Critique services worth it?

Discussion in 'Revision and Editing' started by Kwills79, Nov 27, 2017.

  1. Carly Berg

    Carly Berg Active Member

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    I don't think being able to make a full time, lush living off writing is the only mark of being a good, excellent or succesful writer. The arts do not go by the same rules as many occupations, especially for those who write what they feel called to write (or paint, act, dance, sing, play music etc.) And of course, plenty who do make it big commercially do not seem to be the most talented at all. It can't be judged by income only, just by the nature of it.

    I think you can get solid help with a manuscript from peer reviews or paid services. Either way though, you will have to evaluate the advice you receive and decide what to use or toss.
     
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  2. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    Until quite recently, it was considered to be an absolute mistake to get a work edited prior to submitting it to agents/publishers. That attitude seems to be gradually changing, and I'd say now most people I know in the industry think it's something that might sometimes be an okay idea for some reasons and some people.

    But that means that the vast majority of people who are currently published got there without the help of an editor they paid for.

    I think another consideration, in addition to the ones already mentioned, is the absence of one single standard or expectation for "publishable" writing. I'm happy to take advice from my agent because she knows what she's most able to sell, and I'm happy (well, grudgingly cooperative) with edits from my publishers because they're moulding my books into something that will fit their individual publishing model. But they're not necessarily making the books better, or more publishable in general.

    Like, for my most recent release, I wrote the book for a generic "romance" market, and when it sold to Entangled I knew I'd have to make changes in order to fit the Entangled market... I had to make the story more trope-heavy and in edits I found I had to cut some words in order for it to fit into the category line they had in mind for it. Those changes made the book better for Entangled, but they would have made it worse for some other publisher.

    So I'm not really sure how an independent editor, with no market in mind, could really improve one of my books. There isn't one single standard of "publishable" across an entire genre, at least in my experience. There's basic stuff that should get caught, sure, but if you're still at the stage of making those kinds of mistakes you're probably wasting your money on a professional editor; a good beta could help you out.

    If someone has extra money, for sure, spend it, as long as you take the results with a grain of salt. But it's definitely not necessary in order to get published, and may not even be advisable.
     
  3. Carly Berg

    Carly Berg Active Member

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    There's also just writerly experience, as far as having (realistic) confidence about the quality of the work. That means less dependence on outside advice, whether paid for or not. If someone has years of experience, some commercial success and etc., they know their writing is at least competent. So who to get help from probably doesn't seem as dire a decision either way.
     
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  4. Iain Sparrow

    Iain Sparrow Banned Contributor

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    What one should do is seek an Editor who has a long list of books she's shepherded to publication by top publishers.

    I chose my editor because I'd actually read three of the books she edited, all three million sellers and in the specific sub-genre that I ply... Gaslamp/Historical Fiction. Whether she's an amazing writer in her own right isn't a concern to me, only that she can make me a better writer whose work is worthy of being published.
     
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  5. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    Yes, exactly. One agency or publisher that wants your story to be really focused on the romance, another would rather cut that back to focus mostly on the main plot. I just got done writing a submission to an agency that likes books that "aren't ashamed to call themselves feminist" and I dare say that if they like my work they'll want me to push the strong female lead aspect harder. Everyone has their own idea of what is good in today's market, of what they can sell and who is going to buy it.

    And editors I'm sure have their own opinions too, some of them are right and some of them are wrong and some of them are weird biases that come from nowhere in particular. But unless you can match up the editor with the agent or publisher then it's hard to see how it's really helping you. They may well have made your book better in a literary sense, but if this publisher is happy just selling middle of the road romance that complies with the genre conventions adding those conceptual literary elements isn't doing you any favors.
     
  6. Carly Berg

    Carly Berg Active Member

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    Yeah, that's another good thought. I guess a general, thorough going-over would be more for rough, beginner writing or no-genre literary or mainstream writing. Meeting a particular publishers needs is a whole 'nother layer.
     
  7. Tenderiser

    Tenderiser Not a man or BayView

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    Agreed. I've never paid for critique but some of my author friends have, and it doesn't often help them.

    You really, really don't.

    That's strange because I usually see the opposite advice from agents.

    My advice, for what it's worth, would be to never pay for something you can get of equivalent quality for free. Critique certainly comes under that umbrella.
     
