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Finding a Book Editor for a (Potential) Bestseller

This entry is part [part not set] of 8 in the series Pub­lish­ing Goliath Fallen

So far in my series on pub­lish­ing GOLIATH FALLEN, I’ve cov­ered my bud­get­ing process and how I plan to get my book cov­er designed. Now, the time has come to find my bat­tle buddy—the book edi­tor. Find­ing an artist for my cov­er was­n’t an easy task; it required me to hone my vision and fig­ure out exact­ly what I need­ed. After fum­bling my way through Reedsy and talk­ing with lots of peo­ple for days on end, I final­ly found a great design­er to move for­ward with. As expect­ed, find­ing an edi­tor did­n’t get one bit eas­i­er. This is the per­son who will dis­sect my draft and help me (hope­ful­ly) craft a best­seller, so it was crit­i­cal I find the right person.

The writer and the book editor, like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
“There is no book so bad… that it does not have some­thing good in it.” — uniron­i­cal­ly, Don Quixote

I have a few things to con­sid­er before set­tling on a book editor:

  • I suf­fer from impos­tor syn­drome — My man­u­script has its flaws, but it has received praise from its beta read­ers. Still, it’s irra­tional­ly hard for me to con­vince myself that it’s good enough in its cur­rent form. 
  • I’m a non-native Eng­lish speak­er writ­ing a sci­ence-fic­tion epic in Eng­lish — My beta read­ers have point­ed out plen­ty of pas­sages that either read awk­ward­ly or just out right don’t make sense. I need to ensure these kinks are ironed out. 
  • I’m writ­ing sci­ence fic­tion — My man­u­script leans a bit heavy into physics, engi­neer­ing, mea­sure­ments, and oth­er sub­jects that are spe­cif­ic to the genre. I want to make sure this lan­guage is acces­si­ble to casu­al readers.
  • I’m a per­fec­tion­ist — It’s cliché for an author, but it’s true. I have a high stan­dard for qual­i­ty, and I refuse to set­tle for less.

These are the chal­lenges I’m look­ing to over­come with the aid of a tal­ent­ed book edi­tor. I need some­one to help me set­tle my inse­cu­ri­ties, tight­en up my writ­ing, and erase the awk­ward­ness. How­ev­er, such a thor­ough, pre­mi­um book edit­ing ser­vice sounds like it will sure­ly drain my bank account (insert cash reg­is­ter sound effects here).

Figuring out my needs (again)

Book edit­ing involves mul­ti­ple phas­es, each with its own spe­cif­ic set of tasks. I turned to Google to fig­ure out what a typ­i­cal edit­ing process entails, which helped me under­stand what I actu­al­ly need from a book edi­tor (to the best of my knowledge):

  • Devel­op­men­tal edit­ing — Dur­ing this phase, the edi­tor reads the entire book address­ing struc­tur­al ele­ments like plot, nar­ra­tive, char­ac­ters, pace, etc. They dis­sect the sto­ry, break it down, and put it back togeth­er into some­thing that actu­al­ly makes sense. Devel­op­men­tal edit­ing is rec­om­mend­ed if you’re not entire­ly sure of your sto­ry or if you haven’t received enough feed­back yet.
  • Copy edit­ing — The edi­tor goes through the book revis­ing sen­tences, vocab­u­lary, syn­tax, and gram­mar to ensure every­thing is styl­is­ti­cal­ly sound. This is the awk­ward­ness eraser.
  • Proof­read­ing — Once every­thing is said and done, the edi­tor reads the whole thing one last time to check that noth­ing has been left out and that it’s ready for publishing.

Whether each of these phas­es is required or not depends on the project. Con­sid­er­ing the list of chal­lenges and needs men­tioned above, GOLIATH FALLEN requires the whole she­bang, which means I can expect to spend around $0.06 per word. Giv­en that Goliath Fall­en is 92,500 words, that would trans­late to $5,500 in edit­ing costs.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that’s way out of my bud­get. Not los­ing hope, I paid anoth­er vis­it to Reedsy, a free­lanc­ing plat­form for self-pub­lished authors.  I found the tal­ent­ed Ale­jan­dro Coluc­ci there for my book cov­er, and I thought I would try my luck again to find a qual­i­fied book edi­tor as well. Quotes for a nov­el of my length ranged between $600 and $1,200, and, in some cas­es, includ­ed devel­op­men­tal feed­back in the form of inline com­ments. This price was bet­ter than I expect­ed, but I wasn’t real­ly feel­ing it. Also, I real­ized it’s cru­cial to search for an edi­tor who spe­cial­izes in the genre of my book. This is espe­cial­ly true in sci­ence fic­tion, where the edi­tor should be able to com­ment on any incon­sis­ten­cies in world­build­ing and the sci­ence itself. With this in mind, I nar­rowed my search to only sci­ence-fic­tion editors.

Finding my book editor

I found some real­ly good options on Reedsy and oth­er free­lancer plat­forms, but it was Philip Athans who real­ly caught my atten­tion. His track record as an edi­tor and writer is impres­sive, from work­ing with sci-fi heavy­weights like R.A Sal­va­tore as man­ag­ing edi­tor at Wiz­ards of the Coast to writ­ing a best­seller nov­el that’s set in the D&D uni­verse. Need­less to say, a new­bie like me could ben­e­fit from his spe­cif­ic experience.

His edit­ing process sound­ed very col­lab­o­ra­tive and includes devel­op­men­tal edit­ing, copy edit­ing, a Skype call, help with a query let­ter (if required), and oth­er addi­tion­al materials—all for only $0.03 a word. Quite a bar­gain if you ask me!

I’m a strong believ­er that things need to “feel right,” and since I first con­tact­ed Philip, it has indeed felt right. He was very nice, pro­fes­sion­al, and patient, and he took the time to answer all my ques­tions (like with my cov­er artist). I request­ed a sam­ple edit, and it was very thor­ough with all his sug­ges­tions hit­ting on the spot. I took some time to con­sid­er his offer, since, after all, it’s a good chunk of cash. But, in the end, it “felt right,” so I end­ed up hir­ing him. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, his sched­ule was pret­ty jam-packed until the end of 2021, but hey, Goliath Fall­en has been in the works for over six years; it can wait a few more months. And actu­al­ly, the tim­ing will work out bet­ter that way. I’m still wait­ing for feed­back from my cri­tique part­ners at New York City Writer’s Cri­tique Group, and I will need time to incor­po­rate their sug­ges­tions and give my draft one last pass before it’s ready for my editor.

Alright, so that’s one less thing to wor­ry about. Next up, I need to find a stel­lar blurb writer. Stay tuned for updates on the book edit­ing process as it unfolds.

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