So um what do editors do exactly?

[Aidan of the tavern]

This is my first book, and I really don't know the basics about editors and submissions and all that, I only know writing as far as I'm concerned. I read somewhere that you never actually pay editors, they subtract their wages directly from your book's income, if and when it exists, am I right?

Anyhoo, I was hoping you guys could enlighten me. Presumably you and your editor get together and go through your work page by page? Do they point out misuse of grammer for instance or are you meant to know all that yourself? Do they point out a passage that won't go down well? Thanks in advance for helping a clueless greenhorn.

 

[Steerpike]

It depends, Aidan. It could be anything from relatively minor changes and making sure the presentation is appropriate for publishing, or it could be fairly substantive.

I know someone who now has a few novels published who was told by her editor to remove a significant element from her story (in this case, the death of an infant), and also rewrite the story to take the romantic subplot and move it to the fore. The editor felt that they could market the book better as a romantic fantasy, so the focus of the story shifted such that the romantic angle was primary and the other elements secondary. So in that case, I'd call it a substantial set of changes.

 

[BWFoster78]

I read somewhere that you never actually pay editors, they subtract their wages directly from your book's income, if and when it exists, am I right?

I'm not the most experienced guy with this as I've never been published, but this is my understanding:

If you submit to a publisher and your book is accepted, they will pay an editor to help polish your book. That person will suggest revisions which you will need to make.

If you're self publishing, you'll need to hire an editor yourself. This can run anywhere to a couple of hundred dollars for a manuscript review to a couple of thousand for a full line edit. You pay this money out of your pocket.

If they're doing a line edit, they will point out all kinds of stuff including grammar. I would think that the process is not done "over the shoulder." Rather, you'll give them a copy of your book, and they'll mark it up.

Hope this is accurate and that it helps.

 

[Aidan of the tavern]

It depends, Aidan. It could be anything from relatively minor changes and making sure the presentation is appropriate for publishing, or it could be fairly substantive.

I know someone who now has a few novels published who was told by her editor to remove a significant element from her story (in this case, the death of an infant), and also rewrite the story to take the romantic subplot and move it to the fore. The editor felt that they could market the book better as a romantic fantasy, so the focus of the story shifted such that the romantic angle was primary and the other elements secondary. So in that case, I'd call it a substantial set of changes.

I see. Oh I would hate to have to change my book just to catch a certain market, but then I'm stubborn. Is it pot luck or do you have some say over how much ground the editor covers?

I'm not the most experienced guy with this as I've never been published, but this is my understanding:

If you submit to a publisher and your book is accepted, they will pay an editor to help polish your book. That person will suggest revisions which you will need to make.

If you're self publishing, you'll need to hire an editor yourself. This can run anywhere to a couple of hundred dollars for a manuscript review to a couple of thousand for a full line edit. You pay this money out of your pocket.

If they're doing a line edit, they will point out all kinds of stuff including grammar. I would think that the process is not done "over the shoulder." Rather, you'll give them a copy of your book, and they'll mark it up.

Hope this is accurate and that it helps.

Thanks it does help. I certainly wouldn't think of self-publishing, certainly not this early in my writerhood anyway.

 

[Steerpike]

I see. Oh I would hate to have to change my book just to catch a certain market, but then I'm stubborn. Is it pot luck or do you have some say over how much ground the editor covers?

You always have a say in terms of what you agree to. If a publisher says they want your book, but that you'll have to change X, Y, and Z, you can tell them to go pound sand and sell it someone else instead

 

[The Dark One]

I've had two books published and steerpike's advice is closest to my experience.

My first book started with the publisher accepting and giving me his thoughts. Then he had three readers reports done - one of which included some very detailed structural and thematic suggestions - most of which I ignored, but I took account of some in yet another draft. Then the publisher said he was happy with the story but it needed to be shortened (he wanted 223k words reduced to 160k) - partly because of the print costs but also because he was worried that such a long book might be daunting for the primary market. (We eventually compromised on 192k words and a few readers have told me that they did find such a long book confronting.) After the publisher was happy with the final draft, it went through a line edit - ie, every word closely filtered by an editor. Her main role was to point out inconsistencies and overuse of particular words and expressions.

My second book was a much lighter process, possibly because I have learnt to do my own structural editing as I go. Several scenes were cut and many scenes were rewritten to slightly re-emphasise what was being achieved in the scene - then there was the usual line edit process and voila.