  8. Shadowfax

    Shadowfax Contributor Contributor

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    So, unless your searches were somewhat cursory, there's only ONE writer who could provide me anybody with excellent advice? How does he find time to do this for all us wannabes?

    How do I know that this writer is more advanced in the craft than I am? This may be hubris on my part but, ...

     
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  9. Iain Sparrow

    Iain Sparrow Banned Contributor

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    You've missed the point.
    Judge an editor by his or her ability to get a novel published by a big publisher.

    Do you want me to rattle off the names of great coaches who had mediocre professional careers in their respective sports?
    https://www.thesportster.com/entertainment/top-15-horrible-athletes-who-made-great-coaches/

    Some of the very best coaches, Hall of Fame coaches who took teams to the Super Bowl, World Series, NBA Finals... were horrible in those sports. Likewise, an editor needn't be a remarkable writer to be an amazing editor.
     
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  10. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    But how can you tell how much input the editor had in the process? Did they provide complex story feed back that the author then attended to over a number of months with substantial re-writes that were required before it could be published? Or did they read through an already good manuscript, check the apostrophes were all in the right place and send it back with a bill?

    Of course you want an editor who has had projects they've worked on become successful but even that is no guarantee of anything. Think about this; what if you were a jobbing editor who happened to get an email from the next J K Rowling before they were famous. You edit their book and do an average job, and then that book explodes and makes millions. Does this mean you are the best editor in the world?
     
  11. Shadowfax

    Shadowfax Contributor Contributor

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    I'm missing the point?

    As far as great coaches who were rubbish athletes, yeah. Those guys can command mega-bucks. As can an editor who can "get a novel published by a big publisher". As a novice writer, I can afford that? Or are you saying that, say 50k, will get me a guaranteed deal worth several times that?

    And, as has been mentioned, what guarantee do I have that they edited the novel in question from gibberish all the way to best-seller, rather than merely inserting the odd semi-colon?
     
  12. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    That's exactly the point here.

    I'm sure there are editors who are extremely good at turning manuscripts into exactly what a publisher wants to put out. But they work for that publisher on retainer, not for any random jerk off the street at low rates. They are the person you work with after your book has been accepted for publication. And they are the person who gets paid a good chunk of money to make a book into something that will sell many times that. But that's a very different position in the industry.

    None of this says that editors are bad people or don't help; quite the contrary. But from the writers perspective, especially the unknown writers perspective, there's just no way to know if you are getting good value. Even if you tried to submit a book, failed, approached an editor, submitted again and was accepted; given how uncommon it is to have a book accepted anyway you can't say it was the editor that made the difference.
     
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  13. Iain Sparrow

    Iain Sparrow Banned Contributor

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    You two need to grow up.
    There's no guarantees in life, nor can any editor promise you that your novel will see the light of day. You can't afford a professional editor? Well, that's just tough. Cry me a river.
     
  14. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    What do you think is childish about saying that an editors contribution to a book is an unknown, even when books they work on are published?

    What are you paying them for if not certainty? Surely the point of paying for a professional is because they provide more certainty than a friend or family member or fellow writer? But if they don't provide certainty then there is a real chance you just threw your money away. In fact there is a real chance they made your book less publishable in the eyes of some agencies or publishers. And that's the way writing goes sometimes but again; why are you paying for the same uncertainty you'd get from anyone else? What is that money achieving?

    Afford is an interesting word, isn't it? Because if we all knew that paying 1000 bucks to a great editor would kick start out careers; we could all probably scare up that kind of money. But can you afford to hand a stranger your money with no expectation of making anything back from that?

    Who can afford to throw their money away? By your own admission; there is no certainty and professional editing provides you no real expectation of making the money back. So why spend it? That's just bad business.

    And that returns us to the start of this discussion; money flowing away from the writer is a bad way to do business. This is why you never approach agents who charge reading fees. And it's also why agents work on commission by the way, because that means that they are only paid by your success, not by your failure. It means that you as a writer can trust they are going out there and doing everything in their power to sell your work.

    Have you ever seen an editor who worked on the principle of "not published, no fee"? Why not? Oh because they do serious work that needs to be paid for? Well so do agents. And all agents these days work exclusively on "not published, no fee" basis.

