A good editor knows the market, knows the genre, and knows the conventions. A good editor knows the rules and also has enough good judgement to know when to break the rules. Grammar is the least of it - honestly, if someone doesn't have good grammar, they should just learn grammar. I have some really good betas, but what they give me is a general impression of the story - what worked for them, what didn't, etc. I can have four betas read a story and get back four different reactions to a single character. Which is totally fair. Then I send my MS to an editor and get a totally different perspective. I've worked with several different editors and they all seem to find the same annoying quirks in my writing (not that I don't correct quirks over time, but then I apparently develop a whole new set that needs to be worked through!). Betas don't seem to notice this sort of thing. Editors will also say things like "I loved character A, but we had three books with similar characters last year and they just didn't seem to appeal to readers. Do you think you could...." Neither writing nor publishing is a science. You're not going to get scientific evidence of anything. But publishing houses are notoriously cheap, and they all still pay for editors. Do you think they'd do that if it was an unnecessary expense?
Doesn't always work that way as the book has to get review in the first place. I have only 5 star and 4 star reviews for my fiction but as there's only 13, my book doesn't rank as highly as someone with 89 reviews, even if all those 89 reviews are one star.
Neither writing nor publishing is a science. @BayView you are spot on with that line. Writing and publishing are more akin to Russian Roulette!
Hi CC22, I hear you. But first ranking isn't based on reviews. It's based on sales and borrows. Review numbers are very often much more random. I generally get about one review per one hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty sales - though the advent of KU2 has changed things. But some people get more reviews per sale / borrow if their work is exceptionally good / bad / or memorable in some other way. (Or if they buy them!) And reviews are really the only way you are going to get some idea of what readers think. Even though it's an incredibly flawed system, it's the only one that's out there. So if you have a book which doesn't sell well and the reviews seem to say the same thing - needs editing - you fairly much know you have a problem. Cheers, Greg.
I agree - that's where the problem of self publishing comes in. You can have a brilliant product which a few people love but without the ability to get it out into the headlights of the masses, you fall flat on your face.
Very short answer - yes. I've a degree in English and I need an editor. It's no comment on you as a writer, but everyone has a bit of a blind spot when it comes to their own work. Find yourself some beta readers to go through it first too. Best off luck, publishing is often a thankless task, but it needs to be done. If no one reads our books, how can they talk to each other?
