Can an AI editing tool really replace a professional human editor? With traditional editing costing anywhere from two to five thousand dollars, AI tools promise similar results for a fraction of the price, leaving authors wondering why they should pay for a professional. But that is the wrong choice, because AI cannot replicate what a human editor does, and the wrong decision can damage your content, waste time and money on rewrites, and ultimately harm your reputation.

I share several real client stories illustrating how AI gives flat-out wrong developmental advice, produces amateur-looking books riddled with mistakes, and strips away the expertise and credibility that make your book valuable. Poor editing has a real domino effect, since event coordinators talk to each other and won't hire authors whose books look sloppy or inauthentic, meaning the money you think you're saving actually costs you opportunities and income.

I walk through the common misconceptions on both sides, clarifying what AI editing tools genuinely do well versus where they fall short. The heart of the episode is a strategic editing workflow that uses AI appropriately for first-pass cleanup while reserving developmental editing, line editing, and final proofreading for skilled human editors who understand context, voice, industry nuance, and your target audience.

I also give an important caution that if you plan to pitch a traditional publisher, you cannot use AI at any point, since publishers will pull a contract the moment they discover you’ve used AI in any context of your work.

The bottom line is that AI and human editing serve different purposes, and you should never skip the human editor who protects your quality and your reputation.

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Hey friends and future authors, this is Lynn Eliquity Smargis. Welcome to Self-Publishing for Thought Leaders podcast. I'm a ghostwriter and publishing strategist who has assisted dozens of authors to help them write, edit, and self-publish their nonfiction book. Today we're talking about AI editing tools and how authors are making costly mistakes using these tools and depending on them as a substitute for a professional editor.

So inside this episode, you'll learn what AI editing tools can and cannot do, why editing is best handled by human editors. But before we jump into today's topic, make sure to join my author support group, Self-Publishing for Leaders on School, where you can find out more about editing and how you can successfully hire an editor for your work. All right, my friends, let's look at this problem clearly, okay?

The editing decision every public self publishing or every author makes, not just if you're self-publishing, right? Is whether or not to use AI for your editing. Because traditional editing can cost anywhere from two to five thousand dollars, depending on your length of your manuscript, how many edits you're going to do with a professional editor, and and many other variables. But mostly it depends on.

Length of your manuscript and how well you've written your book in the first pass. An AI editing tool can promise similar results for a fraction of the price. And so authors are confused about like, hey, if I can use this AI editing tool to edit my work and it's the same as a human, then why would I pay the money for a professional editor? Which is a very valid question. But that is the wrong choice because AI editors cannot replicate.

What a human editor can do for many different reasons, and we're going talk about that in this episode. The wrong choice can damage your book content, which damages your reputation. Waste time with rewriting your book when you get it edited wrong by any editor, but especially an AI editor, and you're spending more money on editing than you need to because you haven't hired the right professional in the first place. This mistake authors make.

That skipping human editors to save money because they believe an AI editor is just as good. They use AI to write their book, replacing a ghostwriter, or use AI as a professional book coach. And they assume that AI understands the context of their book, the storyline, or world building when it really does not. So I'm gonna give you a share with you a real client story. actually a few client stories here. An AI edited book.

that AI edited wrong and gave bad advice. I was on a forum one time or a a post somewhere and somebody posted their work and they wanted people to critique it. And the one thing I said was, I'm all the way down 500 words, and I had no idea where I'm at in your environment. Like I don't know. I could be on a train, I could be on a plane, I could be in the middle of of a house. Like I knew it was some physical structure, but I had no idea.

