Some Useful Hints From A Top Book Writing Coach About 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 determining what type of editing services you really require. Most manuscripts will need some developmental type editing. Copy editing is carefully going through a manuscript and attempting to improve on it. Generally hard editing is reading through it with a close eye and looking for misspelled words and other simple mistakes that often make them awkward to read in print form.

Look over their credentials. This work of art you have created is something you will be be giving to somebody else, do not be so intimidated that you fail to ask difficult questions. Ensure they have the required knowledge of this occupation and understand the various genres you are writing. This experience and understanding may be the biggest difference between being successful and failing.

Many editors often brag about successes they have. There really is no shame in doing this. Go over their websites to see if they list their successful publications and history. Remember that it is more likely upwards of 80 percent of their titles are self-published. Always find out how many titles they list were sold to traditional publishing houses. Doing this now may save you time and money down the road.

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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