The Search is Over

[Malik]

 

[Svrtnsse]

Nice one, gratz!

 

[Malik]

This has been an uphill fight, man. Fraught with missteps and backsliding.

I needed a literary editor, not a high-school English teacher.

I went through this whole thing last year where I wanted a comprehensive developmental and line edit, and the editor came back telling me that I needed to rework the whole book. He wanted tight, clipped sentences. Paragraph or even chapter breaks for POV shifts -- my personal nemesis, BTW. No made-up onomatopoeias. No sentences starting with conjunctions, even in speech. I took him at his word and got about ten pages in before I fired him. It cost me half up front plus a cancellation fee. Ouch.

Costly mistake on my part, but my first reaction when I sent out samples for edits was that whoever sent back the most corrections was the most thorough and therefore the most bang for the buck.

Several sample edits later, I just today found someone who lets me write the way I want to write but picks up after me where I'm sloppy. Like a maid service that you bring in to do a full-on Julie Andrews on your house before your mother-in-law comes over. (What, no one else does this?)

Funny thing is, she normally doesn't do my genre (military/portal fantasy espionage thriller -- Stephen Hunter meets Neil Gaiman) but wants to work with me because she likes my book. Which is exactly what I wanted to find, because I'm hoping to appeal to readers outside of the fantasy genre, and I've been working on the necessary voice -- reading and absorbing styles of other genres -- since I started writing thirty-odd years ago. Which is why I don't write like a fantasy writer. And that's probably why I kept having fantasy editors giving me blank stares and suggesting complete stylistic rewrites.

Anyway, I'm over the freaking moon right now. Going for a run.

 

[Ankari]

Hello Malik,

I'm about to hire a developmental and copy editor soon. I'd like you, if you're willing, to PM me your agreement with this current editor and the previous one. I'd like to know what the going rate is, and what's to be expected.

 

[ThinkerX]

Hello Malik,

I'm about to hire a developmental and copy editor soon. I'd like you, if you're willing, to PM me your agreement with this current editor and the previous one. I'd like to know what the going rate is, and what's to be expected.

Making progress with the big multi-book series? Sheesh, how time zips by...

 

[Russ]

Hello Malik,

I'm about to hire a developmental and copy editor soon. I'd like you, if you're willing, to PM me your agreement with this current editor and the previous one. I'd like to know what the going rate is, and what's to be expected.

The "going rate" is all over the map. I have seen quotes for a developmental/line edit of a 100,000 word novel anywhere from around $1000 to $6000 US.

The OP makes some important points. Finding the right editor can be hard, but it can take your work to a whole new level of quality. Although he might want to rethink that whole head hopping in the same paragraph thing...

You have to find the right balance and trust both yourself and the editor. On one hand you don't want one who will try to change you into a writer you are not, but you do want someone who is willing to call you out on BIG problems (in addition to the little stuff) and then you have to have the courage and wisdom to embrace good criticism even if it is hard.

 

[Malik]

The "going rate" is all over the map. I have seen quotes for a developmental/line edit of a 100,000 word novel anywhere from around $1000 to $6000 US.

This.

I got one quote toward the top end of that spectrum but I didn't take him seriously. Most quotes for non-NYT-bestseller-sporting independent editors came in between $1200-2200 for 96,000 words. That's for a few passes of line and content editing and a final polish for typos.

he might want to rethink that whole head hopping in the same paragraph thing...

Touche.

However, like infodumps, head-hopping is common in every other genre -- especially in thrillers and literary fiction, which are where I do most of my reading. (Imagine anything by Tom Clancy without infodumps; or Jane Eyre or Tom Jones if there was a law that the author needed to start a new chapter for every perspective. You couldn't get through one conversation.)

Also like infodumps, head-hopping is an advanced craft, and really hard to do well. It takes years of practice and study -- and incorporating authors who excel at it into your voice -- until it flows right. For that reason, I'd rather have an editor who knows a good POV shift from a bad one than an editor who forbids them altogether because fantasy. YMMV.

And fantasy readers may hate my stuff. That's fine. I'm not writing fantasy, which I think has been my problem all along. I'm writing action/espionage thrillers that happen to revolve around the portal fantasy trope.

Anyway. I hope to have the first book out by fall and I'm sitting here beside a stack of notepads and beat sheets for the second. We'll see what happens.

 

[Russ]

This.

I got one quote toward the top end of that spectrum but I didn't take him seriously. Most quotes for non-NYT-bestseller-sporting independent editors came in between $1200-2200 for 96,000 words. That's for a few passes of line and content editing and a final polish for typos.

Very true. The lady who quoted $6k had about 30 books that had been NYT bestsellers and had edited a number of the giants in the fantasy field as well. She was worth every penny we paid her.

However, like infodumps, head-hopping is common in every other genre -- especially in thrillers and literary fiction, which are where I do most of my reading. (Imagine anything by Tom Clancy without infodumps; or Jane Eyre or Tom Jones if there was a law that the author needed to start a new chapter for every perspective. You couldn't get through one conversation.)

Also like infodumps, head-hopping is an advanced craft, and really hard to do well. It takes years of practice and study -- and incorporating authors who excel at it into your voice -- until it flows right. For that reason, I'd rather have an editor who knows a good POV shift from a bad one than an editor who forbids them altogether because fantasy. YMMV.

And fantasy readers may hate my stuff. That's fine. I'm not writing fantasy, which I think has been my problem all along. I'm writing action/espionage thrillers that happen to revolve around the portal fantasy trope.

Anyway. I hope to have the first book out by fall and I'm sitting here beside a stack of notepads and beat sheets for the second. We'll see what happens.

While I don't want to turn this into a head hopping thread, I don't think it is common in commercial genre fiction at all, including thrillers. And funny thing about Clancy, did you notice that his info dumps got smaller and smaller as his career went on?