Self Editing

Discussion in 'Self-Publishing' started by bluescorpion, Mar 31, 2022.

  1. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    Alliance of independent authors have a list, as do the society of authors - i'm not certain they are available to non members though... there's a fairly big list on Joanna Penns site the creative penn,

    I'd be very wary of the cheap editors you can get through fiverr or upwork etc... you generally get what you pay for, if you do go with a gig deal make sure you have a full conversation about what they've edited before...and if possible talk to the previous clients

    it is worth noting that a good editor will cost a lot more than one of these pseudo editing programs - its usual for them to charge by the 1000 words so it will vary depending on length, and depending on how much editing is needed, but $1000 isn't unusual for a solid developmental and line edit of a first manuscript (make sure you know what you are paying for - some editors only offer copy editing, which is like proof reading plus...looking for errors and stuff but not actually helping develop the writing)

    One point about this is that I'd only recommend it if you are going to self pub... if you want a trad deal editing services is part of what the publishing house should do in exchange for circa 90% of your royalties
     
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  2. Cephus

    Cephus Contributor Contributor

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    Yes and no. Yes, your publisher is going to edit your work, whether you like it or not, to make it more appealing to the audience that they have selected. That may not be the audience that you wrote the book for. They're going to do it so that your book seems more saleable, at least according to their experience. You might be able to tell them no, but that often comes at the cost of them not publishing your book at all.

    That doesn't mean that you can just take a load of unedited crap to an agent or a publisher and expect that they'll take it on. You still have to produce the best work that you can because they're going to be evaluating your skills as a writer, since they're going to want more books out of you. Someone who can't spell, someone whose grammar skills are weak, at best, those people have a much lesser chance of getting picked up than someone who can turn in a readable manuscript up front. Most agents, or their assistants, if they have to struggle to get through the first couple of pages of your manuscript, they're not going to continue. Therefore it does no one any favors to pretend that editing is something that the publisher does. That's only if they think your book is worth publishing in the first place.
     
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  3. Cephus

    Cephus Contributor Contributor

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    You do have to remember that language usage changes over time. If Jane Austen was writing today, she might very well use some of the suggestions provided by Hemingway. It's why all of this is so completely subjective.
     
  4. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    This is absolutely true, but you can get a manuscript to submission ready state without paying an editor a grand.. that's where the self edit, beta readers etc come in, and potentially these tools used sparingly, plus possibly paying for a proofread.

    I wouldn't suggest someone going for a trad deal pays for an actual editor themselves, unless they are really struggling to produce a decent manuscript any other way
     
  5. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    This is also true, but you can get the same sort of result by taking text from a modern best seller and running it through these apps... i didn't here because of copyright issues
     
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  6. Cephus

    Cephus Contributor Contributor

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    This was just to do away with the myth that you can show up with an unedited mess because "they're going to edit it anyhow". Whether or not someone chooses to pay for an editor or do it another way depends entirely on their level of skill with language. No one is going to take you seriously if you show up with something barely comprehensible.
     
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  7. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    We’ll yes , you won’t do anything with an unedited mess self publishing either
     
  8. Cephus

    Cephus Contributor Contributor

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    No matter how many try. :)
     
  9. SapereAude

    SapereAude Contributor Contributor

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    You can (at least in the U.S. -- and I realize that you are not in the U.S.) legally take a paragraph (or two or three) from a book-length work and reproduce it under the fair use doctrine, even if all you do is quote it. If you use it as an example for instructive purposes, such as showing how it would fare in a writing checker, I'm quite sure that's allowed under the fair use doctrine.

    https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html

    https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/
     
  10. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    You can but fair use is a defence not a guarantee you won’t be sued.

    this site has no meaningful funds for legal defence so we prefer to err on the side of caution
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2022
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  11. Vince Higgins

    Vince Higgins Curmudgeon. Contributor

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    I am not interested in any of them. Word works just fine. Like you said, I have a voice. It would be nice if that voice spoke to a large audience, but I don't want to change it to get put on supermarket shelves, not if I have to sound like James Patterson. I have never used a thesaurus either. In the only college level writing course I ever took, Comp 101 back in the eighties, the prof was adamant that I use one to spice up a passage on "describe a person you know." While she was showing me how to find "the right word" I came up with the phrase "inspired mischief." It worked, and I think she was a little offended, as there was no way a thesaurus would have gotten me there. At the end she gave everyone a B, except the guy who was her obvious pet got a B+, and I got a B-.
     
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  12. SapereAude

    SapereAude Contributor Contributor

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    Good point.
     

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