After all, editing is expensive. It takes a long time. What is your editor doing during those weeks or months with your manuscript? What are they doing to earn that high fee? I promise you, editing isn’t sitting around reading books all day. It’s also not making our pens proverbially bleed onto the page as we gleefully correct errors. Editing is a complicated and often frustrating process. Here’s a little of what it looks like.

What Does Professional Editing Look Like?

Since I’m a copy editor, I’ll take you through what a copy edit looks like for me with the average manuscript.

Receive the Manuscript

The first step is receiving the manuscript. I will perform a basic cleanup on the text, formatting it properly (if it isn’t already) and performing basic functions such as replacing any double spaces between sentences with single spaces. All of this happens before the track changes go on because there’s no need for the author to see those changes (and they can be numerous).

Read Through the Manuscript

Next, I’ll read through the manuscript from beginning to end to get an idea of the contents and the author’s voice and intentions. If the edit is a tight turnaround, I may only read the first section of the book before diving into editing fully.

Track Changes Go On

Now, track changes go on, and the editing begins. Editors look for many things at this stage, and the order in which they search for each item could be different for each author and editor. For a copy edit, I’m looking at grammar such as unnecessary passive voice or consistent capitalization; I’m looking for flow such as too many repeated sentence starts; I’m looking for punctuation, including both the correctness and the impact of each mark.

Make Additional Passes

Depending on how “clean” the manuscript already is, I may complete anywhere from two to five passes on it, looking for different things each time. How many passes a manuscript gets also depends on the timeline or quote from the editor. The less time for the edit, the fewer passes I’m going to be able to fit in. Some editors will name a specific number of passes in their contracts.

Manuscript Goes Back to the Author

Once the manuscript is handed back to the author, they have a chance to read through it and make any final changes or change anything back they disagree with. You don’t need to and shouldn’t hit accept all. I usually lock the track changes on during this stage, so you can’t do that.

Final Pass & Cleanup

When you’re done making changes, then it comes back to me, and I do a final scan of the manuscript. In particular, I’m paying attention to any edits I see you’ve made to be sure any basic errors haven’t been introduced. I then “accept all” on the manuscript and send the tracked changes and clean copies to the author.

What Does it Take to Be an Editor?

In addition to how I edit, I’d like to cover what it takes to complete the above steps. Editors have different traits that make them adept at different types of editing. But most editors will have these basic skills.

Decision Making

Editing is a lot of decision-making. Yes, a lot of decisions are made for us by style guides and grammar rules. But there are a LOT of exceptions to English writing “rules,” and editors are tasked with finding the right answer to a question with no certain conclusion. Therefore, a lot of editing comes down to style. Editors are constantly trying to balance what is correct with what is the author’s voice.

Detail Retention

Did the apartment switch from the second to the third floor in two different chapters? Did you capitalize a made-up term somewhere but have it lowercase in other places? These sorts of details need to ring bells in an editor’s mind so they can create consistency in the work.

Empathy

Editors need to understand their authors. They need to understand what the author’s intentions are behind the words and their meaning and how they are trying to get it across. We must put ourselves in the author’s shoes and think like them to do our best editing without removing what makes the writing special.

A Keen Eye

Great editors can spot even the smallest details, like a wrongly italicized comma. We need to be detail oriented to find what needs fixing. A lot of editing is looking at a word or construction and telling ourselves, “I better look this up.”

Patience 

Editors need to be patient with authors, for sure, but also patient with the work. Editing shouldn’t be rushed. When I work on a manuscript, I work six or seven days a week, but I only edit up to four hours each day. This is about how long we can do Deep Work.

Resilience

Editors need to have a thick skin. Sure, most people think it’s the authors who need to steel themselves up against our edits, but it’s really editors who need to be resilient to feedback on our edits. After all, we’ve invested into your manuscript, it can be devastating to hear an author changed back most of the edits. But it happens. Editors need to be resilient to it.

