It has been a long time since I posted. The reason? Have been slaving (or should that be slavering?) over the final draft. Now it is done and I have sent off some samples to various editors. I figure it is worth the investment to try a few rather than just one since a few thousand words only costs around £50 to get edited. Not sure how I will choose between them yet, but I am hoping it won’t be too difficult. Perhaps I need an uber editor to choose between them.
I have to say I am little nervous with sharing my baby: what happens if they think she is ugly, stupid or worthless? Or all three? Not sure. All I know is that my work is at least as good as a number of the indies in the top 100, a fair few of which have not been professionally edited (or if they have been I for sure could not tell!).
Does the cost put people off employing an editor? OK, it will be anything between £500 and £1000, which is no small sum. However, the book is out there forever and I think writers owe it to their readers to make the product the best they can. After all the writer is expecting to make money out of the reader so it is an insult to put out a badly prepared book (don’t even get me onto ebook formatting issues…).
I don’t think an editor can turn a bad work into a good one, but they can turn a fair work into a good one and a good work into an excellent one. I don’t know where my book lies on the continuum from awful to fantastic, but if an editor can bump it up one or two levels then that is justification enough for employing one.
