One thing I forgot to mention in my introductory thread is that I hired two editors for my books. They looked into the story and they seem to like it. Additionally, they didn't find any flaws or plot holes. So then why readers aren't liking my books? So the question I ask is are my books salvageable? If they are, what kind of editor should I hire for my stories? I know I could go for content editors, but what do you think? Oh btw, the two editors I hired one is a copy editor and the second a content editor plus proofreader. Edit 2: My finances are pretty tight at the moment.
What kind of feedback did they give you? Is a content editor similar to a development editor? My understanding is that a development editor would be the type to give feedback on the overall story and pacing, etc. Based on what I saw, I think that the book can be improved, and I'm curious as to how much changed after the editor reviewed it, and what advice they gave. Personally, I wouldn't abandon it until you know you can't make it any better, and right now you have several people telling you that it can be made better. I wouldn't count on these improvements leading to blockbuster sales though. Maybe it will make a huge difference, maybe a smaller but still noticeable difference in sales/reception. But at least you'd know you did as much as you could to polish it.
To become a good writer education is the key. My advice is to work on improving your writing skills. I recommend Strunk & White's Elements of Grammar and a few general grammar books. Personally I'm putting myself through a homeschooling grammar course and it's strengthening my skills greatly. The better you can self-edit, the less you need help from editors, and the more your work will sell.
Yes, I think both are used interchangeably. It's just that content editor is more commonly used for nonfiction while development editor is used for fiction. Regarding feedback, they found it just fine except there might be issues with repetition and redundancy. But they didn't find any major plot holes or character flaws.
Something to keep in mind is that there are a LOT of shitty editors out there on the Internet. Many of whom are failed writers. Anybody can claim to be an editor, create a profile, and dress things up to look like they know what they're talking about. And if they're trying to make a sale, you can bet your ass they're going to butter you up and tell your book is thiiiiis close to publication (with no plot holes or character issues) if you just pay them $500. When I hired an editor once, who turner out to be very good, she was listed with a bunch of other editors who listed a bunch of selfpub books they'd written as credentials. Well, when I checked those out, most of them had glaring typos and misuse of language on the first page. The lesson here is be very critical of what somebody who wants to make a sale tells you.
It's true. Anyone can claim to be an editor. And the honestly good editors with strong track records are charging a couple thousand to do a book. There's a reason why I never seriously considered self publishing: I didn't have the $6000 usd I would need to do it right.
If that's the case, did the editors lie to me? Come to think of it, I still found typos after their edits (which I had to fix myself.) Edit: not a lot but I still found a few. $6000 for an editor? Perhaps one who edited books that become NYT Bestsellers?
They are probably referring to the entire cost of self publishing, i.e. various types of editing, advertising, web design if using a personal page, cover design, etc. Or they could have a very, very long book.
no. $6000 to approximately cover two developmental edit passes, a line edit, a copy editor, a proofreader, a text designer, a cover designer, an advertising copy writer with graphic design skills, and hopefully a little bit of money left over for trade review journals and a couple of ad buys. I didn't include hiring a publicist here, or that would be another $5k, and i don't think you are spending money wisely if you hire a publicist before you have steady backlist income.
From the reviews, it sounds like the issue would involve a line editor. This type of editing involves word choice, sentence flow, and things like that. However, if all of the base language is sort of undeveloped (again I'm just assuming from reviews) then I think this is something you should tackle on your own before trying to get any more editors.