Where I was until I read five to seven hundred words. And that's not good. I should know where I'm at the second I start reading that chapter. And he said, what he said was, and this is almost a direct quote, is that, I put this in AI and it told me I had too much environmental background. So it told me to take it out. So I took it out, and this is what I came up with. And I'm like, no, the AI is literally.

completely wrong it 180 wrong on this person when you can't ha it's really hard to have too much background environment. Usually when new authors and people write books, they don't put enough in. So for an AI to tell him to take it out was absolutely ridiculous and completely wrong advice. Not even sort of wrong. Completely wrong advice. another story is credibility issues, right? So I've heard about people

Who people have told me instances about authors who have used AI to write or edit their book and they read the book, and it's like, you know, it's it and it's this person who's speaking on stage. And literally, I've had no people who've said, I looked at the book, I picked it up, there were all these mistakes in it. I literally they could have gotten the book for free. They didn't even take it home. It was that bad. So that ruined your reputation, and that's not good, never a place you want to be, because we all know.

Getting a reputation back is so hard to do. Extremely hard to do. So you want to make sure you keep your reputation when you're writing your book. another client story is that when you use AI to write and or edit your book, right? It removes your expertise and credibility with prospects and potential clients and other readers because they read this and it sounds like AI and it's not good and it doesn't.

It doesn't have the context that you need to give people to understand your framework, your process, your step-by-step, whatever it is better. It's gonna gloss over those. So you definitely do not want to use AI as your editor for those reasons. because when you have poor editing, it makes your book look amateur and it damages your professional reputation. I got a bought a book, a keynote speaker was I was at a conference.

This keynote speaker sounded amazing. She sounded like she knew what she was talking about. I'm like, I'm gonna get her book because it's gotta be amazing. She's a great speaker. I got her book. It was never edited. If she edited, maybe she edited it with AI, I don't know, but it was really bad. And I literally said to myself, I'm never gonna refer this person to any of my clients because if she's this unprofessional with her book, how unprofessional is she gonna be when she interacts with my clients? And then that makes me look bad, right? So that kind of

You know, domino effect is real and it is definitely gonna affect you if you put out a book that is really, really poor quality because you've used AI to edit it. You've wasted the money on the wrong type of editing services, you've delayed your publication because you have to redo your work because AI didn't do a good job, or you had an editor who used AI, which is not good, and you should always you ask any editor.

Do you use any AI in your editing? I do not use AI in my development or aligned editing at all. That's all human-based work that I do myself based on my experience and my professionalism and my knowledge and expertise. Okay, you have lots of loss opportunities from books that don't perform. Not only loss opportunities, new opportunities, but it can negatively affect you because event coordinators do talk to each other, right?

And if there's an event coordinator, it's like, hey, did you get this person's book? It was horrible. Like there was misspellings all over the place. The context was off. It sounded really horrible. I think AI wrote this. Like, and they're not gonna hire people who are they believe are inauthentic or have are putting out sloppy work, right? Because that looks bad on them.

and you're not making more money by saving money using AI as an editor. You're actually making less money because your book looks unprofessional, it reads unprofessional, and then that gives you an unprofessional reputation. So there's some common misconceptions about AI editing. One is that AI can catch every edit and mistake a human editor can catch. And that is absolutely not true at all.

AI does not do context. AI doesn't do a lot of different things, right? AI doesn't always understand the human emotions or why humans react the way they do, right? It's a good summary note taker when you're on Zoom. It does certain things really well, but one thing it cannot do is understand that piece of humanity. AI editing is a complete replacement for human editors. That is also false because of what we just mentioned. AI tools under do not understand context and nuance.

Which is also another false belief. Like people think that I I does understand context and nuance, and we're like, well, seeing when I wrote about this, it understood this. And it's like, okay, maybe that topic it did. But it's not gonna understand every topic, and it's definitely not gonna understand if you have you're using business lingo or industry, industry lingo, it's not gonna understand that and not gonna understand context within human relationships as well.

