Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I notice, in various threads, that a number of people have said that they don't have their books professionally edited, and I was wondering what the reason for that was. Is it simply down to the cost involved, or are there other reasons?
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Returning to Harry's original query, of course price is the issue. If one is lucky enough to get accepted by a publisher, or sometimes even a good agent, one will get this service thrown in.
If you haven't had that good fortune, it's just too expensive. And I think that, at least in the beginning of e-books, we're going to find that "good enough is good enough". There are so many people out there who enjoy a good read and will overlook the occasional typo or misplaced comma. Let's face it, there are now books in your local supermarket being sold at so much a kilo, and even if they've been edited, they're not Nobel prize material!
With a price for indie books around $3, nobody's going to get very hurt even if chapters 4-last don't quite live up to the standards of the sample chapters, 1-3. And with a price of $3 you've got to sell about 250 books to pay your editor, and I think most of us in here would think we'd been a big success if we sold half that number. I've seen happy authors who are over the moon that they've sold 25.