I hit a big milestone recently: I booked an editor! Although the process ended up being smooth and actually pretty fun, it was definitely one of the parts of publication I was most intimidated by. So let’s talk about how I picked my editor and what criteria I looked for in the editor I chose!

What type of editing do you need?

The first thing to think about is what type of editing your book needs. There are four types of editing, and they go in this order:

1. Developmental editing is high-level editing of the story itself: the substance of your plot, characters, worldbuilding, themes, and so on.
2. Line editing is sentence-level editing having to do with flow, word choice, and readability.
3. Copy editing looks at grammar and spelling.
4. Proofreading is a final pass looking for any small errors that were missed in previous stages.

Your manuscript needs all four types of editing, but you may not want to pay for all four types, since that’s a lot of cost (a good, highly qualified editor for a novel-length manuscript can run you over $1000 for some types of editing). Under the right circumstances, developmental editing can be handled by a combination of critique partners and beta readers. If you’re relatively new to writing and haven’t done a ton of self-editing in the past, or don’t have access to multiple trusted critique partners and a solid pool of beta readers, I would err heavily on the side of hiring a professional for as many different types of editing as you can. However, because I had several critique partners early in the process (several of whom have editing or publishing backgrounds, and very generously did multiple passes–their feedback was gold!), I opted to skip paying for a developmental edit and focus my resources on line and copyediting.

This is sort of a controversial thing to do in the world of self-publishing, and for good reason! It will be very obvious to readers if you publish a book that lacks developmental editing, even if they can’t quite put their finger on what’s wrong. “I don’t need a developmental editor” is also one of the most common and insidious pitfalls authors fall into. I truly would not have felt comfortable doing this without the feedback I got from those critique partners, and without also chatting about the editing my book had already undergone with the line/copy editor I ended up hiring. Maybe I’ll do a longer post about how this all worked later, but for now I direct you to this video by indie author Mandi Lynn about the circumstances in which you can consider skipping paying for a developmental editor, which calmed me down a lot.

Line and copyediting are the stages where I knew I’d need the most help. They were the parts of the process I knew there was no way I could handle on my own, and my critique partners and I had also gotten into a lot of debates over line and copyediting quandaries. Line and copyediting can also be combined into one step, which many editors offer for a slight discount over getting each type done separately. So the first step I took was to narrow my search down to editors that offered that combined service, and had lots of experience specifically in line editing and copyediting.

Budgeting and planning for editing

The list of editing types above isn’t only ordered from first to last, but from most to least expensive. Developmental editing is typically over $1000 for a novel-length manuscript. Line and copyediting are slightly less, tending to hover in the $500-$1000 range depending on the length of your manuscript, and beta reading is the cheapest of all. Obviously, that’s a big investment, even if you skip hiring a developmental editor.

But you also don’t want to go too cheap. Be wary of editors with shockingly cheap prices, and critical examine the experience they’re bringing to the table. Editing is a skill that involves a huge amount of time and energy when done right, and if you’re going to spend money on it, you want to make sure you’re paying for quality. I decided my budget for line/copy editing was no higher than $1000, and ideally somewhere in the $600-800 range. (For reference, because editors charge by the word, my manuscript is currently around 100,000 words.) The normal rate for the editor I ended up hiring was right smack in the middle of this range, but with a discount she was running, I actually ended up under-budget! (Note that they’ll probably have you pay a deposit upfront when booking–at least a quarter of the total cost up front.)

And about booking months in advance–I’m not kidding! I booked my editor for July, and I was fully prepared to book for August or even September if the editor I wanted wasn’t available until then (I booked in early May). Some of the editors I was looking at weren’t available until well into the fall. Start looking for your editor long before you think you need to.

Where to find editors and what to look for

When I created my author Instagram account several years ago, the first thing I did was follow a whole bunch of editors. To this day, pretty much any time I see an editor who specializes in a genre I write and whose creative philosophy appears to jive with my own, I follow them. This really paid off! Whatever social media you’re on, start connecting with editors, even if you aren’t anywhere near hiring one yet (I hadn’t even started writing Hunter of Seals when I started doing this!). That way, you’ll have plenty of time to see their content roll across your feed and decide which ones you’d be most interested in working with.

When it was time to find an editor, I sat down with my phone and scrolled through my Instagram follows with a notebook in front of me. For every editor I came across, I wrote down what they’d charge to edit a manuscript of my length, and made notes on their qualifications, genre preferences, availability, sample edit policies, and other things I felt strongly about. I also checked out each editor’s content to get a feel of what their editing style would be like. It’s worth noting that I also vetoed a couple of editors who seemed overly rigid, harsh, or negative, or had posted content that portrayed authors in a negative light (even anonymously, this is not a good look, y’all).

And yes, I did say rigid! Grammar is mostly pretty black-and-white, but good editing requires nuance, too. A good editor will take your style and your narrator’s voice into account, and recognize that there may be more than one right way to write a given sentence. I wanted someone who would help me polish and refine the manuscript while leaving room for my preferences and treating their craft like the art form it is.

