Unfortunately most people who self publish and chalk up money for an editor just want you to catch spelling and grammar. The moment you suggest "This is not good. This is too heavy or This is simply not relevant" they get horribly insulted.
I suddenly wonder if people would have a better idea of the issues with self-publishing if I said that it's the equivalent of a lawyer having themselves for a client, or a doctor having themselves for a patient. Probably not.
An experienced professional editor who didn't write a work can see its flaws more clearly than the person who did write it. And someone who is traditionally published is more likely to work with an experienced professional editor than someone who is self published. So I'm not seeing the flaw with the analogy.
Speaking from the lawyer point of view, a lawyer who has himself as a client is both too close to the case to see it objectively, and more likely to dabble in areas outside of her expertise. The rationale for doctors is similar. In both cases, the lawyer and doctor are by definition taking on tasks they shouldn't. The analogy is only good if self-publishing, by definition, requires an author do everything herself, including things she has no business doing. Of course, the people who are self-publishing and putting out good quality work aren't doing that, by and large. People who approach self-publishing in a professional manner are hiring content editors, proof-readers, cover artists, and other third parties to do those things they can't do well themselves. The analogy you posed falls into the all too common error of conflating all of the amateur writers who do self-publishing poorly with the entirety of self-publishing, and assumes that if you're going into self-publishing you necessarily have to belong to that group of people who are like doctors with themselves as patients, or lawyers with themselves as clients. It's simply not true. It's a dismissive viewpoint from people who don't like self-publishing and appear to think that no one else should like it either. I don't find it to be accurate, and I don't think it follows that because some people approach it poorly, in the manner you suggest, that it's inherently bad or that everyone approaches it poorly. Clearly not everyone does.
But aren't you conflating all self-treating doctors with the doctors who self-treat but do it badly? And the same for lawyers? Surely there are occasions when a lawyer could handle his own legal work and a doctor could treat himself, and it would come out just dandy. But on average, it's not a good idea. On average, there are likely to be issues that the person is not going to see clearly, because he's too close to the problem. I've purchased several self-published works that clearly had a lot of thought and work put into them--the author clearly did what they thought was their best, and what may have been their best. They could have been quite good books. But they weren't. They lacked that last bit of polish that they could have gotten from a less biased and more professional eye. I don't care about the sea of self-published junk created by people who weren't willing to do the work anyway. I care about those almost-good books that represent a great deal of painstaking work, work that went to waste because the author deluded themselves into thinking that they could be the equivalent of their own doctor/lawyer/whatever.
I don't know if the analogy goes far enough. I can see a doctor effectively treating herself and a lawyer effectively representing himself but I don't think any writer can self-edit as well as a good external editor could. Any writer, not just those planning to self-publish. How can it be possible when a good writer will know 90% more about their characters and 100% more about their intentions than any reader? If anyone has put out a successful book with no external input, they got very very lucky.
Certainly there can be, and are, such situations. I think some people in such professions have a hard time recognizing, or admitting, when they're outside of their area of expertise. With self-publishing, it seems like a simpler analysis to me: if you're going to self-publish, you should hire an editor, cover artist, &c. (referring to people who are just launching their publishing careers; if you're already an accomplished author maybe you can do without these things, though I've seen some good authors suffer from lack of editing later in their careers). To the extent you're arguing that self-published authors who hire professional editors &c. to review their work prior to publication, I agree. And I also agree that a lot of self-published authors don't do this, and it shows in their work. To the extent you're arguing that self-publishing is inherently bad because a lot of authors don't do the above, I disagree.
Hi, Just to weigh in on the stuctural editor etc. My view is No. You don't need a structural editor. Ignoring the fact that the costs for these people are usually horrendous and well beyond what most indies could afford, their value is overstated in general in my view. What an author needs, is an objective outside view of the work. And this does not have to be from a professional. Beta readers, if you choose them wisely, can provide much the same function and they are more representative of the actual readers. When mine read my work the most important comments made are not things like "delete this", or "this would be better there", or "could you change this plot point". They are the comments like "I don't understand" or "isn't this character doing something else that makes this impossible". Often even when these comments are made and turn out to be wrong, they are important as they make me as the author familiar with the work, go back and rewrite a section to make something that wasn't clear more so. Case in point. My current novel is with my publishers and has gone through the first edit which included large amounts of structural editing. The edit involved trying to remove vast chunks of text to get from a 163K book to 130K. So I ended up going through every change made, many of which were deletions, looking for those to accept and those to reject. In most cases where I refused to accept a change it was because I knew as the writer intimately familiar with the work, that these sections that seemed irrelevant early on and which the editor wanted to cut, were actually important for the plot later one. The point here is that a structural editor unfamiliar with the work is at the same loss as a beta reader in many cases. This is rather the part of writing that is best done by the author himself. Where editors shine is in the spelling and grammar, in the tightening of language and noticing of writing habits. In picking up things like excessive passive voice etc. Story elements are best handled by the author. And any author should understand the inestimable value of comments by beta readers along the lines of "I don't understand". Cheers, Greg.
