What to Look for in an Editor

Choosing someone to edit your book is like choosing someone to perform surgery on your child. You need to trust them completely. So how can you be sure the person you’re hiring is qualified? If, as I said last week, you asked other writers for recommendations and checked references, that …

Where to Find Professional Editors

As I said last time, if you’re self-publishing, you need a professional editor. But where do you get one? There is no licensing standard for editors. Anyone with a fondness for reading and a bent for grammar can declare themselves an editor and start seeking clients. Many sites exist to …

Q&A: developmental and substantive editing

Q: What’s the difference between developmental editing and substantive editing? A: That depends on whom you ask. Seriously, even editors can’t agree amongst ourselves what’s what, which is why each of us has some kind of web page where we define different types of editing in our own terms. “Substantive” …

Choosing your publishing model part 2

The other day, we looked at three of the factors that go into choosing your publishing model: Money, Skill, and Control. Today we’ll finish up. Time Royalty publishing takes a looooooong time. It can take up to 18 months to get a book through the production process. At major houses, …

Why what you call a ‘publisher’ matters

Last week, I wrote about the differences, slim though they are, between vanity presses and subsidy presses. In the comments, Jennifer wrote, “What a publisher calls itself does not matter. What matters are the terms of the contract.” True. A company can call itself whatever it chooses, but whether it’s …

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