Do you need to hire a book editor before submitting to an agent or publisher?
Editing is an incredibly important part of the writing process. But when should you be paying for professional book editor services? And when is this an unnecessary expense?
Here we take a look at the various editing options you’ll come across when writing and submitting your manuscript.
Traditional publishing explained: the role of the in-house book editor
Let’s imagine that you’ve got agent representation and/or a publishing deal. Here’s what the book editing process tends to look like:
Your agent asks you to do a first round of revisions on the larger elements of your story before you submit your manuscript to a publisher. This is called developmental editing.
You have a publishing contract! Now the in-house book editor at your publishing house will do another round or more of edits. (Again, generally developmental.)
Finally, your manuscript is sent on to a team of freelance book editors, who will copyedit and proofread your story, until it’s ready for publication.
The above process should not cost you, the writer, any money. A traditional publisher pays for the editing process.
This means that once a publishing contract is in place, these later stages of editing don’t cost an author anything.
What if a publisher asks you to pay for editing services?
If a publisher asks you to pay for editing yourself, approach with caution. No traditional publisher would do this.
Putting it plainly, the publishers that ask you to pay (often referred to as hybrid publishers) may not have the writer’s best interests at heart. From my experience working with aspiring authors, hybrid publishers tend to prey on the inexperience of writers, as well as their hopes and dreams, to get them into contracts that really don’t favour the author whatsoever.
They tend to ask for considerable sums of money in order to publish your book, claiming that they will match your contribution.
Your book will get published. But because they’re receiving payment from you, there is little incentive for hybrid publishers to market the book once it’s available for sale.
They have little ‘skin in the game’ as they’ve (or more accurately - you’ve) covered the overheads.
In traditional publishing, the money should always flow to the author, so if that’s not the case and if you’re happy to front costs involved with publishing, you might want to consider self-publishing instead. That way, you have complete ownership of your story and receive a far higher percentage of your sales. But self-publishing is a topic for another blog post, so let’s get back on track.
So should you hire a book editor before submitting?
We now know that working with hybrid publishers is something that should be done with the utmost caution. And that when you have a contract with a traditional publisher, your editing requirements are taken care of.
So is it important to put your manuscript through an editing process before you submit it to an agent or publisher?
It’s definitely not an essential part of the process.
However, it’s worth remembering that agents and publishers receive hundreds of submissions every week.
Publishing a book is competitive business, so the better the condition your manuscript is in when they read it, the better the chance you have of grabbing their attention.
If you want to make sure that your story demonstrates the potential an agent or publisher is looking for, then you can try one of the following editing options:
Self-editing
Hiring a book editor
Let’s take a look at what both of these editing routes involve.
Self-editing
You can achieve so much by self-editing your manuscript. In fact, it’s a skill that all authors should try to master.
If you decide to self-edit your book before submission, here are a few tips that may help.
Enlist the help of friends and family – ask them to read your manuscript and give brutally honest feedback.
Let your first draft sit for a while before editing – a little time away from your work helps you to approach it with fresh eyes.
Read your story aloud – this is a great way of identifying clunky sentences and unrealistic dialogue.
Use editing software – Grammarly, Hemingway App and ProWritingAid can help you to find and edit overused words, clichés and poorly structured sentences.
Root out typos – reading a hard copy of your manuscript or simply changing the font on screen can help you to spot mistakes you’d otherwise miss.
Hiring a book editor
Not confident with DIY editing? Or feel you’ve reached a natural limit in your self-editing abilities? Or perhaps you’ve already received a few rejections from agents and/or publishers and don’t really know what the issue is? Then hiring a professional editor for your book is a logical choice. An editor can provide:
An unbiased opinion on your manuscript
A clear critique of your book’s strengths and weaknesses
Knowledge of the book market – the things that agents and publishers are looking for
Insight into why your book has been rejected by agents and publishers in the past
A list of changes you can make to develop a more readable and saleable story
Basically, a book editor helps you to address issues within your manuscript before (or while) you embark on the potentially gruelling submissions process.
What type of book editing service should you choose?
Most book editors offer a range of different services. So it’s important that you’re picking the right one for this stage of the writing process.
Pre-submission, you don’t generally need someone to do proofreading. Unless your manuscript is littered with spelling, punctuation and grammar issues, most agents and publishers will be willing to overlook some errors within the proofreading scope.
And copyediting the entire manuscript, while it will undoubtedly provide some benefit in terms of making your manuscript a more pleasurable read, can be a waste of your resources at this stage in the process if you haven’t addressed potential issues with the larger elements of your story (more on this below!).
Why? Because when they first read a manuscript, agents and publishers aren’t looking for perfect grammar, spelling and punctuation. They won’t even mind the occasional clunky and difficult-to-read sentence.
Instead, they want to see that your story works well overall. They want to see compelling characters, a clear narrative arc and all of the key elements of fiction incorporated to great effect.
So what you’re most likely to need at this stage is a manuscript assessment – a critique on the bigger-picture elements of your book.
With this type of editing service, you’ll find out whether your structure, characters, plot, pacing, narrative and POV come together to make a cohesive and convincing story. You’ll often find that larger changes to the book overall will occur with this kind of developmental editing, meaning any proofreading or copyediting done beforehand to those sections would have been a bit of a waste.
How much does a book editor cost?
This varies depending on the service and the book editor you choose.
According to the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), guidelines on minimum hourly rates are as follows:
Proofreading = £26.90/hour
Copyediting = £31.30/hour
Substantial editing, rewriting, development editing - £36.00/hour
Take a look at my services, and you’ll see that I charge by the word, which I think makes it easier for writers to budget. Here’s my current price list:
Copyediting = £12.50 per 1,000 words (with discounts for novels over 50,000 words)
Manuscript assessment = £7.00 per 1,000 words
Pre-submission critique and copyedit = £200 for 10,000 words
In summary
You don't need to hire a book editor if you’re planning to submit your manuscript to an agent or a traditional publisher, particularly if you feel confident in your self-editing skills.
However, the fresh perspective and industry expertise of a professional book editor can be incredibly useful.
If you want to increase your chances of getting agent representation or a publishing deal – or if you’ve already received a few rejections but don’t understand why – hiring a book editor can prove a very worthwhile investment in both your manuscript and your ability to assess your own work well into the future. It can provide you with helpful tools and show up sticking points that you may never have even realised would be an issue.
I understand that editing is a big expense for authors. That’s why I offer a critique and copyedit service for the first 10,000 words of your book. This is a more affordable option than a full copyedit or a manuscript assessment.
With this service, you get feedback on what’s working (and what isn’t) in the opening chapters of your story. I’ll also fine-tune your writing to ensure it flows well at the sentence-level.
This means that when agents and publishers ask to see the first few chapters of your book before requesting the full manuscript, the short excerpt that you send is everything you want it to be.
And with that, I’m off to make myself a cup of tea and eat a mince pie.
Until the next time,
Candida x