Good editors do that too In many cases in-house editors are reading your work for the first time as they are slashing content. They don't actually know what's coming plotwise. They are working to a deadline and simply expect the author to look at the marks and then make a very, very, very strong case as to why they would reject those marks. This is especially true if it's the first book by that author. An author who has been with that publisher for years and has a bit more clout will get a more investment by the editor. My view is, by self publishing you have every opportunity to make your book the best it can possibly be. You decide how much time, money, and energy goes into it. You control every aspect. You can theoretically put out a better quality product than the leading publishing houses simply because their priority is profit and your priority is the book and the story or message it tells. You have a huge self publishing community ready and willing to promote your work and a rapidly growing reader base who prefer cheaper ebooks to the more costly traditional print books because the consumer risk is significantly smaller. And you get a much larger return on investment. There's no longer a stigma attached to self publishing. Just like the communities around indie films, indie music, and indie games, there is an enthusiastic community growing around indie books.
Hi Hawls, I'd just take issue with the last part of your post. There is definitely a stigma attached to self publishing - it's why when I put out an indie book I do my level best to make sure it looks like a match for a trade pubbed work. That stigma is decreasing, but it's still there, and it will remain as long as so many self publishing authors are happy to put out poor quality, unedited, badly covered work and then try to market the crap out of it and sell it cheap. Cheers, Greg.
Saturating the market with poor quality products is not a problem unique to the self publishing scene. But I understand where you are coming from. The advantage, if you choose to see one, is that you have the opportunity to exploit the laziness and poor effort other people make with their books by making yours polished and professional. My view is that the option to self publish is a lot more viable, even preferable, than it was even ten years ago
Sounds awful. Someone/an editor changing what you wrote? It's not a dialogue between the reader and the author anymore if it's been modified by a middle-man.
Yeah. I know someone who changed her book fairly significantly for purposes of a publishing contract because the publisher wanted to be able to market it as romance.
The editors don't make the changes - they suggest the changes. And I'm not sure how novels are part of a dialogue anyway - more like a monologue, surely?
I self published in 2007 for many reasons. First and foremost was because the book I'd written felt like the end of a very long and painful pregnancy as it were and I needed to get it out of my system. I even paid for a critique and I was asked 'Do you really want to publish this?' and I said 'Of course'. Not that it was badly written or anything. In fact he praised my writing, but perhaps it wasn't to his taste. It cost me money yes, but I didn't mind that and the team I was working with were very supportive and professional. The final product, ie the book itself was exactly what I expected; the cover was great and the inside contained perhaps one or two errors, nothing more. I've seen more errors in many other books. For me, it was a vanity thing I think and I didn't expect to make much money at all, however I have a very different view now. Unfortunately the self publisher went bust a few years ago, but I still have it up on Amazon and need to start reviving it, but that's another story altogether.
Just for clarity - this doesn't sound like self-publishing; it sounds maybe like vanity publishing... But if it were self-published, you would be the publisher. And can you clarify what your different view now is?
It was vanity publishing in an idealistic sense from my point of view, but was in fact self publishing by definition. I refer to it as vanity because I was naive, impatient and simply wanted to see my book in print. For their part, the self publishing company edited and formatted the manuscript for publishing which included proof reading, put me in touch with a cover designer and also suggested an author to critique my work (before the decision to self publish was taken). They assigned it ISBNs, put it up on Amazon and their own website and I received royalties direct from them. In that and all other respects, they were honest and up front. Clearly I have much to learn about the publishing business and my different view now is not to be so naive and impatient. It's also worth pointing out that, rightly or wrongly,I felt my first book was cathartic, or in the words of the author who critiqued it: ´Seems to me that this is a book you needed to write, but not necessarily publish.'
Hi Marc, Just to clarify, self publishing is when you do everything yourself or else hire professionals to do the parts you can't do yourself. What you describe is some form of trade publishing in that a commercial publisher did that work. If it was legitimate trade publishing you would not have paid anything to anyone, the publisher would have taken his cut from the royalties and provided you with what was left. Vanity publishing is where you the author pay a publisher to publish your work. Cheers, Greg.
I've read articles about people who have made a big splash by self-publishing and the one thing they all seem to have in common is: each has a background in promotion, advertising, business or marketing or have easy access (read: free or cheap) to someone with one or more of those backgrounds or somehow come by those skills naturally... whatever that may mean. That's not to say they have an exclusive on how to be successful as a self-published author, but it seems to me that it would certainly give anyone a leg up, a major leg up. I also came across a website called Self-publishing Advice that carries How-I-Did-It articles. Might be helpful.
Hi, Not necessarily. These things are undoubtedly useful edges to have, but certainly not all of the self publishing stars have them. Andy Weir - The Martian - was a computer programmer. EL James from memory was a housewife who studied history at uni. Probably the factors that made them both successes was serialising their work on web sites etc, and of course the good fortune of having the right new book hitting the markets at the right time to meet the appetites of readers. It's important to realise that luck plays as important a role for the indie in achieving success as it does for the trade publishing author in getting agents and publishers. There is no secret to success for either, otherwise everyone would be writing best sellers. If you go to kindleboards you'll find thousands of writers all espousing their marketing strategies as the secrets to their successes. I tend to think that marketing etc, comes second to writing. You need to have a good story, write it well, have it professionally edited / formatted / published / covered and blurbed. That should always be where you start. Cheers, Greg.
Thanks Greg Probably vanity publishing then and their services were described thus: "xxxx is a leading UK book publishing company that specialises in a broad range of publishing services including self publishing, print on demand and e-books." Either way, they did a good job and fulfilled all my expectations at the time. Unfortunately they went bust due to the loss of all their data when the hosting company pulled the plug on their website and wouldn't give them a copy of the backup. We live and learn.