Some editors refer to themselves as gardeners, helping manuscripts grow into full books. Other editors see themselves as miners, digging the true message from your words. Overall, editing is a long and complicated process. (And we haven’t even covered developmental editing, line editing, or proofreading.) But rest assured, your high-charging editor is doing much more than just adding a few commas or making a few comments. 

Jeanette the Writer is a freelance editor and writer based in Dallas, TX. When not at her computer, you can find her crafting, scuba diving, or posting pictures of her cats on Instagram. Visit JeanettetheWriter.com for more info and follow @JeanettetheWriter on Instagram and Facebook.

The post What Does an Editor Actually Do? appeared first on DIY MFA.

1. You managed to write all of this!

If you haven’t already, I want you to stop reading this immediately and go celebrate that you finished a project and are moving on to editing. That is a HUGE accomplishment! 

All those words (good and bad), those came from you. You poured your heart onto the page and that took guts and dedication. 

Always keep in mind that you birthed that manuscript or story into the world all on your own. That is powerful.

2. No one’s first draft is good

There may be moments of greatness in your first draft, of course. But no writer, even professionals we idolize, gets everything perfect on the first try. 

It’s a hard pill to swallow when we look back on our writing and admit it isn’t very good—yet. 

But that’s the key. It’s only a first draft. No one expects it to be remotely good, let alone perfect. Don’t beat yourself up about it. That’s what the editing process is there for.

3. Editing is the fun part

In this humble editor’s opinion, the editing process is where the fun of writing really begins. 

During the writing phase, your mind was throwing out anything it could find at the moment to make your point. 

Now is the time to take all that word-clay and start digging in, molding and shaping it into the artwork you imagined. After all, is there anything better than that feeling when a sentence you revised is so good it gives you goosebumps?

4. Editing is NOT a never-ending process

The writing process has a clear demarcation when it comes to an end. All stories, whether short or novel-length, have a conclusion of some sort. 

But the editing process… it’s not so clear when it ends. 

Yes, you could go on forever making a little tweak here and a small wording change there, but you will need to one day call it quits. Setting a goal and having a specific series of edits in mind can help you draw that line in the sand. 

5. All great writers had an editor

With the rise of self-publishing, I can no longer say that every book published has been through the hands of at least one editor. 

But I’ll bet any writer worth their salt can point out exactly which books had an editor and which didn’t. The Amazon and New York Times bestsellers? They definitely had editors! 

Don’t think you have to or even should go through the editing process alone. Editors are your friends and they serve an important purpose.

Tell us in the comments: What do you keep in mind during the editing process?

Jeanette the Writer is a freelance editor and writer based in Dallas, TX. When not at her computer, you can find her crafting, scuba diving, or posting pictures of her cats on Instagram. Visit JeanettetheWriter.com for more info and follow @JeanettetheWriter on Instagram and Facebook.

The post #5onFri: Five Things to Keep in Mind During the Editing Process appeared first on DIY MFA.

While I wanted to lambast this person for thoroughly insulting editors, instead, I politely directed them to a resource where they could learn more about standard industry rates. I then realized it’s something we haven’t covered here at DIY MFA and we should, because industry transparency and setting proper expectations will ensure you get the right service for the right price.

Here are some things to consider when you’re looking to pay an editor to edit your book:

The Type of Editing You’re Asking For

Going back to the Facebook post I mentioned, the OP was asking for every step of editing from the first pass to the final proofread from the same person. Many good editors specialize in just one or two types of editing.

For example, I don’t claim to be a developmental editor. My specialty is making your words sing through line editing or punching up your punctuation with copyediting. Many editors also have a rule about not proofing what they’ve recently line-edited. The OP would likely be better off from a services standpoint consulting with multiple specialists.

As for how this affects what you pay an editor, just realize that paying one person to do two things may mean two separate prices for each service. A line edit may go for one price while a proofread is negotiated separately. Developmental editing often costs the most. Could you get a bundle deal for some of these services? That’s up to the editor, but I personally charge separately for each project.

How Much Editing Is Required?

