let’s just ask, Do you really think Stephen King edits his own work?

I don’t think so. While I’ve never met the man personally or corresponded with him to ask him, I’ve a large enough trove of his books to tell me that some years he’s cranked out a half-a-dozen novels, some of them pretty good sized.

He can sit down for four hours, type at breakneck speed, his own internal editor turned off (or down very low), and just crank ‘em out!

He can probably sit confident in the knowledge that his editors will clean up typos and any other problems.

You don’t have that luxury.

But you still need a professional editor to look at your work. We all do.

The best reason is simply because we’re too close to our own work. We look at something we’ve eaten, drank, and slept for months or years and it’s so familiar we just blow through whole paragraphs because we figure we know everything that’s in them, we’ve seen them more times than we can count.

And maybe we’ve caught most of the problems.

But I can almost guarantee you — this is based on my own experience — there are things in your masterpiece you haven’t caught.

Things that might not be in the obvious places.

Things that will hurt your credibility if you take your manuscript to print without getting them fixed.

Nothing hurts an unknown writer’s credibility more than copy that’s full of typos, for example.

The biggest problem I’ve seen in the self-published books and ebooks that have come my way are typos. Lots of ‘em.

Including embarrassing mistakes like confusing there, their, and they’re. Or seemingly not knowing when to use its and when to use it’s.

I also see grammar mistakes. I don’t mean the occasional split infinitive. I don’t think anybody cares about those anymore. I mean mishaps that muddle the meaning of entire paragraphs and make your intent unclear. That’ll ruin your work!

I once read a self-published novel whose author called one of her main characters Ellen during the first half of the book, and during the second half of the book the character’s name was Mary Ellen. I was confused at first. Was this the same character. I figured it out, but I’m sure many readers weren’t as patient.

The author probably rushed her masterpiece into print without hiring a professional editor to get the extra pair of eyes that would have caught something like that.

She paid the price.

Given the collapse of the traditional publishing model and the rise of self-publishing — far more suited for our fast-paced, instant-gratification society — the onus is now on you, the writer, to ensure that your manuscript is as good as it can possibly be before you release it for the world to see.

Now maybe the world won’t care.

I admit, the cynic in me wonders.

In advice nonfiction, readers may be more interested in content. They may be willing to overlook typos and things.

But maybe the world will care.

Serious professionals will.

Maybe others besides myself find typos and grammar mistakes distracting and credibility-destroying.

Whatever you’re writing, you want credibility. A book about writing that’s filled with mistakes won’t have credibility.

I wager: an ebook that’s trying to help people will suffer if it’s full of problems that distract readers from what the author wants to say.

My recommendation:

Before you rush your work into print, hire an editor to look it over. Editors, too, now work for themselves instead of for big publishing houses or agents. They / we are easy to find on sites like this one.

You can contact me, of course. ??

Or not.

But contact somebody.

If you’re serious about your written work, whatever its purpose, hire somebody to give it a thorough going-over.

That person will fix typos, repair misplaced or dangling modifiers or other grammar problems, and rewrite unclear paragraphs, consulting you about changes where necessary.

Yes, we charge. Editors don’t work for free anymore than anybody else.

But when your work is in front of your audience, they’ll see that it really is the beautiful masterpiece you intended!

And that hiring your editor was worth whatever it cost.