Lately, I’ve talked to several clients and found out they have made mistakes surrounding hiring a book editor—mistakes that cost them upwards of $10,000, so I created this informational episode so you don’t make those same costly mistakes! 

I share five critical facts every author must know about book editing. First, I address the blind spot reality where you cannot edit your own book effectively because your brain auto-corrects what you meant to write. This cognitive limitation causes repeated mistakes that disempower writing, and missing unclear explanations your brain automatically fills in. Professional writers, including myself, hire editors because even big authors need fresh eyes for objectivity that transforms good books into great books.

Fact two explains the four editing types in critical order: developmental editing first for big picture structure, content, and audience alignment; then line editing for sentence-level clarity and pacing; followed by copy editing for grammar and style guide compliance; finally proofreading for typos before publication. The biggest mistake is authors hiring line editors first then wanting developmental editing afterward, wasting money since they'll need another line edit after adding developmental content. 

Fact three covers realistic timelines for editing. I work on faster timelines, completing developmental edits in one week if you're in a timeline crunch. Good editors book out weeks or months in advance, and rushing editing backfires because rush jobs cost more and deliver less. Work backwards from your launch date and add buffer time since editing is not a once and done process.

Fact four addresses pricing. Cheap editing ends up costing you in missed opportunities because inexperienced editors miss critical issues and one lost speaking opportunity costs more than quality editing. Professional editing delivers higher speaking fees, attracts better clients, and creates immediate opportunities. Red flags include prices significantly below market, editors who don't specialize in your genre, unclear pricing, and "I can do it all" editors claiming every specialty. Authors will want to put aside and invest $2,000-$5,000 for book editing because skipping these damages reputation and costs income.

Until next time, keep writing, dreaming, and creating—your book is waiting to be born!

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The opinions expressed on the show by the host or guests are those of the individuals and do not necessarily reflect the views of Unicorn Publishing Company. Unicorn Publishing Company, the host, guests, and affiliates are not responsible or liable for any decisions made by listeners or actions taken hereto based on the information discussed in this podcast. By listening to this podcast, you acknowledge and agree to release Unicorn Publishing Company, the host, affiliates, and guests from any liability.

00;00;20;15 - 00;00;40;06

Speaker 1

Hey friends and feature authors, welcome back to another episode of podcasting for professionals. This week's episode is five essential Facts. Every author needs to know about book editing. But editing is so important. And I did my last solo on why it's important. You have a professional editor and you have your book professionally edited and the reasons for that.

00;00;40;13 - 00;01;00;17

Speaker 1

So today we're talking about five essential facts you need to know about book editing before you even hire your book editor. You don't want to know this. After we hire a book editor. But before. All right, my friends, but before we dive into today's episode, I want to give a big welcome back to my returning listeners and a big welcome to my new listeners.

00;01;00;19 - 00;01;36;00

Speaker 1

Make sure to hit that follow and subscribe button depending on what platform you're at. So you get these amazing tips dropped to your YouTube player or podcast player every week. All right, my friends, I want to, before we dive into today's content, I would like to share a little story. So one of my clients who, was looking for a book editor, had sent me a copy of their book because usually ask people like, send me a sample or a copy of your manuscript so I can look at it before I give them a price on editing, so I know how much editing is going to be needed in their book and can

00;01;36;00 - 00;01;58;19

Speaker 1

00;01;58;21 - 00;02;16;20

Speaker 1

So one of the things I would always recommend my friends is get a recommendation. So if you're going to hire an editor, ask them, hey, can I please have a, of information like email information for when your clients? I would like to get their opinion on your editing. And if they say no, I would say move on to another editor.

00;02;16;25 - 00;02;34;01

Speaker 1

Like, I have clients who would be glad to just email. Like I can just do a three minute email and be like, hey, this person just wants information on and, you know how we did with editing your book? And of course, I always you know, ask my client first and say, hey, I have someone who's looking at editing.

