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Last month, the Huffington Post (I know, I know, but stay with me) posted an interview with an independent author who self-publishes her work: "Meet Mega Bestselling Indie Heroine Amanda Hocking"
Knowing most of my clients are independent authors, many of whom self-publish, my dear friend (and website designer!) Brianna sent the link to me.
Ms Hocking tells HuffPo that "As of Tuesday, January 04, 2011 at 9 PM, I've sold over 185,000 books since April 15, 2010"!! That's incredible for any author, but for a self-published author whose work is primarily available on Amazon.com and BN.com, that's amazing. (And, hey! Her series was recently optioned by a screenplay writer. Cool!)
But here's the passage that really stood out to me, as an editor:
My clients all have the same frustrations. How come they can't edit their own work?! There are actually quite a lot of reasons -- for one, someone who is talented at storytelling isn't necessarily talented at spelling or grammar. To be honest, I'm not really a supporter of "proper" grammar in novels! I think it's important to write a sentence that's understandable -- and aesthetically pleasing to the reader. Be careful not to start too many sentences with "but" or "and" or "because"... but that's not going to make or break your book!
Back to my original point, though: Another reason -- in my opinion, one of the biggest reasons -- authors have a difficult time editing their own work is because you are so close to it! You've read your book a million times -- you wrote your book. How can you tell if something isn't there? How can you really tell what's missing from your story? Even following the time-worn advice from editors everywhere to put your book on a shelf for six months before revising (which, I'll be honest, I don't know too many authors who do this!) doesn't always put you far enough away from the book that you can tell what its problems and holes are.
An editor, however, brings fresh eyes to your book. An editor will catch most (but not all) of your mechanical errors, and most (but not all) of your story editors.
I say "but not all" because there is a reason publishing houses have a minimum of three sets of eyes on each book. At the very least, almost every book has its editor to do developmental and sentence-level work, the copyeditor, and the proofreader. Some books even get two proofreaders -- first pass proofs and second pass proofs, although I think a separate proofreader for second pass is going out of style for all but the most difficult books.
(Difficult, of course, referring to how many problems the book has as it goes through the editorial and production process... some books just have a lot of problems, whereas others go through the process more smoothly.)
Even then, as we all know, books have errors -- typos, factual errors, typesetting errors. It's an unfortunate problem of the trade, that neither people nor computers ever seem to be able to catch every single error.
Lest you think editors are exempt from errors in their writing, I recently went through my old articles to revamp them for PDF, and found several errors (mostly typos) -- and a lot of those articles were edited by at least one, if not two or three, other editors! And, embarrassingly, when doing the final edits of the sequel to Salt and Silver before Kat and I sent it off to our agent, I found a typo on the first page.
How horrifying. And Kat and I are both professional editors! We're just too close to our own writing -- we know what's supposed to be there, so that's what we see. (And we're eagerly awaiting the letter from our agent, pointing out where all the holes are -- holes that don't exist in our heads, because we have the whole world up there and know everything, unlike our wonderful/poor readers, who have to make do with what we manage to get down onto the page.)
Ms Hocking ends the interview with advice for writers:
Yup. Good advice.
Here are a couple of self-editing tricks, if you don't have the money or the inclination to hire a great (ahem, like me!) editor:
1. Really, set the manuscript aside for a while once it's finished. Even just a couple of weeks can make a huge difference in how you see your plot, characters, and sentences!
2. After those few weeks, the first time you read it again, read it out loud. Don't stop to edit except for typos, but make notes to yourself -- either in the manuscript or on scrap paper or whatever. If you can't or don't want to read the book out loud for yourself, check to see if your computer has text-to-speech tech built in. That might even be better, since text-to-speech programs will stumble over misspelled words, but don't lose their place in the manuscript and don't have to stop to rest, drink, or take a breath!
...if you have any helpful hints, feel free to post them in the comments for everyone!
Knowing most of my clients are independent authors, many of whom self-publish, my dear friend (and website designer!) Brianna sent the link to me.
Ms Hocking tells HuffPo that "As of Tuesday, January 04, 2011 at 9 PM, I've sold over 185,000 books since April 15, 2010"!! That's incredible for any author, but for a self-published author whose work is primarily available on Amazon.com and BN.com, that's amazing. (And, hey! Her series was recently optioned by a screenplay writer. Cool!)
