I've been reading here about the importance of editors, and I can't disagree, but doubt if I can justify the cost on my first book ... or not until I feel more confident that the book might be worth it. That confidence is one of the things standing between me and trying to publish. One type of service that I've read about is manuscript appraisal or assessment.
In case you're wondering what I'm talking about, here's a
link to a list of commercial services available in Australia - I hope that's okay to post on this forum, it's not an advert, just a list where you can see the sort of things on offer here.
The thing about an assessment service is that the cost is much closer to affordable. I was wondering if anyone else here has used such a service and whether they found it worthwhile?
The follow up questions to that are probably much the same as they would be for editors: How did you go about choosing such a service? At the moment, to me, it really seems like a shot in the dark, and while it costs less than a full editing, we're still talking about significant money (as I would expect if the service is to be any good).