00;02;34;01 - 00;03;04;00

Speaker 1

Is it okay if I share your email with them so they can ask you about your experience with me? And they typically say yes. And then I just email, introduce them and let them chat via email. And then that prospective client can find out if I like what might be experienced was with my editing. So I would recommend that if you are going to, you are seriously considering hiring an editor, and you should be, and you're down to like maybe 3 to 5 editors, I would ask them for recommendations on work they have done.

00;03;04;00 - 00;03;23;24

Speaker 1

Now it doesn't have to be paid work as if it's a new editor. They might, you know, just have a couple books, but they didn't get paid for them. That's perfectly fine. But it does have to be editing or someone that they've worked with before in the writing, in writing content specifically. Because if it's not specifically content writing, you have no idea what the quality is or how that person works together.

00;03;23;27 - 00;03;52;04

Speaker 1

So I just wanted to give you that valuable piece of information. All right, my friends. So today, we are going to be talking about the five reasons you want to know five facts every author should know about book editing. All right, so, what item number? Fact number one, you cannot edit your book effectively, not edit your own book effectively, because you have what's called the blind spot reality.

00;03;52;07 - 00;04;12;08

Speaker 1

Your brain audio corrects what you need to write. So your brain's thinking one thing and you are writing another. So that is one of the things where, that happens all the time with editing, you're too close to your own content to see your problems, and you read what you intended to read, not what's actually on the page.

00;04;12;08 - 00;04;28;27

Speaker 1

I do all of these things. We all do all of these things, is how the human brain works. This isn't a skill issue, it's a cognitive limitation. And if you're human, you have it. There's no way around it. The other thing I see a lot of with the books that I professionally edit, is that people make the same mistake over and over and over again.

00;04;29;03 - 00;04;48;28

Speaker 1

So for example, I have a client right now. She uses ellipses and over uses ellipses. And when I did a search function on her chapters, she uses anywhere between 15 and 30 set of ellipses every chapter. Now that is not professional writing. And if she were to edit her own book, she would not have known to take all these ellipses out right?

00;04;49;00 - 00;05;08;27

Speaker 1

Ellipses can use. Nothing wrong with using them, however, is very rare that you need to use. Let's right is not very common, so you need to make sure that you're appropriately using ellipses. And that is like another thing that people do is they like to make three question marks at the end of a sentence that's not professional.

00;05;08;27 - 00;05;29;00

Speaker 1

Texting is fine. I do that with texting, whatever. It doesn't matter if your grammar is incorrect when you're texting your friend or your family member, but it is does matter. Excuse me if you are putting incorrect grammar in your, in your book. So we tend to make the same mistakes over and over and over again. They see it in oh, my client's another mistake a lot of people make is they use a lot of fuzzy words.

00;05;29;03 - 00;05;46;21

Speaker 1

So what I call fuzzy words is when people say something or stuff or maybe or sort of or whatever. It's not descriptive and it really powers your book. It's what I call powering. Right? So you're not using descriptive words. So it's taking power away from your words. And that's really important to know. You don't want to use it as fuzzy words.

00;05;46;21 - 00;06;28;19

Speaker 1

So that's I correct a lot of fuzzy words when I'm editing as well. Okay. So professional writers hire editor. So I have hired an editor for my professional writing. I am professionally writing a fiction romance book, a contemporary romance with another writer who's also a professional editor and has been a professional editor for over two decades. We have hired a professional editor for our book because we are in her own hands, and we're not going to see all the mistakes, even though we have done 6 or 7 self edits to the book already and have spent over 100 hours writing this book, we still cannot find the errors we are making, right?

00;06;28;19 - 00;06;49;08

Speaker 1

Not all of them. We will find most of them, but not all of them. And that's the difference between a good book and a great book. So make sure that you have a professional editor, right? Stephen King has editors, Malcolm Gladwell has editors. You're writing ability doesn't equal editing ability or editing success, and fresh eyes will catch what your familiar eyes are going to miss.

