Yesterday we received back WRIGHT from our awesome editor!
Some quick pre-information for those who don’t already know:
- My wife and I wrote this novel together.
- It took approximately 3 years for the original idea to get down into a full first draft
- The book was revised over 4 times from front to back (and back to front) before we started looking for an editor
After all of this and after careful consideration with tons of resource review (self pub vs agent vs publisher) we decided to go the self-publishing route.
On to the editing experience:
We live in Canada so there are a few good resources for finding an editor but we kept it simple and went with Editors Canada www.editors.ca and looked for someone local to us who fit the genre (YA Speculative Fiction) with a long history and positive reviews.
What was great about the editor we found is she promised to take a sample of the work, 1 – 2 chapters and edit for free so we could see the sort of improvements she would bring to our novel. Once that was done she gave us the pricing for completing the full work based on page count and the amount of editing she had to do in the sample. To be honest with you the book is about 220 pages and the cost was still significant. Considering what I’d reviewed for other editors though it seemed fair and so we proceeded.
Part way through the first edit our editor came back to us and suggested a manuscript evaluation. The difference between this and the copy edit, simply put, was a full review of our book to see if it was logical, viable and enjoyable. At first we were concerned this was an additional cash grab but honestly when it was done it was a godsend of information. She also provided a significant decrease on the cost of that as a credit for the editing work. The evaluation report we got back was mind blowing in a good way! Both the positives and the areas for improvement made tons of sense and I think streamlined the book in a way we would never have achieved alone.
Following the recommendations from that evaluation we did a couple further revisions and then sent it back for the final edit.
All told, the process took about 7 months including our time needed for revising on the notes we’d received.
Yesterday we’ve got the final edit back and the polished result is beyond professional.
Basically, if you are going to self-publish and want it to be work you are going to be proud of for years to come (success or not) the cost of editing and evaluation is worth it.
