Some Good Tips From A Book Writing Coach For Finding A Good Editor

By Helene Norris


As any good book writing coach will tell you, after writing a book the next hardest thing to do is find a good editor. It is never a matter of sending your manuscript to several different publishers and hoping one of them will contract you. The same is true for online services. You can self publish a book, but without an experienced editor it probably will not get a lot of attention.

In short an editor makes a manuscript the very best it can possibly be. This goes beyond spelling and grammar checking. They can also fact check any citation referenced. They go over the layout making sure the chapters and headers are correct. Most importantly, they offer ideas. Having read many books they are full of ideas that can make your manuscript the next number one best seller.

Begin by figuring out the kind of book editing services you will be needing. Many manuscripts will still need developmental editing. Simple copy editing will be going over the manuscript while trying to improve it. Most hard editing will be going through it using a careful eye seeking any mistakes or misspelled words that could make it appear awkward while in print form.

Check their credentials out. This is a work of your art you will be handing over to someone else, never be frightened to ask the hard questions so you are comfortable with them. Make sure they also have in depth knowledge their job and a particular understanding of the genre you are attempting to break into. This is critical knowledge and their experience could be the difference failing and winning.

Most editors like to brag of their success stories. There is no real shame in this and should be expected. Look at any website they have to see a list of their successful publications. Keep this in mind though, it is very likely that 80 percent of these books are self published. See how many of their titles were actually published by traditional clearing houses.

A Good editor will always ask for positive testimonials from anyone they have worked for. Just like anybody else you hire take the time and effort to read through these and to possibly contact some to get any more information about them. Look at various web sites to see if they have information for them and what they really thought of the books that are not self published.

Find out if they have actually written any books themselves. This goes a long way to showing not only that they can point out issues, but have the knowledge to fix them as well. You will be surprised how many write on the side under various pseudonyms.

This is one of the most important decisions you will ever make. Finding a good book writing coach and editor will affect your career in a huge way. Be patient and take the time to do it correctly and in 10 years you too can share your success story with other beginning writers.




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