00;06;49;13 - 00;07;19;01

Speaker 1

So know that professional distance creates objectivity, and that is what helps to make your book a better book. All right, professional writers, excuse me, the dangers of DIY editing. Like we said before, you can overlook your repetitiveness and your redundancies and your blind to unclear explanations and logical gaps in your own book because you are not seeing them as unclear explanations, because your head is filling in that information for what it is.

00;07;19;05 - 00;07;36;13

Speaker 1

I'm currently been working with a client who I'm developmental editing their book, and they have a lot of terms in there that most people wouldn't understand because they're slang term. So I told this person, we need to explain what this term means because people don't know it. And that person reply back. I was like, oh yeah, I didn't think about that.

00;07;36;13 - 00;07;56;15

Speaker 1

Of course she wouldn't. She's writing her book and that she knows that because that slang term is in her head and she knows the definition, but her readers won't. And that's where you're going to lose readers, right? If they're not understanding what you're saying. Now, there is you may say, well, Lynn, what about the element of surprise or the element of like, oh, that's really cool or fascinating, yes.

00;07;56;15 - 00;08;16;12

Speaker 1

But you still need context and you still need to explain to your readers what is happening in your book. If you leave too much out. That's not mysterious. That's a reader. That's not that is not going to read your book any further than that point. Right. Because they need to know enough background information. So keep that in mind.

00;08;16;15 - 00;08;36;22

Speaker 1

You also have typos and errors, and other errors that damage your created your credibility. And you're going to be blind to logical gaps in your book because again, your head's going to feel this it all right to self-editing is the first draft clean up. So once you get your rough draft done you can go in and self edit it once or twice.

00;08;36;22 - 00;08;58;00

Speaker 1

Sometimes people will put it in the eye and say, hey, can you tell me about this aspect of my book? How can I improve my writing? But hey, AI is good for a self edit, but it is not. It is not a professional editor my friends. I am a professional editor. I, I edit things that people have written and I and I can tell they've written in AI because it has grammar mistakes.

00;08;58;00 - 00;09;19;09

Speaker 1

It has spelling mistakes, it has tons of references. Mistakes. Never use AI for your research, and it has other mistakes that make you look not credible. And you don't want to look not credible in your book, especially when you're handing it out for your business card. Okay, so professional editing is your quality assurance, right? Even if you've done multiple editing passes because those are always necessary, right?

00;09;19;14 - 00;09;51;11

Speaker 1

But you still need to hire a professional editor to do your developmental editing, your line editing. If you want to do your copy editing in Grammarly, you can do that. Or your grammar editing. That's not as big of a deal. Sometimes, depending on, you know, where your strengths are, though. But you do want to hire professional editors to help you develop your book, and you absolutely have to hire professional editors if you want to pitch to any publisher because you want your book to be strong when you go in the first time, not the second time or third time, because then you've taken another two years to publish your book.

00;09;51;11 - 00;10;15;11

Speaker 1

By that time that happens, you are better off taking spending the investment upfront. Getting an editor to make your book as strong as possible before you submit to that, that publisher on that point, a publisher is not going to take you seriously if you keep having to resubmit two and three times the same book rate, they're going to get tired of seeing your book and are eventually just going to, like, toss it off their desk.

00;10;15;11 - 00;10;35;14

Speaker 1

I mean, I would if I was a publisher, and I kept seeing the same book with the same mistakes. Right? So go in stall, hire a developmental and a line editor, and make sure that there are good editors, are experienced and have some work underneath their belt. And that they are going to do an excellent job on your book and that they're communicated with you as well.

00;10;35;17 - 00;10;59;04

Speaker 1

Okay. So budget for for professional help from the start. All right. Fat number two, there are different types of editing and you need more than one. So developmental editing is the big picture structure and content. Your organizational flow your chapter structure, your transitions, your content gaps and redundancies, your audience alignment. Are you speaking to your audience? Right.