Genre preference was also a big one for me. Hunter of Seals is a fantasy novel, first and foremost, but it isn’t all fantasy. It contains the first beats of a slow-burn romance that takes off later in the series, and it has notes of thriller and sci-fi influence. I’ve been told some parts of it read like an action movie. I think that cross-genre influence is one of the things that makes it special, and I wanted an editor who would help me preserve the unique tone I think it has compared to most fantasy books, rather than steering me toward “correcting” it to look more like traditional fantasy. Now, when an editor lists the genres they like working with, they aren’t just stating a preference–they’re telling you what they have the most experience in. And I’m a firm believer that even when you’re dealing with fiddly grammar rules, knowing the expectations of the target genre matters. I wanted an editor whose experience spanned all the different genres that influenced Hunter of Seals, and who would be equipped to help me make it shine in that context.

The sample edit

Don’t hire anyone without getting a sample edit, period. Instructions for getting a sample edit should be somewhere on a prospective editor’s website or social media. If they aren’t, reach out and ask. If they don’t do sample edits, run.

A sample edit is exactly what it sounds like: you send a chunk of your novel (typically 1000-2000 words long) to an editor, and they give you a taste of what their editing style looks like. It’s also a chance for the editor to see what it would be like to work with you. You might think to send the beginning of your book–don’t! Most editors would vastly prefer to see a chunk of the midsection of your book, since this tends to be the most lightly self-edited portion of any manuscript. Beginnings, by comparison, tend to be over-edited, and it’s in the editor’s interest to get an honest look at what the most labor-intensive part of their job might look like. It’s also in your interests, since you want to know what their harshest criticisms might look like, and if it’s anywhere, it’s gonna be in the roughest part of the book.

My sample edit was from Chapter 9 of Hunter of Seals, around a third of the way into the book, and I specifically picked a scene I knew I hadn’t given a lot of attention to in previous phases of editing. It stayed very much the same plot-wise from the first draft through four rounds of developmental editing apart from some slight additions that I knew had not been proofread much. I also didn’t proofread it before sending it off; I just slapped it into a word document and released it into the wild. (The actual manuscript will, of course, get a little more care, but for the purposes of this sample, I wanted to see what my worst work would look like in a prospective editor’s hands.)

The editor I went with requested a 2000-word sample edit (on the high end of word count for samples, which I really appreciated!), and got back to me in three business days. These were the main things I looked for (and, I’m happy to say, found!) in her feedback:

1. Liking the book. An editor who doesn’t even like the story isn’t going to do it justice. I wanted to hire someone who was enthusiastic about the story and enjoyed being in this main character’s head as much as I do. The editor I hired clicked with the main character right away, and instinctively understood what I was going for in terms of the unique blend of genres, and had good things to say about the story as whole. Hire someone who gets your work, first and foremost!
2. Thoroughness. That word document came back with a lot of comments on it, and it was evident she’d done multiple passes, and thought through her feedback carefully. Her comments all described the reasoning behind each specific change, and I even learned a thing or two about grammar from her that I’ve already started applying in my writing (notice your girl is no longer putting spaces on either side of her em dashes–check it out!).
3. Options. As I mentioned, the ability to maintain an author’s authentic voice is a mark of talent in an editor, and a big part of this is offering options. In several different places, this editor offered choices for how to rephrase a tricky sentence or alternate punctuation to use depending on the tone I’d like to achieve. This is the nuance I was talking about! Edits like these will help me nail not only the accuracy and artistry I’m going for, but maintain or even enhance the voice and emotion of the story. It also gives me room to adjust that voice and that emotion in different parts of the story without sacrificing polish.
4. Positivity. I talked about this in the context of beta readers in my last post, but it is so, so important that anyone giving you feedback on your story knows how to give compliments when they’re due. An unending, relentless stream of critical comments, even when you asked for them, even when you hired someone specifically for the purpose of criticizing you, is exhausting and disheartening. It also deprives you of the opportunity to learn what’s already working well about your writing, which will impede your ability to fix problems effectively. This isn’t about ego-stroking–it’s about being able to point to a good example and say, “No, see, like that! Do it like that!” Hearing that an editor likes a particular line or phrase gives you a benchmark to aim for when you’re implementing their suggestions for improvement.
5. Good communication. Throughout the whole process of obtaining this sample edit, the editor was prompt, clear, and professional in her communications with me, proactively offering information about when to expect the edit back, and even the opportunity to ask follow-up questions about her suggestions. It was clear immediately she was someone I’d be able to comfortably collaborate with, and that I won’t have to worry about what’s going on on her end, because I’ll always know.

She also corrected a few sentences that had really been bothering me, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. This affirmed my choice to spring for professional line editing, since these were sentences neither I nor any of my readers had the faintest clue how to fix. When a piece of critical feedback makes you so happy you’re bouncing in your chair, you know you’ve found the editor for you.

To booking and beyond!

In the end, I’m so happy to announce that Hunter of Seals is booked for a July line/copy edit with Meg of Clarity Copy Co.! I’m so excited to work more with her, and delighted to have found an editor to whom I feel comfortable entrusting this book.

In the meantime, Hunter of Seals is still out with its final round of beta readers, one of whom has already finished reading! Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves. I doubt there will be much to clean up plot-wise in June. This book means everything to me and I truly cannot wait to share it with the world.

Happy editing!