I'm still waiting on JP to finish
editing my first novel in a trilogy and she has not yet started.
It's September 3rd and I was hoping that she would start
by August, but no. So here I am still waiting, churning ahead with
the third installment of my trilogy, forging ahead, so to speak. And
waiting. Waiting on my editor to start to work. It's been a long
wait. Since July 16th. A mighty long time. But I have to
admit, I did do my homework in finding JP so I am not concerned by
the delay. We also did agree that I would wait until she started
working on it when time allowed her to. So that is another point that
needs to be taken into consideration.
How did I find JP and should you go
about it the same way?
Well, whose to say my way is the right
way, but I will tell you that I have done my due diligence and with
that being said, I might be able to lead you in the right direction. I might not be able to lead you into a good negotiation with
your editor though, or you might find yourself in the same boat that I'm in.
Firstly it began on a sunny summer day with me going through my email
and finding a mail from BOOKBABY.COM. Bookbaby is an online book
distributor. Now lets not get these terms confused. There is a very
accurate terminology for things in the e-publishing world. There are
publishers, which are your brick and mortar counterparts. These guys produce
hardbound and softcover books (and sometimes e-books) and since they front all of the money,
you get a small royalty check for the books that you sell. They take
the lion's share of the income. This is a book publisher.
Bookbaby and other companies like it
are book DISTRIBUTORS. They are not publishers, they do not front any
monies to your book and therefore do not take any of the royalties.
They take nothing off the top and leave all of the profits to you
since you are the one who has taken all of the risks. They'll convert
your document and deliver it electronically to several electronic
retailers of e-books so that you can sell your work to the masses.
They even do some of the collateral work, such as book cover design,
format conversion, and the procurement of ISBN numbers for your book.
I was interested in this process, being
tired of the Agent/Publisher stranglehold on publishing. There is
really no need for all of these middle men and gate keepers in the world of publishing any longer. An author need only reach his/her fans with their latest work.
That's how things were done in the past. An author would go to a
printer, have copies of their book made and distribute it themselves.
Only later did Publishers appear on the scene, using their influence, their guilds and their connections
to give respectability to their middleman status and therefore made it appear that the author that continued to resort to vanity printing was not a
real author. Shortly after this, agents appeared, creating a further
separation between the writer and the reader, and adding a new level
of middlemen to sap a writer's royalties and talents. But that's
another sad story. With the advent of e-publishing power is being
returned to the writer and the useless and unnecessary chain of
middlemen can finally be phased out. The only thing really needed is
the distributor.
While reading through Bookbaby's site, I found several free
publications of theirs that explain the e-publishing process through
them. I downloaded their free copy of E-BOOK PUBLISHING: THE HOW
TO GUIDE FOR WRITERS. I jumped into it with both hands and feet,
gobbling it up on no time, and what I came across was a stern
admonition. Get an editor to go over your book carefully to remove
mistakes and errors that crop up in your drafts. It is true that you
are too close to the work to give it the careful scrutiny it
deserves, and fresh eyes can do a better job than you in finding and
correcting mistakes. These mistakes are said to be the bane of
e-published books, because authors don't follow this advice and turn
out books with horrible errors that make the reader feel that the
quality of e-books in general is diminished and far from that of the brick and
mortar publishers. They warn that once you show a reader that you are
lax in this process, you can be hurting your sales later when they
see your book again and are turned off by your poor skills.
It's not that your skills are poor. You
can be an excellent writer, and your training may be impeccable, but
you are also human and humans make mistakes, that's why we don't pull
the delete and backspace keys off our keyboards. With a new set of
eyes, you cut human error down considerably and the few errors that
do slip by, hopefully your readers will forgive you for them.
Remember, the book publishers are no better than you. They are just
smarter. When they get your work, it'll go to an editor for vigorous
massaging, then to the printers who will return with a proof, and
this document will go to a proofreader who will search again for
errors made by the printers and you and your editor. After such
intense scrutiny they will then mass produce your book...and why do
they do this? Because it is their image that they are concerned with.
They want to send out the best to their readers. Your thinking should
not be far from this.
So I decided to use an editor. And in this book from Bookbaby they
direct you to The Editorial Freelancers Association. This is
something like the Bar Association for lawyers. Here you will find a
search-able listing of freelance editors to suit your needs just as
you would find lawyers from the Bar Association. With this
information, I did a search of editors in my genre and printed out
the top ten editors to my liking. Then I went through their
individual webpages in search of their qualifications. Some had their
resumes on their sites and these are the ones that I centered on.
With their resumes I could make a more informed choice than just how
much they charge for their services.
This boiled the list down to five and I
contacted each of them to feel them out, and that's how I reached JP.
She told me clearly that she was busy and that I'd have to wait on her timetable, but with this said, I chose her anyway because of her
sterling qualifications.
Later, I thought of Googling her after
I paid her the money for her to start her services, which was $40.00
an hour. I sent her a check for $400.00, the first ten hours of her
work. Then I Googled her, which frankly I should have done
long before sending her the check, but this is my admonition to you
to perform first. Learn from my mistakes here. Although, I was
pleasantly surprised to find that JP was an editor for several major
publications and magazines, and she also contributes to a writer's
website giving her advice to the masses. Google your editor BEFORE
you send them your money, just as an added precaution. You may get
bad news, and the truth is, being forewarned is forearmed.
I am quite pleased with JP and hope
that she will be willing to edit my entire trilogy. This will be good
for me because she will have the continuity of story to work with and
not be lost in the breadth of the tale as what would happen if I had to get another editor to start at the second book in the trilogy.
So, like I said, I did my homework and
I am confident in my choice of editor.
I keep saying this to myself as the
days roll by.
Gregory
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