You do hear of publishers wanting books completely rewritten to achieve a different focus and/or target a different market, but I suspect this mainly happens to people already published. Publishers are so swamped by manuscripts these days that they simply toss aside something that doesn't hit the mark straight away. I reckon it would be a rare case now that a publisher would be prepared to really work with a new writer to get a book into publishable shape. Certainly the big publishers - target the smaller publishers if you would like to be taken through a proper editorial process.

 

[Philip Overby]

Editors do other stuff as well. Not just edit. For instance I was for about a year, serving as a submissions editor for a small press. It was extremely eye-opening for me.

Many writers don't like (obviously) being rejected or having things changed. I was actually more a slush pile reader. I would read manuscripts, evaluate them, and then send them to the publishers. If the publisher liked the idea, I'd ask for more from the writer. If they didn't like it, then we'd pass.

So there are many different types of editors. Not just ones that "edit."

 

[Graylorne]

I'm with a small press. First, my ms started out with 250k words. I got the advice to split it in two parts, so I rewrote an ending halfway and a new opening for the second part.
After acceptance came a line-edit. A process of three extremely hectic months (with a deadline), in which I had to rewrite sections, delete sections that I couldn't rewrite, take out two less relevant MC's and generally polish the wholt thing till it shone.
I've two pages of this process on my bookblog (graylorne.blogspot.com), they're in Dutch ofc but you can get an impression of how the editor worked.
After the final OK from the line-editor, my publisher checked the whole ms over in case we had overlooked a errant dot, comma, space etc.
And yes, some changes were bitterly difficult You really need to trust the people you work with. But the end result was better. More concise, better flow and no more irrelevant digressions.

 

[Kelise]

In addition to the above, most of the time their edits will be sent to you electronically, but at the start and every so often you'll go out for coffee (if you live close enough together) to discuss it over coffee.

 

[Robert Donnell]

That is the problem, there are several types of editors who do different things for wholly different reasons, but we use the word editor for all of them.

 

[SeverinR]

In addition to the above, most of the time their edits will be sent to you electronically, but at the start and every so often you'll go out for coffee (if you live close enough together) to discuss it over coffee.

Torture! No one said anything about having to drink coffee to be a writer. What next? Krispy Cremes or worse scones?
Editors are sadistic? I've heard rumors, but....

 

[Christopher Wright]

If you get the opportunity to work with a good editor, and you're willing to listen to him or her, the editor can help you make your novel so much better than you could possibly imagine. Even if it's already good.

If you have the misfortune to work with a bad editor, the same thing in reverse.

Keep in mind the following assumes the editors are good:

First you have copyeditors, who go through the document looking for typos. They are superior to just running spellcheck because they also catch words that are spelled right but used incorrectly. "I have to go two the store" will not be found by Spellcheck and you're going to feel like an idiot if it gets published.

There are also editors who edit for grammar, and they are superior to just running the grammar checker because they'll be able to detect when you're intentionally mangling grammar (i.e., if it's a speech pattern for the Narrator or a character) vs. when you do it accidentally.

Then you have editors who look at the book as a whole and try to find glaring plot holes you might have overlooked, whether there are chapters that need rework, whether some characters are weaker than others, and they make suggestions on changes that will take care of these problems. This is where editors and writers fight more, because the writer might not always agree with these suggestions. And it's tricky: editors are just people with preferences, like everybody else, so there's no way they're going to be RIGHT all the time. However, an experienced editor has the advantage of having read a LOT of "before" and "after" manuscripts, and has the experience to say "last time a writer did this and we fixed it, it sold well. Last time a writer did this and we didn't fix it, it didn't sell at all."

This is the part of the editing process that apparently a lot of us writers have a problem with because the editor is telling us our baby isn't perfect and needs to be changed. And editors don't always say that in ways designed to preserve our fragile writerly egos. However, if you have a good editor and you can stave off the defensive desire to fight back and work with the edits, apparently 9 times out of 10 the story comes out better at the other end.

Being told you have to take a hatchet to chapters 13 through 22 and combine two characters can be tough to take. But if a good editor recommends that, there's a reason he or she is saying it, and it's usually to make the book better.

 

[Aidan of the tavern]

This is the part of the editing process that apparently a lot of us writers have a problem with because the editor is telling us our baby isn't perfect and needs to be changed. And editors don't always say that in ways designed to preserve our fragile writerly egos. However, if you have a good editor and you can stave off the defensive desire to fight back and work with the edits, apparently 9 times out of 10 the story comes out better at the other end.

