Quote:
Originally Posted by MrPLD
Aaah, editors (and proof readers)... expensive but frequently essential.
We spent thousands of dollars and that was a "medium priced" editing.
Despite all that, it wasn't until it hit print that we found another 10 or so mishaps in a 380 page / 200,000 word book. Considering it was our first book I'm quite pleased overall as we were rather distracted learning all the in and outs.
Perhaps the worst thing you can do is edit your own work - you're effectively too blind to see anything.
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I've been a professional editor for 26 years and have edited hundreds of books over that time (not fiction, however; I do not edit fiction) and can tell you that no matter how careful an editor is and no matter how careful the proofreader is, there will invariably remain a few errors in a book. It is the nature of being human.
I wrote about this phenomenon on my blog in
The WYSIWYG Conundrum: The Solid Cloud.
As for self-editing, that is almost always a mistake, not only because of the WYSIWYG Conundrum but because it can lead to great embarassment and doesn't reduce the cost of professional editing (see
I Published My Book But Readers Keep Finding Errors).
Whether or not authors should invest in professional help is an ongoing debate. As an editor, I definitely think they should and posed the question in this blog piece:
Question of the Day: Investing in eBooks by Authors & Readers.
I also have written about the difference between a professional editor and the neighborhood editor in these 2 articles:
Professional Editors: Publishers and Authors Need Them (Part 1) and
Professional Editors: Publishers and Authors Need Them (Part 2).
Again, just so it is clear, I'm not looking for work nor making a pitch that an author on Mobile Read should be contacting me to be their editor: I only work for publishers, only in nonfiction, and almost exclusively in the fields of doctor-to-doctor medicine and educator-to-educator education. I present the above perspectives because I think they would be helpful to Mobile Read authors.