Cheaper is better when you're just starting out. That is so risky. And it is never, never a good thing to always go cheaper, right? Like if you are serious about your business and you're serious about your career and your speaking engagement, you need to invest the money in yourself, in your book, and and you know, in your business. Because if you don't invest any money, people don't will not take you seriously. All right. So some common misconceptions about human editing is that human editors

you have to have a human for every task you do on your book, which is not true, right? We used we talked about last episode that using AI as an ideator is fine. You just don't want to use it to actually write your book. AI tools are only for amateurs, which is not true. Anyone can use an AI tool as long as the UI you're using it is proper. That's what you want to look at. Human editors catch every editor, that every editing mistake, that is also not true. I have literally

Bought books that were published by the big five. And they one of them didn't have a preposition in it. It didn't have a comment. Like so, even books from traditional publishers who use all human editors, which is the best way to go, you know, we still don't get everything, but it's gonna sound human, it's gonna relate to people, and it's gonna still it's gonna look professional, right? And it's not gonna sound inauthentic because it's a human editing, not a machine editing your book.

Think of it this way, my friends. Think of it like when you buy right that Chinese knockoff or whatever it is on Amazon, you know it's not a good quality product, right? But you're not expecting it to be a good quality product because maybe you just want to use whatever it is two or three times and you're not worried about the quality, right? Your book is the opposite. You don't want to you make your book look like a Chinese knockoff. That is never ever a good idea. And it's gonna damage your reputation, and it's really hard to get your reputation back.

once your book looks like a Chinese knockoff. Professional editing means avoiding AI entirely. That's not true. You can use AI for ideation. You can use AI to get certain ideas for editing, but you don't want to use it for specifically everything that you're doing. That's never a good idea. Okay, so what AI editing tools do well? They they can help with grammar and punctuation basics

Spelling and typo errors, like if you mean you're writing in Word or you're writing in a Google Doc, right? It can help you with typo errors, which is really, really great and efficient and handy as you're writing. consistency in style choices, it can help with sometimes, depending on what it is. and it is great for a cleanup on your first pass of your book, right? Like if you just need to spell your words correctly on the first pass of your book, AI is a great tool to use for that. but

Any AI editing tools cannot understand your book's overall structure and flow. It cannot recognize your unique voice. It cannot preserve it. It cannot write in your unique voice. It cannot catch industry-specific nuances. It cannot catch industry-specific context. And it cannot provide developmental feedback on context. That's what I was talking, the example I talked about earlier.

Where it said, don't put the environmental things in, just write about this, the write about what's going on. Totally not true. It completely threw me. And when I read that passage, I'm like, where is this going on? Right? Not good for developmental edit. I know I've heard I've seen people do it before. It never ever ends up well. It just makes the book worse. So never use it for developmental editing. And you definitely don't want to use it for line editing because it's gonna change your voice and it's going to bland it out and

Dumb it down and not not do a good job for you, right? So you definitely don't want to do any type of line editing or developmental editing with AI. It's not gonna properly coach you, right? For as a book coach, please don't use it for that. I've seen people do that before and it's given them such wrong information because it gives them information based on whatever it pulls off of the internet, and we know what comes off the internet isn't always correct. So

Don't use it as a book coach and it cannot understand your target audience's expectations, pain points, and their needs, right? Even if you tell it, it's not going to understand that in context. So you don't want to use it for any type of editing that has anything to do with that or writing. It cannot make judgment calls about what content is good to keep and what content is good to cut. As in the example I said before, it just messes it up. It just doesn't understand what you need.

To add for context. So the strategic editing workflow for professional authors who want to do a great job and sound professional in their book is first of all, you can use AI for a first pass cleanup, grammar and spelling, right? Before a human editor sees it. That's a perfectly good way to use AI. Now I will caveat with this: if you are planning on going with a traditional publisher at all, you cannot use AI.

For your editor. You cannot use AI for anything. So do not use AI if you are writing a book and you're planning on pitching it to a traditional publisher. They will not take your book. There is a person I talked to recently and who said one of her professional people in her network had landed a contract with a traditional publisher, which is really hard to get. And the traditional publisher found out that.

The editor that the person used used AI for the editing and they pulled the contract. traditional publishers have no problem pulling a contract if they think any AI is used at any point. So when you are interviewing editors, ask them directly, do you use any AI when you edit? And if the answer is yes and you're working with your traditional publisher, say no. Even if the answer is you're you self-publishing your book, say no. Because when you're hiring a human editor, the human should be doing the work.

not the AI. All right. So basic inconsistent basic consistency issues like commas and and hyphens, things like that, AI is fine to fix, right? Removing typos and f and errors, things like that. But you want to use a human for developmental editing, for structure, chapter organization. That's one thing AI gets so wrong every time organization, it is so bad at organization. It's not even funny.

