Self-published writers have to hire experts to do certain things that major publishing companies provide in-house, but publishers today are putting more and more work on their authors, especially book promotion, so self-publishing seems the wiser option to me unless you’re hoping to win a major literary award. Those generally aren’t open to authors not published by the Big Five or their subsidiaries.
Why share your pie with a publishing firm that does nothing for you except edit your book and make you a book cover? Especially with so many small press predators popping up all over. Did you hear about Adelaide Press? Argh.
No, we get help. Not self-published yet but aiming for it.
Although, you do have to make some money/time sacrifices you might not do if you had an agent and publisher. Who is going to make the cover? You? Or are you going to hire someone? And what about formatting? Good if you can learn how to do it yourself but do you really want to risk not looking professional? Maybe you need to hire someone?
Beta reading can be done for free. There are plenty people willing to read essentially free books. Editors, yes, you do have to get all the stages of editors. Not all editors do all stages of editing. Developmental editors might not always also do line editing, for example. Some editors are through a company and some are freelancers, and some are expensive freelancers who have edited books published by one of the big publishers.
You really have to make the call where you are willing to spend your money and where you are willing to put all your time into.
Even after publishing, there’s marketing and are you gonna pay for a website? Put your time into creating content around your book to get people interested? It’s a LOT.
But the pros outweigh the cons in my opinion because you can make sure you create the book that you envision. Not the book some big publisher thinks that people will love and follow some book stereotype.
Since you took interest, here’s some more info. I didn’t know anything about editors until I started to look for them.
Developmental editors
Line editors
Copy editors
Proofreaders: often I’ve seen copy editors offering proofreading as the final step of their service.
This is the basic order you would go through for editing, but how many times you go through each stage seems to depend on your story and how professional you want it, and also how quick you need to get that darn book out. You can’t edit forever, obviously.
These roles might all be done by the same person, but not always. I’ve seen editors that specialize in line editing which is looking at the sentences of the story (not plot) and seeing if they make sense or could be tightened up a bit. You would only do this once you have finalized the story and gone through developmental editing.
I’ve heard from a developmental editor that usually people would go to a different developmental editor if they edited their story afterwards and still needed more developmental editing.
So there’s that. You might not work with the same person in the same stage of editing either. The only time you might go to the same person is if you changed the story considerably.
Btw, editors usually offer to do a free sample edit (5-10 pages double spaced). Usually you would want to ask if they do it and also ask if they would like it formatted in any specific way. Only one editor out of the dozens I looked at charged a fee for a sample edit (and she was the one that had a pretty impressive portfolio of books by major publishers). Of course, I didn’t ask her for one in the end.
You’d want to do this because not all editors edit in the same way. You gotta find your match.
I’m almost all set to publish Part I of Wonderland on Wattpad. I have a short description which, I believe, best describes Wonderland as a whole. I’ve also filled out the Story Notes and realized who the true protagonist is:
Truth, the God of Truth, Mind, Soul, and Power. They want nothing more than to understand human mind and what better way than to write the stories of a husband and wife, of two men, of two sisters, and of an aspiring writer.
I have a few covers from when I last published this book on Wattpad but I’m not so sure any of them represent what it has become now. Might commission a new cover, make one myself, or choose from the ones I have. But once the cover situation is fixed, I can publish the first part.
Man, this gets complicated lol but it makes sense. So what exactly does a developmental editor do? Find loopholes in the story or where things don’t make sense? And like character inconsistencies?
I had developmental editing done and what she did was point out things about the character’s actions that didn’t make sense, some major plot holes, and some other plot inconsistencies, things about the lore that didn’t make sense to be mentioned in the story, and asked a lot of “why did this happen?” “why did the character say or do this?” type of questions.
Her overall comments were about the story itself. She also commented on my time skips and whether or not it made sense for these certain minor characters to appear or not.
This is the last scene in Ch.29 of The Rat Girl. I like how it played out
In that moment, the trees to the left rustled and crashed to the ground. Out came an army of antlered people wearing armor made of wood and leaves. The Avians quickly made a circle around their princes, brandishing their swords at the newcomers.
A yellow-haired woman wearing an armor dress came to the front. Her face from the distance looked rather deer-like with a snout instead of a nose. She turned up her face to Vivienne.
“We are Damadae. I am the Lady Cerfia of Damadae. We felt the curse be lifted. We heard your call. We will fight alongside the Mosspetal sisters.”
And, oops, new character. Lady Cerfia of Damadae. That wasn’t supposed to happen, but it did.
No joke, this is really useful. I’m probably going to go the self published route as well, and I had no idea as far as the different types of editing. You mentioned beta reading can be done for free. What’s the difference between a beta reader and an editor? That an editor gets paid and is supposedly a “professsional”? How/where do you even find legit editors that aren’t scams.
Beta readers are just readers. They won’t edit your book and you’d ask them questions to answer like, “Did you relate to the character?” “What parts did you find were too slow paced?” “Who was your favorite character and why?” That sort of thing.
Editors won’t beta read for you. Although some beta readers might comment on the plot and their comments can help you in your self-editing.
I found her through IG. Legit editors will have credentials. And the more you look around, the more you can understand the basic price range for the style of editing you’re looking for.
I think IG is your best bet. You can also ask already published author friends who they were edited by and find editors that way. I have heard that sometimes referrals can be good because the editor is familiar with their client, you know.
Good tip!
Help in the form of faun-like deer people.