But here's the passage that really stood out to me, as an editor:
I'll be honest - when I first started publishing in April, I thought my editing was fine. The first book I published - My Blood Approves - had been read by me about fifty times and also read and edited by about twenty other people. So I thought that all the grammar errors would be taken care of. But I was wrong.
Since then, I've tried to utilize beta readers and hire people. But so far, people are still finding errors. It's not from lack of effort on my part, though.
I am now looking for a professional editor - as in the kind I would get if my book were to go through a publishing house. What I find most frustrating about editing and being indie is that everything else I can do myself. Writing, covers, marketing, etc. But I cannot edit properly myself. It's just not possible.
My clients all have the same frustrations. How come they can't edit their own work?! There are actually quite a lot of reasons -- for one, someone who is talented at storytelling isn't necessarily talented at spelling or grammar. To be honest, I'm not really a supporter of "proper" grammar in novels! I think it's important to write a sentence that's understandable -- and aesthetically pleasing to the reader. Be careful not to start too many sentences with "but" or "and" or "because"... but that's not going to make or break your book!
Back to my original point, though: Another reason -- in my opinion, one of the biggest reasons -- authors have a difficult time editing their own work is because you are so close to it! You've read your book a million times -- you wrote your book. How can you tell if something isn't there? How can you really tell what's missing from your story? Even following the time-worn advice from editors everywhere to put your book on a shelf for six months before revising (which, I'll be honest, I don't know too many authors who do this!) doesn't always put you far enough away from the book that you can tell what its problems and holes are.
An editor, however, brings fresh eyes to your book. An editor will catch most (but not all) of your mechanical errors, and most (but not all) of your story editors.
I say "but not all" because there is a reason publishing houses have a minimum of three sets of eyes on each book. At the very least, almost every book has its editor to do developmental and sentence-level work, the copyeditor, and the proofreader. Some books even get two proofreaders -- first pass proofs and second pass proofs, although I think a separate proofreader for second pass is going out of style for all but the most difficult books.
(Difficult, of course, referring to how many problems the book has as it goes through the editorial and production process... some books just have a lot of problems, whereas others go through the process more smoothly.)
Even then, as we all know, books have errors -- typos, factual errors, typesetting errors. It's an unfortunate problem of the trade, that neither people nor computers ever seem to be able to catch every single error.
Lest you think editors are exempt from errors in their writing, I recently went through my old articles to revamp them for PDF, and found several errors (mostly typos) -- and a lot of those articles were edited by at least one, if not two or three, other editors! And, embarrassingly, when doing the final edits of the sequel to Salt and Silver before Kat and I sent it off to our agent, I found a typo on the first page.
Don't think about how the subway right home had been full of jerks, how I'd had a terrible day at work, how my iPod, which I hadn't really been able to afford in the first place, had been jostled out of my sweaty fist and onto the train tracks.
How horrifying. And Kat and I are both professional editors! We're just too close to our own writing -- we know what's supposed to be there, so that's what we see. (And we're eagerly awaiting the letter from our agent, pointing out where all the holes are -- holes that don't exist in our heads, because we have the whole world up there and know everything, unlike our wonderful/poor readers, who have to make do with what we manage to get down onto the page.)
Ms Hocking ends the interview with advice for writers:
Write a lot, but read even more. Learn to be open to criticism. And research as much as you can before making a decision about where you want to see your writing career. The internet is filled with information that will help you become a better writer and make better decisions about publishing.
Yup. Good advice.
Here are a couple of self-editing tricks, if you don't have the money or the inclination to hire a great (ahem, like me!) editor:
1. Really, set the manuscript aside for a while once it's finished. Even just a couple of weeks can make a huge difference in how you see your plot, characters, and sentences!
2. After those few weeks, the first time you read it again, read it out loud. Don't stop to edit except for typos, but make notes to yourself -- either in the manuscript or on scrap paper or whatever. If you can't or don't want to read the book out loud for yourself, check to see if your computer has text-to-speech tech built in. That might even be better, since text-to-speech programs will stumble over misspelled words, but don't lose their place in the manuscript and don't have to stop to rest, drink, or take a breath!
...if you have any helpful hints, feel free to post them in the comments for everyone!
