The English Major Next Door and Other Incompetent Editors

Authors need professional and trained editors. Too often, a first-time author is led astray by hiring someone who says he can help, only to have him do an incompetent editing job or for him to find out he doesn’t have time to edit a book, leaving the author in a panic. By doing a little research to find the right editor the first time, authors can save themselves tears and frustration later.

“My niece is an English major. She could help you edit your book….My sister teaches twelfth grade English; she could help you edit your book….Sure, I write for the local newspaper so I know all about editing and proofreading; I can help you….It can be slow here at the library; I can work on your book in between waiting on the patrons and during my lunch break; it won’t take me long.”

If anyone approaches you to edit your book and feeds you a line like one of these—RUN!

Okay, maybe not run, but think twice about it and politely decline. Why should you decline? Because these people have not edited a book before or are not really qualified to do so. While it’s possible such a person could do a great job, you are better off hiring a professional. If you really feel you want to hire a person of the caliber of those above, do yourself a favor first by asking a few questions which you should ask of any editor.

  • Have you ever edited a book before? If “no,” politely decline letting the person touch your book.
  • How many books have you edited before? If two or less, you should probably decline but it’s okay to go on to the next two questions before you decide.
  • Will you give me the names of the books you’ve edited? If the answer is “No,” well, you know what to do. If you get the books’ names, go read those books. Are they up to your standards?
  • Can you provide me with references from authors you have worked with? The answer absolutely has to be “Yes.” Otherwise, the authors weren’t happy with this editor’s work, or the editor is lying about the books he’s edited.
  • How much will you charge me? Your budget may be small but don’t let someone edit your book because she’s willing to give you a low price. You pay for what you get. Anyone charging you less than $20 an hour or a penny a word is someone who isn’t familiar enough with what it takes to edit a book or professional enough to be aware of what the going rates are for editing. Even if you only have a few hundred dollars, and the editor wants $1,500, it may be well worth your time and money in the long run, and you can always ask whether the editor will work with you so you can make monthly payments.
  • My book is x number of pages? How much will you charge to edit it? If the person gives you a price without seeing the book—RUN! An editor who gives a price without seeing the book is about as smart as a mechanic who agrees to fix your car for $250 because you say it’s making a noise and think the muffler needs to be replaced. If the mechanic discovers engine problems and puts $2,000 of parts and labor into your car, do you think he’ll be happy with $250? Neither will your editor if the work necessary is more than you lead him to believe, or you know yourself.
  • Have you written and published any books yourself? If the answer is “No,” it’s not a deal-breaker, but why would you want someone who never wrote a book to fix yours? You want someone with qualifications, and as nice as the English teacher or the newspaper reporter may be, if the person never worked on a full-length book, she may just not be up to the task. Would you hire a dentist to do open-heart surgery for you? And don’t let the person sweet talk you with stories of how he teaches English or she has a Master’s or Ph.D. in English—what matters is that the person can pay close attention to the smallest details so your book is consistently edited throughout—not how many times the person taught “Romeo and Juliet” or whether she knows the difference between a poem written in iambic pentameter and one written in trochaic tetrameter.

A lot of great book editors are out there. You just have to find them. Don’t worry about hurting someone’s feelings by not hiring him, and don’t be afraid to work with someone who lives across the country and you meet online. What matters is finding someone who will do the best job possible for you, is compatible with what you need and want, and is qualified to do the job.

The best way to find an editor is to get a referral to one from another author. If you know any authors, find out who their editors are, and look over their books to see whether they meet your standards for quality—are there punctuation or grammatical errors, or awkward sentences? If so, don’t use that author’s editor. Keep looking until you find one you can trust.

If you don’t know any authors, go online and try to find a self-published author whose books you can look over to see whether they meet your level of satisfaction. Then find the website for that book’s editor and contact him or her. Oh yes, that’s another thing—your editor should have a website to promote his or her services. If the editor doesn’t have a website, it’s clear he isn’t a professional editor who does it for a living.

When you find a professional editor, be sure to ask the same questions you asked above. Then send your manuscript to the editor, ask him to edit a few pages as a sample for you so he can come up with a fair price quote and so you can get an idea of his editing work. Any legitimate editor will be willing to give you a sample of his or her work. That way there will be no surprises on either end.

What do I mean by surprises? If I haven’t convinced you yet to spare no expense or time in finding someone qualified to edit your book, here are a few horror stories from authors who worked with the “would-be editors” who fed them a line about editing, as noted above:

“The librarian said she’d have time to edit my book and it would only take a week, but after a month, she was only halfway through because she was busier helping patrons than usual, and now she’s in charge of a conference and says she doesn’t have time to finish it, so I have a half-edited book and don’t know what to do.”

“My first editor quit halfway through on me because she found a full-time teaching job and said she didn’t have time to finish my book, so I found another editor who kept picking apart everything the first editor did; then the second editor told me she wanted more money when she didn’t really do anything. When she sent me back my book, it was in a file I couldn’t even open so I never did get to see her edits. I’ve paid two people to edit my book and I’m still at the beginning with an unpublished book.”

“I keep getting bad reviews because of the editing and grammar errors in my book. I paid my friend who was an English major to do the editing, and I paid her good money too. Now I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but I’m going to have to stop selling the book and have it edited again. I’m too embarrassed to sell the copies of my book I had printed because of the errors, so all that money I spent on printing is wasted.”

Now are you convinced?

 

Irene Watson

Irene Watson is the Managing Editor of Reader Views, where avid readers can find reviews of recently published books as well as read interviews with authors. Her team also provides author publicity and a variety of other services specific to writing and publishing books.

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