This was a new one on me. I have a reviewer who seems to think that if they leave a review describing how they would have done a better job at editing my book, I might hire them. Even leaving aside the dubious ethics of bashing my current editing team, the sheer presumption of this person takes my breath away. Here’s the thing I realized after I got over the fury*and considered what they were really saying: they are not a professional editor. A good editor doesn’t impose their preferences on an author. An editor can make suggestions on structure, if that is what they were hired for. They should never wholesale force an author’s voice to become their own, because that is not editing.
A reader having a preference is fine. Want a slower-paced book? Find one and read it. Want a fast read where you dive right into the world and action and don’t spend chapters reading through painfully fleshing out character motivations before letting them do anything? There are books for you out there (and mine are among them). A selection editor having a preference is fine, and I do when I am choosing stories for anthologies, or reading children’s novels for Raconteur Press. However, once the editing on a book is being done there is no room for that. The author, presuming they haven’t hired an editor to give them structural suggestions, wants to know if there are misspellings, if there are inconsistencies, and they need to know what changes are being made to the manuscript, and why. A structural editor needs to be able to fix a broken plot and help the author see where there are places to smooth out the story – but not to impose their view of what the book should be. I’ve seen a superb structural editor in action, so I have a pretty high bar of what should be happening with one. I don’t work with him often but when I do, I come away having learned things and improved my craft. First and foremost, though, he never asks me to align how I write with what he prefers to read. Because that is not editing.
Editing can be thought of as a funnel, or perhaps in terms of polishing. The structural editor is the coarse grit, the wide mouth of the funnel, catching the big issues to smooth those out. Then there is the line editor, who is finding the grammatical problems, someone’s name change, or other smaller problems. The final stage is the typo-hunting of the copy-editor. In most cases, the last two stages are being done by one person as I’ve yet to meet an editor willing to leave alone a typo or misplaced punctuation.
I have, in the years I’ve been doing this now, had my fair share of encounters with bad editors. As a newbie author, I paid for ‘editing’ which was done without tracking what was changed in the manuscript, and which altered my voice to that of the editor (you may see now why I have strong feelings about this) at a point in my career where I didn’t fully understand what was being done to me. It is, frankly, abusive, and a shocking number of people call themselves editors, hire themselves out to do this, and repairing the damage from it is far more expensive than just the cost to either hire another, good, editor, or to go back through the book to change everything to the original authorial voice and styles. It leaves an author crippled, if they don’t see what is being done to them. I’m at a point now where I know what I’m writing, and why, but twelve books ago? I was still learning and was naive enough to trust that someone would respect my work.
Keep this in mind, then, my dear authors. Know what you are hiring an editor to do, whether is is structural or copy-editing, and know that there are some editors who can do both, but you don’t always need a structural editor if you have the skills in place. You’ll likely always need a copy-editor! Know that your voice is what makes you uniquely you, and don’t let someone strip that away from you. The editor is your employee, and you have the power to say ‘no, that is not what I want for my book.’ The editor who chooses you for a traditional publishing gig is in the position of power, which is just one of many reasons I have my own publishing imprint and a team of trusted people I work with to produce my books as a product that I can control.
And if you are hanging out your shingle as an editor? Be ethical with your marketing. Bashing books in reviews is not likely to endear you to the author, because shaming someone into hiring you is just as abusive as going into a manuscript without track changes or making dialogue in fiction ‘technically correct grammar.’ None of these things are ok.
Authors, you don’t have to take bad editing lying down. Demand better. And ask for references. Not only ‘who have you worked with?’ but look up the books this person has edited and see what kind of product they have had a hand in. If the books don’t sell well… yeah. That’s also a clue. Sometimes the editor can’t help pathetic covers and bad placement in categories and keywords, because that’s not their department. However, if you see a consistent alignment between an editor that works with those kinds of books? And social media presence that is full of untruths and negativities? Run, my young friend, because this is not a professional. You need support and help, not whatever that is. If they are willing to bully you in their approach to you, they will be abusive when they are working ‘for’ you.
*Bash my book, eh, whatever. Bash my people? Oh no. No that is not ok and I will make a stand on that hill.
