Self-publishing your book can be a great achievement, since it allows you to share your ideas and knowledge with the world. The downside is that you might be too close to the topic and that means it’s harder to spot any possible issues. That’s why you should hire an editor. The main job of an editor is to review accuracy, clarity, grammar and the overall content. This way you can be sure that your book is ready for self-publishing and closer to people actually getting their hands on it.
What types of editing services are there?
For most of us, editing seems like a straightforward job. But the truth is that you can find many different types of editing. You can find them below:
- Proofreading is one of the final steps during the editing process. The idea here is that the proofreader focuses on finding errors, missing text, typos, formatting issues or anything in between.
- Copy editing works mostly on sentence and word detail. The main focus here is on grammatical errors, punctuation and spelling. The copy editor also focuses on the overall consistency of the book as well.
- Line editing focuses on polishing sentences, analyzing every line for word choice, flow and structure.
- Developmental editing is all about the bigger picture, things like character development and book structure.
Things to keep in mind when you want to hire a book editor
- It’s very important to know your word count, because editors will charge you based on the amount of words that you have right now.
- Is the project complex or not? The subject matter, writing style and so on will make things more difficult for the editor, so the project becomes a lot more expensive.
- How much experience does the editor have? Ideally, you want to work with an experienced professional that can help you with the entire project.
- Do you have a deadline? Is the editor able to help you? If you’re self-publishing, you might not have a deadline, but it’s still important to understand timelines.
- Getting a sample edit can help a lot, especially if you’re looking for a very specific type of editing.
- Asking for referrals is a great idea, since it will make it easier for you to trust the editor if he has lots of referrals and recommendations!
Where can you find the best editor for your book?
There are a variety of places where you can find editors. One of the best would be freelancing websites such as fiverr.com, since most editors are freelancers and they work based on the word count. There are also websites that have their own editors and you just send your work, they do the rest.
Another thing you can do is to use job sites and share the need for an editor for your particular project. It can help quite a bit, and this is a good idea because there’s a lot of traffic and you can find some great editors.
Conclusion
Self-publishing your book can be very challenging, but also extremely rewarding. If you can find a great editor, things can be even better. Aside from that, you also want to find the right book printing company to ensure that your book will look great and provide the quality people want from it. So to get started use our online calculator to get a price for your book. Once you have all these things narrowed down, you will have no problem getting amazing results!