Being told you have to take a hatchet to chapters 13 through 22 and combine two characters can be tough to take. But if a good editor recommends that, there's a reason he or she is saying it, and it's usually to make the book better.

Thanks for that. Yes, I guess I do need to accept that the editor needs some say over the plot, but I guess part of my defensiveness would come from thinking "does this editor really care about this story or are they just trying to make it mainstream", but as you say I suppose a lot comes down to the editor you trust and the one you don't.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Thanks for that. Yes, I guess I do need to accept that the editor needs some say over the plot, but I guess part of my defensiveness would come from thinking "does this editor really care about this story or are they just trying to make it mainstream", but as you say I suppose a lot comes down to the editor you trust and the one you don't.

It seems like it would be almost impossible to approach this scientifically, and demonstrate whether a particular editor actually helps improve the book (keeping in mind that "improvement" is relative to a particular goal; e.g. if an editor makes the book win more awards but sell fewer copies, the author might not consider that an improvement).

My goal is to sell as many books as possible with the sole constraint that the books have to be ones that I would want to read. I don't have any need for editing at the spelling/grammar level (there are occasional typos, on the order of 1 per 10,000 words; yes, I counted on my last pass), but the levels above that (prose construction and storytelling) are NP-hard and come out best when one gets feedback to make sure that one isn't suffering from tunnel vision. To that end, I don't plan to use professional editors; instead, I give my work to beta readers and use their feedback to refine the story.

If, some day, I'm rich enough to actually hire a story editor for more "professional" feedback, well... the problem is in determining that a given editor will actually be able to provide insightful analysis. I'd have to try it and see if the feedback seems like it's worth the money.

 

[The Dark One]

Thanks for that. Yes, I guess I do need to accept that the editor needs some say over the plot, but I guess part of my defensiveness would come from thinking "does this editor really care about this story or are they just trying to make it mainstream", but as you say I suppose a lot comes down to the editor you trust and the one you don't.

This is actually a really important point, and to some extent it comes down to how desperate you are to see your novel on the shelves. If you sign with a commercial publisher they will have a vision for your book and it may not be the same as yours. Then it becomes a negotiation, with them always holding over you the threat that if you don't make the changes then it won't get published. Are you happy to see you name in print even if it's not exactly (or nowhere near) what you thought you were writing?

When I got accepted the first time I was assigned several editors but one had to go. His vision for the book was nothing like mine, would have required a huge amount of work and would have been aimed at a teenager/YA market in which I had zero interest. In short, it seemed to me that he had entirely missed the point of the book I had written and I was not prepared to let it change that much. Fortunately, the publisher agreed with me and the final version had quite a few chunks deleted and was thoroughly polished, but was still pretty much the book I had written.

 

[Aidan of the tavern]

This is actually a really important point, and to some extent it comes down to how desperate you are to see your novel on the shelves. If you sign with a commercial publisher they will have a vision for your book and it may not be the same as yours. Then it becomes a negotiation, with them always holding over you the threat that if you don't make the changes then it won't get published. Are you happy to see you name in print even if it's not exactly (or nowhere near) what you thought you were writing?

When I got accepted the first time I was assigned several editors but one had to go. His vision for the book was nothing like mine, would have required a huge amount of work and would have been aimed at a teenager/YA market in which I had zero interest. In short, it seemed to me that he had entirely missed the point of the book I had written and I was not prepared to let it change that much. Fortunately, the publisher agreed with me and the final version had quite a few chunks deleted and was thoroughly polished, but was still pretty much the book I had written.

Yes, that editor who had to go is the kind I want to avoid. Obviously I would like it to be in a form where people can pick it up in a bookshop and hopefully like it, but not at the expense of it's individualistic style (I bet I'm the kind of writer editors hate to work with ). I do not consider writing to be a lucrative enough profession for money to be my main objective at this stage.

 

[Bear]

The editors that I have worked with went over all my mistakes, injected some opinions on certain parts of the story, checked for continuity of the plot. After I submit the manuscript the editor goes over it then sends me back a word document and I have to approve all of the changes. I'm independent so I contract out editors. They basically do what I pay them to do. Basically, editors do many things but it depends on the scenario as to what they will ultimately do.

There are also different types of editing such as line edits and copy editing. The line edit is the basic spelling and stuff. As you go into the different types things get deeper and more complicated.