Mad Genius Club 
20 responses to “How Not to Drum Up Business”
I had someone leave “reviews” on my first and second novels that said nothing about the books, just ranted about how authors like me were ruining self-publishing by not hiring professional editors like her. The wording was virtually identical for both, and I suspect that she cut and paste the text into reviews all over Amazon. I can’t imagine that it resulted in any contracts, but who knows.
That’s partly why I wrote this. I want young authors to know that this kind of thing is not ok, don’t take it to heart, and *run* from bullying.
“Leaving this review means you are not a professional.”
It’s critical that your editor understand the tropes in your genre! Back before RWA imploded, I was a member of our local chapter. I heard horror stories about editors editing romance who swore no one ever “fell in love at first sight” and it was therefore, a storyline that needed to be completely rewritten.
No soulmates, not enemies to lovers, no forced proximity, etc., etc.
This was NOT an editor who read or understood romance.
Also — and there were people who did this — NEVER do “global accept” of edits! If Editor makes a mistake, you just propagated that spelling mistake or error throughout your manuscript.
Every single remark must be evaluated for correctness and relevance to your story. Only you know your story. Editor doesn’t, not the way you do.
Finally, many times what Editor is actually saying is “I don’t understand where you’re going with this.” If Editor doesn’t understand, then it’s likely Reader won’t either.
This! Editors are not gods. They make mistakes. They’re flat-out wrong sometimes.
When I’ve had editors edit my stories for anthologies, I’ve generally found the edits fall into one of four categories.
1) Those where the editor finds a mistake I’ve made. In which case, good on you, editor, I’m glad someone caught it.
2) Those where the editor is trying to get my usage of punctuation and spelling to align with the style of the anthology. No one is “right” or “wrong” per se, but it’s best to change what I’m doing to keep it consistent with the other writers.
3) Those where the editor has clearly misunderstood what I was trying to do and suggested a change that would alter my meaning. In which case, I don’t accept the edits, but I do usually change something to try to clarify what I was getting at.
4) Those where I have no idea what the editor was thinking. As far as I can tell, he’s hallucinating grammar rules that don’t exist.
Exactly! I don’t like being edited. My darling husband edits me and I edit him so we have, sometimes, a fraught relationship. Yet I know he wants me to be my best and I want the same for him.
A GOOD editor makes you, the writer, the best writer you can be, clarifying your story. A BAD editor tries to rewrite you into something you are not.
Editors are like beta readers: more likely to be right about the problem than about the solution, and more likely to be right about there being a problem than the problem itself.
Absolutely! Frequently the message you’re looking for from Editor is the note behind the note.
That is, Editor senses something is wrong with the manuscript but they can’t articulate it and so settle on some vague statement complaining about something else.
I suppose some Editors don’t want to come out and say “I don’t get it. Fix it.” because that implies they aren’t skillful editors.
I don’t know if anyone still does this or not, but there used to be a few free-lance editors who would do a sample chapter for $15-20 dollars. You, the author, got to see if what they were doing meshed with what you needed, and they, the editor, got to see if they understood your style and goals. Some non-fiction editors still do that, because not everyone can edit a hard-science book vs. environmental history vs. social sciences.
I’ve heard supposed structural editors say they do this and, speaking as one, I seriously don’t get it. I *can’t* do a good structural edit without the whole book in my head. I can possibly do a listing of strong and weak points of a single chapter as a chapter, but the entire list could be made moot by the next chapter I haven’t seen yet. With nonfiction it makes a lot more sense.
I used to read/hear about Writing Workshops for newbies that were bludgeoned by “thus was it always, thus must it be” group discussions easily derailed/made abusive on two topics:
* Genre unfamiliarity — not knowing about or approving of genre conventions as useful shorthand in-group-reader communication devices
* Prestige-driven convictions that formal (non-fiction) English conventions constitute the only allowable/respectable grammatical constructions in all uses of the language.
The second one is based on status insecurity, I believe, while the first is based on prestige. Both are driven by an ignorance and fear that is so status-related that it cannot be defeated, only evaded.
