The Ultimate Guide to Finding the Ideal Professional Editor
You have many great ideas for a book, and you just want to write all of it down. Ensuring that the book’s quality is as good as the quality of your narrative ideas is essential. To do this, you need to make sure that your manuscript is free of errors. By that, ensuring that every part of the content contributes to a great structure, this includes correct usage of words, clear sentences, no redundant phrases, and many more. A great option for you to take is to hire a professional editor. The benefits of doing this will not only reach a great book alone; it also helps you save yourself from the dreading process of editing your own work.
Having someone to edit your work doesn’t mean that your content’s voice, ideas, and meaning will change. These professionals will enhance it and free it from errors. Thus, it would help if you did not let your worries stop you from doing it. Professional editors have extensive training and skills in shaping manuscripts. A great example would be Greg Van Arsdale, who offers copy editing and developmental editing. Greg Van Arsdale’s different book projects have shown his proficiency in his job. If you are long for someone with great talent to polish your work, he would be the perfect one to contact.
You and your editor will also work on your write up together, which means that you can also learn from them. However, once you have successfully decided to hire someone, you need to take a couple of measures to find the right one for you. Below are some of the ways on how to choose the perfect one for you.
Research about Overall Editing Process
For you to understand how the editing world works, you need to be knowledgeable of the services they provide. Usually, there are types of editors, depending on what you need for your content. Developmental, line, copy, and proofreading editing are the typical services they offer. For some editors, they offer multiple editing solutions.
Ask References
If you have author friends who have experienced hiring editors, you should not hesitate to ask them for tips. This is one of the best ways to land a great editor. You might want to ask a couple of questions from your reference, such as how much did it cost them or did a certain editor really met their expectations.
Choose Someone Adept in Your Genre
Once you have ideas on who to hire, you want to consider someone that knows your book genre well. This way, when you hand them over your manuscript, they already know what to do. Finding someone expert in what you are writing about will easily understand you and what your book needs to improve. One way to make sure that they really are is by checking their available information and resources online, such as their social media pages and websites.
Request for Sample Outputs
You also need to make sure that they know what they are doing. Thus, asking for sample edits is another option for you to take. You will be able to assess and gauge their skills. You ask for a raw file and an edited file. Once they send over their sample edits, you need to make sure that they really do make a significant difference from both files.
Discuss Budget with Them
Once you are done with the evaluation, the next step to take is to talk about the budget. The first thing you need to know is that editing required as much hard work as writing. You would understand, right. Editing will require focus and concentration. Hence, you cannot demand a budget that you think would be inappropriate for the job.
All in all, the need for you to get a professional editor is crucial to make a great book. If you successfully chose the best one, there is no doubt that a publishing company will take it as it is. But for the record, the best ones are those freelance editors, usually people who are published authors, like Greg Van Arsdale. He published a couple of hit novels, such as The Genesis Project Series.