00;10;59;04 - 00;11;15;26

Speaker 1

Your book shouldn't be for everyone. Your book should be for a certain audience. For example, my book, The Guide to Traveling Gluten Free, is for people who are gluten free because they're allergic to gluten, such as people who are celiac and have an autoimmune condition or people who have Hashimoto's and they can't eat gluten because it makes them sick.

00;11;15;28 - 00;11;36;25

Speaker 1

Right? So those people who also love to travel are fabulous, you know, readers for my book. So you need to know who your audience is. And when I work with my clients and I do book coaching, I give them what's called a book focused template so we can figure that all out from the beginning, right? So that there's no question on what the book focus should be.

00;11;36;27 - 00;12;03;14

Speaker 1

Right? Audience alignment timeline. Your timeline shapes your entire book. So make sure that developmental editor is going to help you with the timeline. All right. So those are all the things the developmental editor will do line editing, sentence level clarity and style, sentence structure and flow, word choice and voice pacing and readability. Tone consistency okay. And then you get a line edit after your developmental ad.

00;12;03;15 - 00;12;25;15

Speaker 1

That's another mistake I see people make all the time. So I am with an organization called DFA, its Editorial Freelancers Association, and I get work through there because people hire editors to IFR. And I have gotten, queries there like I have a I've gotten a line edit. I actually just got a query today in my email inbox and says, I have had hired a professional line editor, and now I want to get a developmental editor.

00;12;25;15 - 00;12;44;25

Speaker 1

It's like, you literally just did that backwards. Like, you always want to hire a developmental editor first because you're going to change the content after the developmental editor. So that person just wasted their money getting a line edit, because now they're going to have to add more content and get another line edit after their developmental edit. So developmental editing always comes first.

00;12;44;28 - 00;13;06;10

Speaker 1

And then you want to get your line editing. And third you want to get your copy editing which is your grammar, punctuation, spelling and capitalization. You also want a style guide. This is a really big thing that I see a lot of people miss out on, is that they don't have a style guide. And I am going to do another different episode of what is a style guide and why you need one.

00;13;06;10 - 00;13;32;04

Speaker 1

So make sure you hit that like follow or subscribe button so that you get this dropped to you when you need it. All right. Next is proofreading. That's the final error. Catching typos and formatting issues. Last minute catches before, catch catches on, grammar mistakes before publication, and a final quality check. And this is the very last step before you are going to format your book.

00;13;32;07 - 00;14;03;25

Speaker 1

All right. Why you can't skip levels each one addresses these different issues, doing them in the wrong order. Waste money. Like I mentioned earlier, skipping developmental editing gives you structural problems that are remaining in your book. Skipping proofreading is embarrassing grammar errors that are going to slip through well, most professional authors invest in is proofreading, line editing, sorry, proofreading, copy editing at a minimum, but I would always recommend what I recommend at minimum is developmental line editing because that's your big picture stuff, right?

00;14;04;02 - 00;14;26;27

Speaker 1

00;14;26;27 - 00;14;49;12

Speaker 1

So stay tuned. We will be back in just one moment.

00;14;49;15 - 00;15;14;26

Speaker 1

Hey friends, we're back with the second half of today's episode five Essential Facts Every author should know about their book editing. All right, essential fact number three editing takes longer than you think okay. So there are realistic timeline expectations. And if you have an editor that is like the editor I just hired, well, me and my coauthor hired for our romance fiction book, we had to wait three months to get her to edit our book, and we knew this ahead of time.

00;15;14;26 - 00;15;32;21

Speaker 1

So you have to know how backed up the editor is. I am typically six weeks out, sometimes four, depending on how much work I have and how fast it takes to get it done. Like, right now I'm eight weeks out, so because, one of my, clients had a little bit of a tech issue, so we had it take a little longer to get through that edit.

00;15;32;23 - 00;15;53;28

Speaker 1

So make sure you know in advance, ask the editor how far out are you booking your work so they know, right. But once your editor starts work, you should be able to have that done, depending on, the type of editing. So developmental editing typically takes around four weeks. Line editing 2 to 3, copy editing to and proofreading 1 to 2.