having looked at the look inside of book 1... not wishing to be nasty but if that's been looked at by an editor you were ripped off... My editor would have sent that back covered in red pen (or technically highlighting and notes since we use the adobe acrobat function for editors reports) It looks very much like a first draft, and makes me wonder whether your 'editor' was actually a proof reader dealing with typos and spag rather than the actual deeper issues in terms of cost ball park is about £1000 (thats circa $1500) for an 80k word novel... however for one that needs a lot of editting the cost could be higher As i said on the other thread the first thing you need is some decent beta reading to help you with the self editing process before it goes near an editor In terms of obvious flaws n editor should have called out a) the naming of characters: Why does everyone have alliterative initials...JJ, GG,ZZ etc ? b) a colossal amount of telling instead of showing which starts pretty much straight away and persists throughout c) redundancies "are you excited GG he asked"... "yes i am i replied with an excited fist pump"... you tell us three times in two paragraphs that the bar shes going to is a popular new place d) sloppy language "once we spent hours playing dungeons and dragons that he taught me after spending the night at his place"... so did he teach her D&D after she spent the night, or did she spend the night playing D&D e) inconsistencies : In the second paragraph you say that shes going on a date with the on call officer...less than a page later you tell us that she'd forgotten that he was on call when he asked her out f) irrelevancies : e.g JJ's boss is my boss too (you already told us that you both work for the police dept) g) Logical flaws "gunfire.. it must be JJ shooting his gun...but that would trigger the alarm" a) how does she know its JJ shooting and b) why would gunfire trigger the alarm, and c) why would an unarmed secretary run towards a gunfight, and d) he called for back up 20 minutes ago h) bad writing "one of them shows a disturbing silhouette, a gun? No they're holding four machine guns (so a) that's a yes then, not a no, and b) do you really mean that one of them is holding four machine guns, or did you actually mean that each of them is holding a machine gun? ... i) Bad dialogue (the way KK talks in particular.. this is an info dump through dialogue rather than sounding believable..) j)lack of research : How does this police department even function k)poor transitions "a few seconds later a group of officers are surrounding" where did they come from? they seem to have just fallen out of the sky l) poor structure : the diary like way its laid out with no real structure to the plot I could go on since this only scratches the surface of the issues... suffice to say that any editor who told you this book had no problems didn't do their job properly
I need beta readers but this puts me in an impossible situation. I need beta readers but none will take up my offer and I don't know where to look. And the ones who I think are fit, end up bailing out. This applies to both paid and free ones. I want to improve but no one's giving me the chance, so I feel like throwing the towel.
part of the problem is that your cart is way ahead of the horse, here i don't know when you started writing but it sounds to me like you've had very little developmental support. you finished a novel all on your own, without that support and that's an act of incredible tenacity. but i'd like to get an idea of where your experience is at, if you don't mind answering some questions how long have you been writing? how many stories have you written? how long were they? where have you gotten your knowledge about general writing craft? where have you gotten your knowledge about your own writing - what techniques you use, what your strong points are, where you need to develop more deliberately? how familiar are you with the jargon of writing craft? what's your reading experience and history like? how often do you read now? how has your experience of reading changed since you started writing? which writers have skills you'd like to have yourself, and what are those skills?