I've read stuff people have put up and I can tell AI has written it because it is not well organized and it does not flow well because it's just picking pieces from all over the place. content gaps and redundancies, you see a lot with AI editing. And so you want a human editor to edit your content gaps, your redundancies.

your audience alignment especially, right? You want to make sure your book is written for your avatar and you want to make sure your ghostwriter or your editor understands who your avatar is and who you're writing for. So when they are editing your book, they position you well. Your story, argument, development, all of that kind of stuff, you need a human editor for because AI cannot replicate this. All right. Now step three, use a human copy editor for line editing.

Or excuse me, a human editor for line editing, right? This is going through line by line and sentence level clarity and voice preservation editing. You do not want to use an AI for this because it's going to dull out your voice. It's going to make it sound very vanilla, and it's not going to make it sound like you. It's going to make you sound like everybody else. That is a big no-no when you are writing your book, my friend. All right. You want to have your industry-specific terminology accurate. So you need to use a human for that.

When I'm doing someone's book and I'm editing, if I don't understand a term a term that's industry specific for someone's industry, I just ask them, like, what does this mean? And we talk and they respond to me via the chat box or we get up on a call. And so that way I know how to edit their book so that their book translates correctly when the reader is reading that industry-specific terminology, right? And AI is not gonna understand. And if it doesn't understand it, we all know AI.

likes to make things up and falsify things. So it's just going to make something up when it doesn't understand it. And then not only is it not bad editing, but it's actually putting incorrect and false information in your book. And you definitely don't want that. Okay. Nuanced language and tone decisions you need a human line editor for. Okay. So this is where AI editing can come in handy. Again, if you're not planning on going with a traditional publisher, right? It's a second pass for any

kind of misspellings you've done, right? Or consistency with your with your language terminology, it can find certain things. But you want to make sure that you're ready for your human proofreader for the final step where their human proofreader is going to polish it to get fresh eyes on your manuscript, to catch anything that's been missed before, and to make sure that your manuscript is publication ready and high quality.

All right, my friends, and remember your quality is still intact. You need to keep a human editor, right? You can be time efficient without sacrificing standards by using AI correctly. Again, don't use AI if you are using a going with a traditional publisher. common obstacles, make sure that if you have a budget constraint, prioritize human developmental editing with your budget.

Make sure you save that money ahead of time and figure out what that cost is going to be based on your book and your type of book. So you can have really good developmental editor. I'm a professional editor and I hire other editors to edit my stuff because I know I can't edit my own stuff because I'm too close to my book. All right. AI can help speed up, but it definitely never replaces your human work.

Okay. So AI and editing and human editing serve different purposes. Don't skip human editors, my friend. They are the only editors that know how to hire how to edit your book for context and edit it well. Okay. You don't want that tarnish reputation because you used AI to write or edit your book, because once you have that reputation, that's gonna spread like wildfire. And then you're not gonna see the results from your book that you're gonna that you want to expect. All right.

So, my friends, remember if you want to learn more about book editing, I post information about book editing all the time in my community. Make sure that you join my author support community, self-publishing for leaders on school. Get the information you need to professionally edit your book, connect with other professional authors who are navigating the same process. You get access resources on editing strategies. You can purchase my book coaching, right? You've got a ghostwriting professional there with you.

To help you, I will help you guide along the way. The link is right underneath this video or in the show notes if you're listening to the audio podcast. All right, my friends, make sure you've hit that subscribe button because next week we're talking about what nobody tells you about marketing your book on LinkedIn. And I've got a great guest, Julia Zada, who's going explain all of it in detail in the next episode. So make sure to join us. All right, my friends, remember to keep writing, keep dreaming, and keep creating. Your book is waiting to be born.