00;15;53;28 - 00;16;13;02

Speaker 1

Right. So it's depending on the type of editing you have, it's going to take a longer time. For me it actually those times are in half because I work really fast and I process information and I write to the eight, 10,000 words a day. So for me, a developmental edit typically takes a week. So for me it takes a lot shorter time.

00;16;13;02 - 00;16;29;06

Speaker 1

So if you're in a crunch, you definitely want to find out more about my editing. I would be happy to help you at right for you in the up on the contact form or book a discovery call. And I can help you out with your, dead editing in a much shorter amount of time if you're on a timeline.

00;16;29;06 - 00;16;50;12

Speaker 1

Crunch. Okay, but total time with professional edits is about four months. In that time, you can be worked on, work on your marketing plan, you're be going back and forth with your editor. There's lots of other things you could do for your book in that time by your ISBN. Okay? Why rushing editing backfires if you are rushing your editing right?

00;16;50;14 - 00;17;19;28

Speaker 1

Rush jobs costs more and deliver less, errors are going to slip through because your timeline is compressed and your book deserves proper time for your refinement. Are you have to plan? Is your publishing timeline accordingly? Work backwards from your launch date. Add buffer time for your unexpected delays. Account for your review time between editing stages, and look at any holiday and or vacations that you have and or your editor has that could impact your, you know, your date and it's done.

00;17;19;28 - 00;17;46;24

Speaker 1

Now, if you have a talk or a speech, that definitely applies, right? Because you have to have your book out by a certain day. Or if you're a thought leader and you have, you just wanted to be out by a certain time because there's a time of year that your industry does big launches, then that's really important. But some people don't have a strict timeline, and if you don't, then you don't have to worry as much about the timeline editing, although it will get really tedious if you have to keep waiting for people a long time.

00;17;46;28 - 00;18;10;16

Speaker 1

So still know how long it's going to take and how long you have to wait for that edit to happen. All right, so the revision loop reality is that editing is not once and done. Okay. You're going to receive an edited manuscript. You'll need to review it. Some sections are going to require an additional pass. Each editing stage might reveal another issue that you need to take care of in a future edit or the current edit.

00;18;10;19 - 00;18;34;07

Speaker 1

So build in time for review for your edits, right? So what I do with my clients is that I, start to edit their work. I give them, I share them, the document, I editing, I tell them to please look at the edits. I will continue editing this way if there's a way, if they don't. But they, have a question about the editing, I stop editing, we can meet on zoom, we can talk about what it is that we need to change moving forward.

00;18;34;07 - 00;18;55;01

Speaker 1

I change this things for them, and then they continue to edit their work. And then at the end, I take all their they go through and do all their comments. And then once they are through their comments, we make a time together where we go over their work on zoom live, real time, 1 to 1, and clean up any other edits or any other issues that they need.

00;18;55;01 - 00;19;22;13

Speaker 1

And then I clean them up and then they have a finished I finish editing job. So that's how that works with me. Every editor is different to make sure that you are you know what you are. Editors process is that's super, super important okay. Fact number five good editing cost money and it's worth every penny. So a developmental edit can cost anywhere between 5 and $0.12 a word a copy edit between 2 and $0.05 a proofread is 1 to $0.03.

00;19;22;16 - 00;19;44;00

Speaker 1

00;19;44;00 - 00;20;02;26

Speaker 1

So make sure you know that going in. If you are not, giving an editor a lot of money, like for example, I'm part of the Editorial Freelancers Association, and people post jobs that they need for editing on there. So I go on there and like on a daily basis to see what jobs are listed. One time I saw a person, they said, I have a 60,000 word book.

00;20;02;26 - 00;20;21;20

Speaker 1

I have $500 to pay for someone to edit this, and it was like a line edit. And sure, you can pay someone $500 line edit your book. Is it worth it? No, I would say save your money because that's not going to be a quality edit anyway. He's going to lie. He's going to line edit your book. That's 50 or 60,000 words for $500.