As i said before you can ask for beta readers here once you've made 20 posts and been here 14 days, we have a whole forum board dedicated to collaboration, but you must complete your workshop requirements of critiquing at least 2 pieces by other members first. you can also post extracts from the books into the workshop here (again with appropriate crits on other peoples work to fullfil the 2 for 1)... if you went and gave two worthwhile critiques now, you could post for example the first chapter of the first book (which i looked at above) and get a bunch of more detailed insight on improvements which you could then carry through to your self edit. there are also facebook groups dedicated to beta reading exchanges for example https://www.facebook.com/groups/241737905853186/ Also people don't 'give' or deny you the chance to improve... that's on you... you could take the rough and ready feedback i gave you above and read through your draft with it in mind and see how much you could improve it... and if you identified certain points where you need help making them better we've got a whole forum here to help. also take heart... I've got 6 novels and 2 novelas out now (plus a bunch more working through the process) but i abandoned two books before I completed my first... and the first draft of the first book took nearly two years and was terrible and took a bunch of beta reads and a paid edit to whip it into shape... even after all that i look back at it now and think ... yeah, i'd change this that and the other by contrast a recent first draft took 14 days and my editor barely changed anything
If it's getting to know me better so I can get the answers I want, sure I'll answer them. 1) I've been writing for fun since high school, but began writing out of necessity during college. After college, I started writing fanfics for various fandoms and posted them on my website (which is long dead.) It was while working a day job in 2017 that I started to take the craft seriously when I began writing the book's first draft. 2) I began writing fanfics (namely those in the Persona series) so they range from short stories to full blown novels. In fact, I wrote a fanfic romance novel that parodies soap operas using the main characters. The novel's unreadable but I had a lot of fun writing that. 3) I get my knowledge from different places: Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, some author blogs like Anne Allen, and books like Plot Perfect and Story Grid. 4) Given my experience writing fanfics, I developed a system so I can complete a draft faster. Tell first, show later and I can add as much or as little details as I wish. The main point is that I need to move on to plot point A to plot point B as quickly as possible. Because of this, I prefer dialogue over description. 5) I know the bare minimum to get by. I can always look up if I don't know something. 6) When I was a kid, I was a huge fan of the Wizard of Oz novels. I read a lot of its books. Even though they're novels with little illustrations, they were really fun to read. In addition to Oz, I also read other kid-lit novels like Goosebumps, the box cart mystery series (I believe it was.) But I moved overseas and had to learn a completely new language. Still, I ended up reading novels in that language too and it was still fun. So upon returning to the US and entered college, I had to relearn English but college has made reading and writing a chore. I was forced to read classic novels and they were so boring that I didn't understand a thing. The fun of reading novels as a kid is gone and moved on to nonfiction, manga, and more recently Japanese light novels. The reason for reading them now is because I don't have time to sit through countless pages of "description porn" just to get to the plot point. 7) I don't go for specific writers. I go for titles. If a story within a title is good, then I'll follow regardless who writes it. My books are based on those Japanese light novels that tend to be fast paced and designed for skimming to reach the plot point, then backtrack if I want to understand the story and move forward if I wish. Therefore, this is the principle I follow for all reading: skim, reach the plot point or twist, backtrack, return to the plot point, then move forward.
I think it boils down to you needing to improve your craft. Your book needs additional drafts that you accomplish on your own before editors are brought in again. You're writing style is lacking to the readers. This means improving diction, sentence structure, metaphors, naming, character development, and etc. As @big soft moose said, sometimes the first few novels are VERY rough and improvements take a ton of effort. I abandoned the first one I finished but I am now revisiting it two or three years later. That has involved me "deleting" everything and starting from the beginning as if it is an entirely new project. If you still want this book to succeed, you might want to consider re-launching it after another couple drafts. You'd have to make significant changes to be able to launch it as a new book though. New cover, new scenes, etc. Keep in mind you can't just take it down and re-publish it with no changes--that is against KDP rules and could result in your book being banned. I suggest checking out the KDP page on what to do for a re-launch if that ends up interesting you.
okay. thanks for your answers. what I'm seeing here is a lot of haste. a lot of concern with speed. not much concern with craft, depth or skill, and it sounds to me like you haven't learned how to read like a writer yet. So are you interested in patience? are you interested in depth? are you interested in patient, thoughtful reading? are you interested in years of progress that is slow and difficult to measure? are you interested in knowing things down to the millimeter? are you interested in at least five years of methodical, dedicated work that will probably humble you regularly? Writing well takes years of diligent practice. It takes deep thought. It asks a lot, really, and from your answers I don't really get the sense that you've discovered just how much yet.
It's hard to tell from what you wrote above, but I get the sense that what you've studied is more about story structure and not so much about grammar and sentence construction. That's where your writing needs a lot of work. Not meaning you're already there on story structure, that might require more learning as well, but the sentence construction and grammar jumps out to readers immediately, and is more fundamental than story structure.