    Maybe you can afford to not see anything back from editing. And that's up to you. But to say that this vindicates the idea of paid editing is short sighted. Almost all of us here are adults with jobs; we could put up the money if we thought it was worth it. But we don't think it's worth it. And how can anyone afford to do something that isn't worth the money?
     
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  15. EdFromNY

    EdFromNY Hope to improve with age Supporter Contributor

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    I'm just curious. Of all the folks above who are arguing against ever having a professional editor review your work, how many have been successful signing with an agent and getting a first novel published traditionally relying only on other amateurs for review and without any significant publishing past? @LostThePlot? @Tenderiser? @Shadowfax? And, if so, what genres?

    They certainly aren't unknown to the author.

    Improving the quality of your work beyond what an amateur can tell you, and hence improving the odds of getting published. I'll give you a real life example. In my current project, a crime novel, I have a subplot surrounding a supporting character with a great deal of detail that I felt was necessary for the reader to understand the character. I had three beta-readers review my current project before I sought out an editor. All three gave very helpful input. One touched on some of the details in the subplot and questioned if they were necessary. But the editor pointed out that most of the scenes involving the subplot resulted in a loss of tension, and suggested I involve the character's scenes more directly with the main crime story. She also made some other suggestions pertaining to the goal of a series (which I expect this to be). I followed her advice and the ms is much stronger because of it. Is it good enough, now, to be published? Let's just say I'm a lot more confident now than I was six months ago. And, in my judgment, that was worth paying for.
     
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  16. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    But how do you know it wouldn't have stopped you getting a deal or that it wouldn't have been picked up by the editor the publisher paid for ?

    I am happy to pay for a structural edit as a self publishing author, but I don't see the point if you are going to a trad deal as that is part of what the publisher usually pays for

    It would be interesting to hear from @Laurin Kelly since her first novel was published by a trad publisher
     
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2017
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  17. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    I notice you didn't ask @BayView ; she is a successful author who doesn't think that professional editing is worth it. By the tenor of your logic that would be impossible. That's what your arguing right? That all of us are only not published because we don't use professional editors, right? So how do you account for published and reasonably successful person who also doesn't use professional editors for her submissions? You can't have it both ways. You can't stick your nose up at us and say we're wrong just because we aren't making money from our writing and then conveniently ignore the published person who agrees with us.

    And, to answer your question directly; my problem in getting published is nothing to do with the editing. It's to do with how I crafted ideas. I focused specifically on writing things that were weird and dark and that appealed very specifically to me. I know my first couple of books were a hard sell. But I wrote books that I wanted to write and have been moving slowly towards being marketable. Agents have told me my writing is good and my characters are good and that my voice is excellent for the audience; the problem is that the plots I wanted to write were too out there. Are you seriously going to tell me that if I had hired an editor that this would have magically recrafted my ideas to being mass market fiction? No, obviously not. What I needed in fact was to write more books; to build different ideas. And I didn't need an editor to tell me that. I already knew that. And the people who betaread my books have been an incredible help to me and I can't express my appreciation enough. Not because they told me something magically above my ken; because they told me things that I couldn't see because I was too close to my work, too in love with what I had already written. They didn't need to be good writers to teach me something (although they are) they just had to be people who's opinions I trusted and who would argue with me to make my ideas better.

    But you aren't that author, are you? You are their next customer, aren't you? Are you going to go track down the authors that succeeded and ask them searching questions about the abilities and input of their editor? And remember, you are just some guy off the street; not known from Adam. Is this seriously what you think every aspiring author should be doing? Bombarding published authors with questions about who edited their books and how much input they had?

    What makes you think that an editor is better than an amateur? Because they get paid?

    Why do you think that 'improving' your work is a singular axis? There isn't just 'better' and 'worse' in books. Some audiences like romance, some like action, some like politics, some like twists, some like downer endings. So how do you make your book better?

    And, of course, agents and publishers don't actually care about quality. They care about marketability. They really don't give a damn how good your writing is, as long as people will pay for it. There's a reason why fairly bad, middle of the road books continue to be sold. Because people buy them.

    According to who? According to her? Well she would say that wouldn't she? You are feeling more confident because you think her opinion matters more. And that's fine if that's what you honestly believe. But remember what Bay said earlier; that one editor says one thing, another editor says something else and that puts you right back where you were.