00;20;21;20 - 00;20;49;11

Speaker 1

Isn't going to do a good job, right? Cheap editing is expensive because inexpensive or inexperienced editors miss critical issues. Poor editing damaged your professional reputation and one more speaking opportunity because of that bad editing cost more than if you were to pay somebody for quality editing in the first place. Because remember, your book resents use for years to come, so invest accordingly in those years to come that your book is going to represent you.

00;20;49;13 - 00;21;18;01

Speaker 1

All right, that number five, there is an ROI for perspective for professional authors. So professional editing gives you higher speaking fees because your book is a better quality. Your quality book attracts better clients. Your quality book gets you more speaking gigs that pay you better and more media opportunities because you have a professional presentation. Okay, your investment comparison is editing versus damaged reputation and editing versus not getting paid as much.

00;21;18;01 - 00;21;41;01

Speaker 1

You're not getting any, anything that you are getting be able to use. All right. Do some red flags. You to know as a bonus six fact you need to know prices significantly below market rate. That is a red flag. Editors who don't specialize in your genre that could be a red flag, depending unclear about what's included in the price.

00;21;41;01 - 00;21;59;25

Speaker 1

Very big red flag. No contract or evasion policy. If you don't know how many revisions you get, and they're not clear on it. Extremely big red flag. I can do it. All editors who claim every specialty huge red flag run the other way. I mean, I am a ghost writer, right? But I cannot I don't do copy and proof.

00;21;59;25 - 00;22;19;17

Speaker 1

That is not my thing. I don't care how amazing the book is. Copy and prove. I refer out to another editor. That is a fabulous copy improve editor, but I don't ever do copy preventing. It's all my thing. And so, I do some like copy editing. If I go to line editing, I'll fix things that I see.

00;22;19;18 - 00;22;40;09

Speaker 1

Right. But that's not a specialty for me. So I refer it to another editor. And anybody who says I can do it all, that's not, that is not true. Right? That you can't do fiction and nonfiction really, really. Well, like, I do some fiction, developmental editing, but that's it. Like, I don't write fiction. I for ghostwriting, I write it for my personal, but I don't do it for a client.

00;22;40;16 - 00;23;01;18

Speaker 1

I don't do line editing for fiction copy or proof perfection. So there's a lot there's many things I don't do, but there are specialties I do work in, and that's nonfiction, ghost writing, developmental editing, line editing, formatting, and book cover design. I also do book coaching because I know how to guide people, especially new authors, through the publishing process.

00;23;01;20 - 00;23;22;27

Speaker 1

All right. To make sure that you budget realistically for that. And he is the right editor, makes all the differences. So that's really, really important to know that all of these things when you're looking for an editor. All right, my friends, this has been really great. I hope you have learned a lot from this episode. And remember, you are you.

00;23;23;00 - 00;23;43;26

Speaker 1

You are representing your book and your book is representing you. So you need to make sure that you have the right quality book to put out there, especially if you're using this for your, for your business calling card. Okay. I love working with new authors, so if you are having any of these difficulties, you need to find an editor for your nonfiction book.

00;23;44;03 - 00;24;06;09

Speaker 1

Definitely. Who to write for you that me and book your discovery call. That's right for you. You need to book your discovery call today because I can stand by your side and walk you through the publishing process with a fabulous professional edit that is going to sound great and represent you very well out in the field. One of my most recent clients, I edited his financial book for.

00;24;06;15 - 00;24;26;17

Speaker 1

He has 65 star reviews. So if you want those five star reviews on your book, go to my website right for you dot me. Click on the Discovery Call button and I can do this for you. That same thing for you. All right, until next week, my friends. This is when a liquidy reminding you to keep writing, keep dreaming, and keep creating.

00;24;26;17 - 00;24;28;22

Speaker 1

Your book is waiting to be born.