I also get the sense that you don't want to describe things... now there's no problem with being fairly sparing in description, in fact its better than being incredibly purple... but your book is suffering from you just baldly stating things that should be shown... theres also no problem with drafting on a tell first show later model... but the issue seems to be that you haven't changed from 'tell first' in the 'final' draft... this is especially true in the first few pages of a book where a huge info dump will put people off and thirdly because you don't read novels you're struggling to write in a way that engages the average reader.
I agree with @hyacinthe about reading as a writer. Writing, like painting, is an art form. You may not like Rembrandt, maybe you prefer Picasso, but that doesn't stop you from looking at a Rembrandt painting and admiring the way he used lighting. Sometimes when I read a book I will stop, go back and re-read a paragraph just to admire how the author put their words together. It might be a book I really don't care for but I can still admire how they wordsmithed it. I am not familiar with Japanese light novels but most people I have met read a book cover to cover, start to finish. Few skim to the end of a book to see how it ends, then go back to read the actual text if they missed some context. Maybe that's a Japanese thing? But writing a book for what I am going to assume is a very small niche market of skim-to-the-end readers is going to put off the majority of modern novel readers. They want a novel with linear progression, fleshed out plot and setting, with characters they can grow to love or hate by the end. If you are looking for a good resource to improve, I would suggest watching Brandon Sanderson's BYU lectures on YouTube. It is geared toward fantasy but covers all of the elements of writing a good story. You literally get a college class taught by a best selling author and the best part is its completely free.
For that to happen, I have to completely start all over as if it's a new project. This often means changing the main characters, removing the diary format, and write a linear story from start to finish. It's going to be really difficult without a lot of coaching, mentoring, and support. And I have to be passionate (and motivated) on top of it so I can finish the draft. Well, only if someone's willing to mentor and coach. I need to be passionate too. Web-novels (not all but some) are also designed to be skimmed-to-the-end. Anyway, so novel readers don't like skim-to-end, tell everything type of stories. Okay, good observation.
The forum is kinda here for writers to help and support each other... I wouldn't necessarily suggest that a mentor is necessary... but people here will help you improve if you're willing to put in the time and effort. You're right that you need to be passionate and committed though... if you're not then maybe writing isn't the best option for you. In that case you need to find a different occupation where you are passionate and committed, and a forum of people in the community who can help you be great at cookery or clog dancing or learning Russian or wherever your passion lies.
oh. hm. okay, so there are a lot of ways to gain instruction and coaching. tons of them are online. but I didn't learn that way so I don't have many specific recs. I did a speaking engagement with Western University once for their MFA program: https://western.edu/program/genre-fiction/ That one is good because the instructors are all actual working professionals in SFF publishing. There's the six week writing workshops like Clarion, too. getting into Clarion is a big deal. you go live in a dorm for six weeks and do intense writing and critique for those six weeks. it breaks some people, though, so be sure that environment is what you need. Clarion's about $5500 USD - that doesn't include your transportation costs or your home living expenses while you are away. but I'm not sure you're quite ready for those yet. you have to apply to get in, the application includes a writing sample, and you're competing against every other applicant and they're all going to have more experience. There's coaching, too, but I don't know of any coaches who teach craft. the assumption is that when you're looking for a coach you already have the technical skills in place. coaching usually is done in 45 minute sessions and pricing generally starts at $100USD per session. you could try Breakthrough Writers? it's a group, so it's a little less to do group coaching (the lowest tier is $50USD,) and one on one sessions are available, but again, the assumption is that the technical skill is already in place. https://www.breakthroughwriters.com/
Mentoring is expensive, and you really should bring your base skills up to a certain level before you consider that. Websites like this one don't charge anything, and rather than just one person (who might have certain issues) you get help from lots of people (who all have their own issues, but it's better overall). Also, books are cheap. Just get a dozen or so good books on grammar and sentence construction and story structure (sounds like you already have some for that) and spend a year or so deeply immersed in them and practicing what you're learning.