    Why do you hold an editors opinion as gospel? Why do you believe that they are unilaterally able to make your work better when they are just one person with one opinion and one set of biases? Why do you think that one singular opinion is better than three other opinions? After all, your beta readers are supposed to be your audience, right? So why ignore what the audience says? Shouldn't you be trying to serve the audience, rather than what an editor thinks is good?
     
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2017
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  18. Laurin Kelly

    Laurin Kelly Contributor Contributor

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    I definitely didn't pay for any type of professional editing prior to having Under the Knife accepted by my publisher. IMO that's one of the services a publisher provides in return for their share of the sales of my work.
     
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  19. EdFromNY

    EdFromNY Hope to improve with age Supporter Contributor

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    Because the whole point is to get a publisher to want to look at it in the first place, which can't happen until an agent likes it enough to take it on. THAT'S the whole point.

    And, May I assume by both your question above and your lack of response to my question above that you have NOT secured a publishing deal for your first novel by relying solely on amateur reviews?

    @LostThePlot - In other words, no, you have not yet succeeded in being traditionally published by following your own advice. Thank you. Perhaps one day you will. I honestly hope you do.

    In answer to your question, the improvement in the ms was obvious to me and one of my beta-readers, who read the revision. We both recognized the improvement even though we had not recognized the weakness. A professional had. That professional, a published author in my genre, was also able to give advice on what works and doesn't work in that genre. Will that improvement be enough to get my book published? I don't know. I should have a better idea over the next several months, and if I'm successful, I will share the news here.

    BTW, I did not include Bayview in my list because I was just looking at the last page of the thread. IIRC, she has both self-pubbed and traditionally pubbed in the romance genre. But if you read her last post, you will see she acknowledges that using editors is becoming more common in the industry. I'm not sure how typical her experience would be, but I always read her posts with interest.
     
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2017
  20. Shadowfax

    Shadowfax Contributor Contributor

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    You got me there; but not @Tenderiser . 33% beats the usual odds against getting published.

    Last I recall, your WIP was a mammoth story involving several generations and centuries. Am I right in thinking that this has now, following a successful round of editing, been accepted for publication?
     
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  21. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    That's cheap.

    And to give that response more credit than it deserves; what possible reason do you have to believe that a lack of an editor is what is holding my work back? Have you read it? Would you like to? Don't stand there and say that if only I hired an editor I'd make it when you haven't read a single word of my writing. Did you even read what I said above? Would you like to read the feedback I get from agents telling me that it's not my writing that holds me back; it's my ideas?

    And again; how can you ignore published authors who don't use professional editors? How can you just say that they are irrelevant and only focus on those that haven't been published? That is incredibly dishonest.
     
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  22. EdFromNY

    EdFromNY Hope to improve with age Supporter Contributor

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    No, I have set that project aside. Too large and too outside the box for a first-timer. No, the project to which I refer is a crime novel, as I think I mentioned earlier.
     
  23. EdFromNY

    EdFromNY Hope to improve with age Supporter Contributor

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    Thanks for posting, Laurin. Did you have any other writing credits prior to your novel?
     
  24. EdFromNY

    EdFromNY Hope to improve with age Supporter Contributor

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    @LostThePlot - I only asked the question. It is obvious to me that you have now made this emotional. Not unusual on this board. I simply offered advice based on my experience as a still-unpublished author to other unpublished authors as to how I believe I am improving my chances, in the hope that others might also improve theirs. I am not trying to convince you to abandon your view, only to explain mine in areas in which you have questioned it.

    And, BTW, I am not ignoring anyone. I have not said anywhere that getting professional advice is a requirement for getting published. I have only said it can helpful. That some writers have succeeded without such help does not disprove my point. Maybe they had other writing credits. Or maybe they caught an agent's interest with just the right project at just the right time. Or maybe they're just better. More power to them. You do not wish to use such assistance. That's fine. I wish you the very best of success.
     
  25. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    But what makes you think that agents only look at work that's been professionally edited ?

    You can assume - from the fact that I explicitly said so - that I'm an Indy , I'm not planning on asking a trad publisher to publish anything. You can however also see Laurin's reply that she got a trad publishing deal without spending anything on editing services

    Could you answer your own question - Has professional editing so far helped you secure an agent and publishing deal for your first novel ?
     
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