- Too many authors send me their edited manuscripts,
telling me they're ready to publish and clearly they have,
in fact, hired professional editors,
but the book is still not good.
What has gone wrong?
If you're about to hire an editor
for your book you need to watch this video.
(upbeat music)
Hey, I'm Julie the Book Broad,
an award-winning author and the founder
of a fantastic company called Book Launchers.
We are your professional self-publishing team,
helping you write, publish, and sell non-fiction books
that grow your business and make you money.
(chimes ding) See, Book Launchers, ah.
I've talked about hiring editors
and the difference between content or developmental editing,
copy editing, and proofreading before.
But after seeing more than a dozen manuscripts
in the last couple of months that have been edited
or that are supposedly publish-ready
that were so far from publish-ready,
I thought it was worth explaining
where good intentions go wrong
when it comes to hiring editors.
So I've come up with a list
of three ways hiring a professional editor
goes wrong for authors.
Now before we get into those three ways, let me be clear.
100% of authors need editors.
You cannot edit your own work.
No matter how experienced of a writer you are,
or how detailed you are, your brain plays tricks on you,
and you will only see how something
is supposed to be written,
not how it's actually written.
Also, stuff that makes sense to you,
quite likely, doesn't make sense to other people.
Even when you know this
and you know you have to hire professionals,
you might still go wrong when you hire editors.
Here are the three ways I see it go wrong
for even the most well-intentioned authors.
Number one, you hire an editor,
but your book really needs help
to develop the concept further.
This is the most common problem I encounter.
I've even seen this when people have hired ghostwriters.
Editors are not the same as writing coaches.
In fact, editors are more analytical
than a writing coach or a story expert.
The best editors are detail oriented
and process driven in most cases.
A good writing coach is going to be driven
to influence and communicate in a way that's engaging.
They're typically much more creative than an editor.
And a lot of books might need someone like that first,
someone to develop the concept further,
make sure you've made an argument
that's compelling and interesting above all else.
Editing improves the writing,
but it's not usually going to develop the core message
and idea enough to make the book really great.
Number two, you hired an editor,
but you weren't clear on what you expected the results
of the edits to be.
I had someone say this to me recently.
"I hired an editor, but she didn't make my book better.
"She just made it grammatically correct."
If you hire a copy editor, you're going to get a copy edit.
Some great copy editors will flag areas
of your book that need improvement,
but their job is to follow a list of rules
and make sure your book follows those rules.
If you want an editor that's going to make your book better,
you need a story expert, see point one,
or you need to hire a developmental editor
or make it clear that you're looking for someone
to dig in and help you figure out
how to make this book better.
Before you're hiring an editor,
spell out what that looks like.
Do you want them to actually write out,
how to write a paragraph.
So it would read better.
Or do you want it flagged with questions,
so that you can do the work?
The more you lay out the expectations of your editor
in advance, the more you set yourself up for success.
The third place I see people go wrong,
you hired an editor without checking their experience.
Every three or four months, we bring on a new editor
to the Book Launchers' team.
When I open up the hiring process to editors,
I usually get somewhere between 50 to 100 applications.
Of those, and this is the really important thing
for you guys to realize,
of those, only about 10% are actually professional editors.
So many people say they can copy edit,
but they base that on the fact that they edited web content
at their work, or they edited some papers,
or they've edited one or two books in the past.
When I'm hiring editors for our team,
the first thing I do is look at their resume
or their LinkedIn page.
If their current job title isn't editor, I move on.
I want people who eat,
sleep, and breathe editing.
I don't want somebody who can do your book cover,
your layout, your editing, and walk your dog. (laughs)
If they haven't edited a bunch of other books
in my genre, which is non-fiction,
ideally business books or memoirs,
I move on and you should too.
Someone may have a great eye for mistakes,
but that is not the same
as being an experienced and professional editor.
If editing isn't how someone makes the majority
of their income, I don't consider them a true pro,
and I'm not hiring them,
and you probably shouldn't either.
For more on hiring editors, check out this video right here.
Editors are the most expensive part
of your book publishing process,
unless you're working with a ghostwriter,
and then the writer should
be the highest paid person on your team.
But if you're doing the right thing
and you're investing in editors,
make sure they're going to make your book better,
and often, this means you need different people
to do different roles.
At Book Launchers, we have story experts or writing coaches
who will help with the concept
before anybody does any editing on the book.
Then we have a different person do the content edit,
then a different person do two rounds of copy edit,
and then another person still who will do proofread.
Believe me, the margin on our book projects
would be much higher without involving all these experts,
but then the books we would produce
wouldn't be half as good.
Every professional is worth it,
but make sure you're getting the right people
at the right time in your book publishing journey
to get the best results.
And if you want professional guidance,
and you're working on a non-fiction book
that will help you become the name people know
or build your business, Book Launchers,
we would love to help you.
Just take a couple of minutes to tell me about your book
at booklaunchers.com/application,
and then we can hop on the phone and chat about it.
Now do you have an editing gone wrong story
or something else to think about
when you're hiring editors?
If so, please go ahead and share in the comments below,
and when you comment on the day a video is released,
you'll be entered to win some sweet #noboringbookswag,
like a mug or a journal or every once in a while,
this beautiful, No Boring Books, Book Launchers' hoodie.
Like this tip, smash that thumbs up button.
Go ahead, try it, it feels so good,
and make sure you subscribe to the channel,
so we can hang out every Tuesday and Friday
when a new video comes out.
Now I highly recommend you checkout this video
on the different kinds of editors and what they do,
or if you're already up to speed on that one,
then this brand-new video could be
exactly what you need to see.
Either way, go ahead, click on one of them.
I can't wait to see you over there, click it.
(upbeat music)