So, you’ve written your novel. You may have even gotten a beta read or two. It was really hard, but at least you only had to worry about pushing yourself, and you made it happen.
Now it’s time to get into the next round of editing, and you don’t know how to select the right services for your story. Doing too much can be costly, but not having enough help can lose you readers. We’re here to help you find the right balance to give your book the edge it needs.
Your Budget
If you’re looking to build a career as an author, you have to treat your books like a business. That means making a profit. But most businesses need investments in both time and money to get off the ground. If you’re just getting started writing, it’s likely that working with a full-service editor will give you more than a polished manuscript. You’ll learn a lot, too! And that can help you save time and money in future projects.
Still, you want to be savvy about where to invest and when to scrimp. It’s never going to serve you to over-spend. That’s why it’s important to work with an editing team that understands your budget and has creative ways to cut costs on your writing project.
Your Strengths and Weaknesses
One of the first questions I ask all of my editorial clients is what they consider their strengths and weaknesses as a writer to be. It sounds like a standard interview question, but knowing what my authors want help with gives me a sense of what to look out for and how to help them select services that are the best value for their needs. Knowing their strengths helps me understand the goals of their narrative and how to really solidify their authorial voices.
You can do this evaluation for yourself as well. What do you really love about your writing? If it’s your story structure, plot, and characters, you can probably forego a developmental edit. But if your strengths lie in painting beautiful paragraphs and really creating a visual experience for readers, it’s more likely that skipping copy editing is more your thing. Same goes for your weaknesses. Do you know that your spelling and grammar are atrocious? Then you probably want to make sure you get a proofread done.
Your Goals
What are you wanting from your publishing experience?
If it’s primarily a line item for your resume and to say you’ve written a book, then you can publish a novel without an editor altogether. It’s really empowering to know this is something you can do entirely on your own, and you deserve that.
If you’re wanting to make a bunch of money off one book, it’s likely you’re in the wrong business. But there are still choices you can make to maximize profits! Often this looks like trading beta reads with other authors, going for a copyedit only, and getting a marketing analysis to help find your target readership.
But it’s most likely that you want to build a career in writing. By investing in your early books before you have an audience, you’re more likely to get repeat readership when you do make it big. When readers fall in love with your hit novel, they’re going to want more, and there your back catalogue will be waiting. If it’s good work, they’ll read it all and likely sign on for your future work as well. If it’s lacking, it’s a lot harder to make that connection back.
Your Feedback
You’ve been writing for a while, and having a realistic sense of your own capabilities will get you a long way. But ultimately, you’re wanting to share this book with other readers. What are they saying about your book? If you haven’t already, working with a beta reader is a great place to get more feedback about what more your story needs.
Ideally, your beta readers will represent the audience you hope to read your novel once it’s published. So their feedback can act like a road map to what kinds of edits need to be made. Were they confused, bored or unsatisfied? It’s likely you’re looking at the need for a structural change that developmental editing can target. Or maybe they fell in love with your story but said they had a hard time digging into it or kept falling asleep before they could make real progress. That’s more likely to need prose-level editing like a line edit.
Your Gut
You’re probably spending a lot of time analyzing which editorial services you need from every angle possible, and that can be very valuable. You want to be certain you’re getting the best editorial advice for your dollar. But ultimately, you need to listen to your instincts when you’re selecting a professional to work with.
If you’re really good at listening to your gut, you may even be able to get professional help on your developmental edit at a fraction of the price. Working with a book coach can allow you to bring pinpointed areas you need help in and talk them over with a professional editor without having to pay the per-word price of a full editorial review. This allows you to keep the things you love the same and help improve the scenes you need more work on.
Developing the right editorial strategy is going to be different from author to author as well as from book to book. Only you have all the information you need to make this decision, but there are a lot of people you can use as resources. Most important is making sure you’re working with a professional you feel comfortable with who won’t push you to do more than you need but also has the knowledge necessary to polish your story. Find that person, and you’re set.
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