Cedar, I foresee a small problem: unless you know the author, you’ll be looking at what was published, and that means the book as someone (author, publisher, etc.) went through and accepted or rejected what the editor edited… and you won’t have a window into what that editor actually did.
I beta read for a couple of TxRed’s series. I suppose you could call me a “free editor”. 😎 The first thing I do is save off a working copy with my initials in the file name, and then turn on “track changes”. That’s what goes back to her. I have those files still, under digital lock and key.
If I ever decide to offer my services as a “paid editor”, those working copies would be my portfolio, after I got permission to use them that way. Potential editors should be able to offer you those working copies (with permission) so you can see what they did and how they did it.
The very first time I ever edited a story for a friend, I did it with glee and enthusiasm. When I finished, I proudly passed it back to my friend who read over my changes. His first comment shamed me into silence and remorse.
“But this isn’t my story anymore.”It was years before I even attempted another editing task. I think of that every time I approach another edit. It isn’t MY story.
I have yet to find an editor that doesn’t want me to rewrite my stuff, his or her way. It’s painful
Some people need proofreaders more than they need editors per se.
I’ve gotten definitely one and maybe two reviews that might have been attempts to gently drum up editing business. In both cases, they said a reasonable amount of positive things about my work before launching into “needs professional editing.”
And I’m sorry, but the money’s not there to drop a few hundred to a thousand+ dollars for that. Midjourney gets a pass because endless cover prototyping plus endless setting previsualization plus the entertainment value of just goofing around with it for $30 a month is relatively easy to justify. $0 a month to have Claude chatbot clean up my dictation output and help with brainstorming is also easy to justify. People who may or may not know better than me how to fix stuff charging an arm and a leg for their services, much harder.
The eternal conundrum: When you need it the most, you can’t afford it; once you can afford it, you don’t need it so much.
What I try to remember with editors is that they’re my employees. There are two implications to this:
Coincidentally, I was reading some old blog entries last night about the romance writer Barbara Cartland and how she apparently had a clause in her contract that not so much as a comma of her manuscript could be changed without her permission. The general attitude of the blog seemed to be, “Isn’t this evidence that she was a ridiculous diva who didn’t believe she could need editing?” I, meanwhile, was thinking, “Yeah, that’s a good policy. Editors, please tell me if you think I’ve made a mistake, but even with small edits, I would prefer to be the one who makes the final decision.”
My job as an editor is to help the author make a better story. It is NOT my job to alter the author’s voice, to change the storyline or the author’s universe. I want that story to be an enjoyable read just as much as the author does, but it’s the AUTHOR’s story, not mine. I will be Conan the Grammarian where necessary, but if the voice is not grammatically correct, I’ll just make sure it stays consistently so. Also, anything I edit will be right up front, where the author can make the final decision.
I recently had a short story published, where the “editor” literally changed the entire universe in the last paragraph. Did this “editor” contact me before the anthology went to print? Nope. Had this “editor” read the first story in that universe before arbitrarily making the change? Nope.
I now have the rights back to both stories in that universe and must decide where to take the universe now. Do I go with my original storyline, or do I somehow incorporate that “editor’s” change so things stay somewhat consistent? I dunno yet. But I certainly will never allow that person to edit anything I write again.
My job as an editor is to help the author make a better story. It is NOT my job to alter the author’s voice, to change the storyline or the author’s universe. I want that story to be an enjoyable read just as much as the author does, but it’s the AUTHOR’s story, not mine. I will be Conan the Grammarian where necessary, but if the voice is not grammatically correct, I’ll just make sure it stays consistently so. Also, anything I edit will be right up front, where the author can make the final decision.
I recently had a short story published, where the “editor” literally changed the entire universe in the last paragraph. Did this “editor” contact me before the anthology went to print? Nope. Had this “editor” read the first story in that universe before arbitrarily making the change? Nope.
I now have the rights back to both stories in that universe and must decide where to take the universe now. Do I go with my original storyline, or do I somehow incorporate that “editor’s” change so things stay somewhat consistent? I dunno yet. But I certainly will never allow that person to edit anything I write again.