Common Misconceptions of Book Editing Amongst Independent Authors
How to level-up your work to get repeat readers and recommendations.
The number of independent authors seems to be growing year on year, as more and more self-published books flood the market. One reason for this boom could be the ease with which independent authors can now publish their work digitally, through platforms such as Amazon Kindle (KDP), Lulu, and InstagramSpark, to name but a few.
We hear stories about authors who have made six figures from self-publishing; yet the hard work these independent authors have put in behind the scenes is often overlooked. It’s not just the business of running a business, but also making sure that the quality of the manuscript is there in the first place. What’s the use of being a marketing whiz, or having an amazing cover designer, if your story is full of plot holes and there are numerous grammatical errors in the text? Regardless of how much you market, and how shiny that cover may be, no-one is going to read or promote a badly written novel.
Despite the increase in competition for self-published titles, many independent authors are still not seeking the services of an editor, and in some cases, they don’t even get their manuscript proofread — no wonder so many authors aren’t seeing the returns they expected. As well as all those tips and tricks for marketing your digital novel, first and foremost, you need to have good prose and a good story. It’s good writing that keeps your readers coming back for more, not good marketing. Editing and proofreading are vital to ensuring that your prose is readable, your story is structurally sound and engaging, and your manuscript is error free. There’s a reason that traditionally published authors all go through multiple rounds of editing with their agent and book publisher — to polish the novel so it’s ready for public consumption. This is where the first of our misconceptions comes into play….
1. I have to do what my editor says
I think that one of the biggest reasons many independent authors shy away from traditional publishing and go it alone in the first place is to do with control. There is a common misconception that an editor will fundamentally change your story. However, not only will your editor not alter your voice and style, nor make you drastically change the plot of your story, they also don’t expect that you will take up every suggestion they make. They want to make your book better — it’s really that simple. If you’re not comfortable with an editor’s suggestion, you don’t have to take it; but the suggestion will have been made with the aim of improvement. It may sound like they’re being picky, but your editor simply wants to help you make your manuscript the best version it can possibly be before you publish.
Many authors these days have large platforms and use them to help other writers improve; they will tell you a published book is bad, that the editor didn’t do their job, and then they will show you how it could have been re-written, to show you how it could be improved upon… but this isn’t necessarily good editing. That’s not what an editor does. And this may be why there is so much negativity towards editors generally, amongst many independent authors. A good editor provides suggestions to improve, whilst retaining your voice and style. They make it readable, digestible—not necessarily perfectly written, but something that is uniquely yours and will be enjoyable to others.
A developmental edit will help you hone the plot so that there are no gaping holes, the characters have development, and the point of view works for the story you are telling. A line edit will show you how to improve your sentence structure for better readability, will clean up your dialogue and verbiage for greater impact, and can point out if you’re telling too much, or showing in the wrong places such as right in the middle of a fight scene.
Of course, the point of editing is to improve your work. If you are completely resistant to your editor’s advice, take their comments as misplaced criticism and aren’t willing to learn, to grow, to improve, then there’s little point in hiring an editor in the first place.
2. Editors are failed writers: they will change my story and insert their own voice
Many authors incorrectly assume that an editor is an editor because they failed at being a writer — this simply isn’t true. Although many editors are also successful authors in their own right, equally, many editors have no interest in writing a novel themselves. And those who are successful authors aren’t going to want to insert their own voice into your book — after all, they already have published books of their own, there’s no benefit for them. An editor wants to help you to polish your manuscript and help you to make your work the best it can be. A good editor won’t change the voice and style of your work but will help you to fix those niggling issues with verbiage and sentence structure and plug those plot holes for a more satisfying read.
3. Anyone can edit a book
Editing and writing are very different skillsets — especially self-editing. Just because you can write a novel, doesn’t mean that you are able to edit one, and it certainly doesn’t mean you are able to edit your own! There are specific courses and credentials for editing, just as there are for creative writing. So many independent authors get their spouse, a best friend, someone they knew from college who’s always been good at writing, to edit their work—they think that sufficient. Regardless of how perfect your best pal’s English may be—even if they’re an English major and a lawyer, a CEO, or a teacher— they simply won’t know the conventions of fiction, the genre tropes, or non-fiction publishing standards such as the Chicago Manual of Style.
This leads me onto our next misconception, and a common refrain of many independent authors…
4. I don’t need developmental editing; a proofread will do
Even if it’s just beta readers, every author should have some form of developmental editing or feedback on their novel. Why? Because it’s hard to clearly evaluate your own work, especially when it’s a 150,000-word first in a series fantasy novel with extensive world-building and brand new magic system! Even professional authors who have been writing for decades and have numerous bestsellers under their belts will still use an editor, because they appreciate that you need that second pair of eyes on your story.
When you’re writing, you have the story in your head. You know the world you created inside out. You know what you want to happen, where the plot points are, and how the characters are going to develop. Having all this in our head stops us from clearly seeing where the plot doesn’t work, where those characters aren’t being developed, or where we’ve failed to explain the setting sufficiently. It is even more important for newer writers, who may not have the experience to know if a point of view is working, that they keep head-hopping inadvertently, that their dialogue tags are hindering the reading flow, or the sentences aren’t varied enough and the pacing is off.
A beta reader may be able to tell you where they got bored, where the prose felt ‘sticky’, or that the ending fell a little flat; an editor will be able to tell you why the start is boring, how to alter your writing to prevent that ‘sticky’ prose in the middle, and suggest how you could re-structure your ending for the most impact.
Many of these misconceptions stem from a simple misunderstanding of what an editor actually does. Authors newer to the writing and publishing business, especially in fiction, may never have heard of developmental editing. Many authors don’t know that there are different types of editing and what they are there for, which leads me onto my next point…
5. An editor will rewrite my story and make my writing better
Editing is not the same as ghost-writing. An editor’s job is not to re-write your manuscript to make the prose more readable or engaging, or to strengthen the plot. Many editors will offer in-text suggestions when line editing, they physically mark-up the manuscript to show you examples of how you could re-write a sentence or section; but generally, the onus is on you, the author, to make the necessary changes. The suggestions in the text which the editor makes may be general, and not applicable for your story. They might show you how to re-structure a sentence, or how to show instead of telling a scene, but it is up to you as the author to make this fit with your character’s attitude or the story development. An editor will not take your first draft and make it a finished novel. An editor is a guide, not a ghostwriter.
6. After my book is edited it will be perfect and I can publish straight away
This is also mixed in with the common misunderstanding about the job of an editor, or what different types of editing entail. The onus is on the author to take the editing suggestions and decide which to keep and which to disregard. The expectation, whether a developmental or line edit, is that you will read through the advice, go through each and every suggestion, and amend accordingly. Your editor will usually make notes in the margin, pointing out scenes to draw them to your attention and provide suggestions for why they feel it may not be working — it is up to you to do the work any make the necessary alterations, if you agree with their assessment. When you receive that editorial report back and a marked-up manuscript, it will be in no fit state for anyone to read, just yet. And even once you have worked through your edits, there’s one last, important step that’s often overlooked — an edit is not the same as a proofread.
Editing and proofread are both important parts of the book publishing process and provide a way to ‘level up’ your work.
In some circles, self-published authors are still looked upon as being ‘lesser’ than their traditionally published colleagues, despite there being both excellent and terrible books out there by both independent and traditionally published authors. But I think much of the prejudice against the independent, self-published author is simply due to the vast amount of un-edited, un-proofread, self-published novels saturating the market these days. The best way to stand out amongst the increasing competition is to write good, error-free prose, and tell a good story that your audience wants to read.