Writers seek out editors at many different stages of the writing process and some writers may be better at certain aspects than others, which means their editing could take more or less time. If your editor is charging hourly, having a cleaner manuscript will mean faster work, taking down the price.

Good editors will also evaluate a sample of your work to make sure the editing you want is the editing you need and to estimate how much time or effort it may take. Depending on what we see, the rate for editing can change.

How Long Editing Actually Takes

In the Facebook post, the OP wanted to publish the manuscript in less than a month. This seemed fairly unrealistic to me considering everything they were asking for. Good editors are in high demand and are often booked months in advance. We carefully lay out our schedules to make sure we can get the work done properly without rushing through and missing things. Many of us juggle multiple projects at the same time.

How does this affect your wallet? Well, if a client asks me to put their project ahead of others to meet a strict deadline, there’s a surcharge for that. Depending on how busy I am or how much of a rush it is, I’ve charged up to 40% more than what a non-rush quote would be. That number could be much higher with other editors.

So, How Much Should I Pay an Editor?

Now, let’s talk about pricing. Truly, the number offered in the original post was laughable. Is there an editor out there who would pick up that job? I would sincerely hope not, but yeah, people do. I would, however, question this person’s reasoning in agreeing to complete the project for so little money.

As for rates, I’m partial to the EFA’s (Editorial Freelancer Association) median rates. Keep in mind, these aren’t bottom and top prices. This is the industry median (between the middle values in a data set) based on real reported rates from working editors. Will you find lower? Yes. Will you find much higher? Absolutely. 

This means there is a wide range in what you might pay for editing, keeping in mind the type of editing, cleanliness of the manuscript, and the timeline.

Part of deciding what to pay for editing is deciding on the caliber of editor you want. Are there amazing editors with lower rates? I’d say yes. Could you overpay for someone’s shoddy job? Yeah, that could happen too. 

Luckily, there are plenty of articles about how to evaluate an editor before you work with them. (Hint: a lot of it is about personality matching.) It’s a balancing act between the right fit and what you can afford. 

Speaking of which, having a budget in mind to start out with can help you not overpay for services. Or at least you’ll end up feeling good about how much you spent.

What should you budget? Let’s do some simple math. Developmental editing sits at a median rate of $0.03 to $0.039 per word. And let’s say you have a 50K-word novel. Multiplication tells us that your pricing could be around $1500 to $2000.

It could also be charged hourly (median EFA pricing is $46-50/hour); in which case the final price depends on how fast the editor works based on the number of pages. An industry-standard page is 250 words, meaning your 50K-word manuscript is about 200 pages. The EFA reports that editors work at a median pace of 4-6 pages per hour, equaling between 30 and 50 hours of editing. Again, multiplication says this will be around $1300 to $2500 for your developmental edit.

You can use the same math to estimate your price for other types of editing based on this chart.

In the end, there is too wide a variety of pricing to spell out in this article. But I recommend budgeting $1000+ for a good editor going through one stage of editing. 

If you’re self-publishing, you may need several rounds of editing with one or more editors. You also might need other people on your team like a graphic designer for your cover or a formatting expert for your layout.

Overall, editors strongly encourage each other to charge within industry standards. We consult with each other on pricing and even pass off jobs to each other if we know our rates aren’t inside the writer’s budget. When it comes to editing, don’t let sticker shock deter you from seeking out help. Slowly put aside your funds for editing. In the meantime, head to your local writing or critique group and learn from fellow writers who may be at a more advanced stage than yourself. Try grammar software (but please don’t blindly accept every change!). Pull the trigger when you’re ready for a professional to step in.

Jeanette the Writer is a freelance editor and writer based in Dallas, TX. When not at the computer, you can find her crafting, scuba diving, or posting pictures of her cats on Instagram. Visit JeanettetheWriter.com for more info and follow @JeanettetheWriter on Instagram and Facebook or @JeanettetheWrtr on Twitter.

The post How Much Should I Pay an Editor to Edit My Book? appeared first on DIY MFA.