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I am told that one can hire an editor one's self. I listened to an interview of an author who publishes independently. One editor edits for the normal grammar and spelling errors. The other looks for logic problems and unclear passages in the narrative. He also hires someone to do the artwork for the cover, usually two or three choices. I'll have to dig up a citation for that but right now I'm running out the door.
This is a good resource for such questions. Best viewed before signing a contract. https://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/...
Here is the link to an interview of author Phil M. Williams on independent publishing. Many of his ideas will apply to a writer with a traditional publisher. He also talks about how to run a business, and how to compete against the BIG authors like... uh... well... never mind. :-)
http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/freedom-through-indi-publishing
NOTE: I was the history writer for this podcast for 3 1/2 years. I loved the work and still love the podcast. However, a few minor vulgar words are uttered at times. If that will cause you to run screaming into the night, skip this podcast.
Jean, if as writer you recognize grammar or punctuation mistakes, but don't feel qualified to correct them, hire someone who does. Any friends who were English majors?
I've only done non-fiction writing, but the first set of copyeditors hired by my publisher were *awful*, and I just wrote back, gave the publisher a list of blatant mistakes chosen from all of three pages out of three hundred, and told them that that particular set of copyeditors really shouldn't be hired again. They were quite polite about it, and the second set were much better. It does need to be done before publishing, but don't hesitate to stand up for the quality of your work, especially if someone's coming along and making it worse. Also, there are a surprising number of people who enjoy casual copyediting that you may be able to hire freelance next time around.
Jean -- it looks like you've been scammed. Here's a BBB complaint about Covenant, which makes it clear this author paid Covenant to publish their book. Did you pay them? If they present themselves as a traditional publisher, that's not done: https://www.bbb.org/us/sc/murrells-in...
Here's a discussion, under a post about Christian publishers, that mentiones Covenant a lot: "This is why I have not accepted the offer I received from New Covenant Books. They want 595 down and 295 a month for ten months. Too much for me." and someone else: "They want $3300 to publish a book and say they do edits but have been vague on what they mean by edits." So okay, you've probably paid a lot of money to have your book published. This looks like a scam to me. Paying a company a lot of money to publish your book for you is only half a step sideways from the old scam vanity presses where you paid a publishing company a lot of money to publish your book. In fact, a lot of the current "self-publishing" scammers are the old vanity publishing scammers, having either "expanded services!!" on their old companies, or started new companies with new names, to take advantage of essentially the same group of inexperienced writers who were being scammed before, in a slightly different way.
This comment, from the blog owner in the discussion above, shows how it's happening: "Covenant Books is a self publisher." No, they're not. But someone who seems to have some info that he's sharing with writers who know less is calling them a self publisher, which just spreads the problem.
Self publishing means what it says -- you're publishing yourself. You might (and should) hire some people to help you, but you're the publisher, you're in charge, and the people you hire have to work to your specs. There are honest companies that offer a range of services, but the good ones put their price list right out in the open, and let you pick and choose what you want, involving you in the process all the way through. Then they give you the completed files and let YOU open publisher accounts with companies like Amazon, Apple, B&N, D2D, etc., and let YOU actually upload your files and publish your book. This is important because as the account owner and publisher of record, YOU then have complete access to all sales data, and the money paid goes straight into YOUR account.
Honest companies also don't charge you $500 or $1000 to start a Facebook and/or Twitter account under the name of your book (which some scammers have done), or a similar amount to set up a web site under your or your book's name, using a free service and a template that lets them set up your web page in 20 minutes or so max. They don't charge you money for useless press releases, or other marketing schemes that won't work if you're a newbie self-publisher, and which you can't confirm they ever did anyway.
Paying a company to do all the work and (supposedly) send you occasional royalty checks is NOT self publishing, or indie publishing, or anything like that. It's a scam, period. I'm very sorry you've been taken in, but your chances of ever getting your book fixed, or seeing a dime out of these people, is very low.
My advice is that you look at your contract and figure out whether you can get out of it. If you're determined to publish your book, in good condition -- if this one particular book is very important to you -- then it might be worth taking the contract to a lawyer for an opinion. Getting away from Covenant is your best move right now.
Here's a self-publishing assistance company that I haven't used, but some writer friends of mine have. Lucky Bat has all its prices out in the open, and you can hire them to do only what you want; they don't try to up-sell you into an expensive "package." Here's their price list, on their web site: https://www.luckybatbooks.com/service... Yes, it's expensive. But they do a good, professional job, and they're completely honest. They won't try to rip you off, or make a grab for the rights to your book. Any publishing service company or individual you hire should be just as open and above-board as Lucky Bat.
If you still want to self- or indie-publish, whether this book or many others you might write in the future, do your research about what independent publishing is actually about. Joanna Penn's web site is a great place to start; she has a page full of resources for authors who want to self-publish. She's not a scammer, and won't try to take advantage of you. Yes, she's written a lot of books on the subject. 1) She'll give you one for free, just for signing up for her mailing list, 2) the rest are reasonably priced, and 3) there's a huge amount of info, including links, plus topics and names you can Google yourself, on her site for free. The self-publishing page is only one; explore her site and you'll find a treasure trove of info. Also, she regularly does podcasts with people in the business, which also have great info; you can listen, or if you're not into podcasts (which I'm not) she posts transcripts to her blog.
Dave Gaughran also has inexpensive books on how to indie publish, as do Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Dean and Kris write about many topics related to writing, publishing, business, professionalism, and not getting ripped off.
If you want to do this for a living, rather than just publish this one book, it'll be worth it in the long run to invest in Vellum, a software product which is becoming the industry standard for e-book formatting. I bought a refurbished Mac laptop (because I'm a PC person) only so I could use Vellum, which only runs on the Mac OS. Chuck Heintzelman has written a great book on how to use Vellum. Vellum is easy to learn, easy to use, and once you're up to speed, you can create your book files (the ones you upload to Amazon, etc.) quickly and easily. Their formatting options are fairly limited right now, but they're working on that, and what they have is beautiful.
Yes, there's a lot. You don't have to do it all yourself, but you have to be familiar with everything required and how it works so that you can make an informed judgement about whether someone you hire is doing a good job or not. For example, you can hire a cover artist, but if you don't know what a good cover -- for the genre of your book -- looks like, how do you know whether they're giving you value for your money?
There are many, MANY people and companies out there who'd love to get their hand in your pocket. Your only protection against them is knowledge. Take however much time you need to study self- or indie-publishing, educate yourself in how it's supposed to work, what the options are, and which options are best for you. All the responsibility is yours, but all the control is yours too. You can make sure your book is produced just as you wish before you press the "Publish" buttons, and whatever money you earn will come directly to you, so you don't have to wonder whether the company publishing you is skimming. It's a lot of work, but it's worth it. :)
Best of luck!
Sorry, I forgot to link to the Christian publisher discussion:
https://thejohnfox.com/best-christian...
At the risk of sounding self serving (because I'm a freelance editor), even if you're publishing through a more traditional publisher, it doesn't hurt to hire an editor before you consider your ms complete -- unless you have shor-level friends willing to donate their time.
If you're being asked to "do your own editing" by the publisher, this is essentially self-publishing, or what used to be called vanity press: you're paying someone to print your book. In that case, absolutely you need to find someone to do your editing before you send the ms to yourself, and (possibly the same) someone to do the proofreading on the typeset pages.
There's also a group here on Goodreads - the Beta Reader Group - where you can find people who offer a wide range of help, both free and paid, from basic beta reading to full-on editing: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/....
(I'm a freelance editor too.)
I USED to be a magazine editor when I was young and foolish. I agree that hiring an editor is a good idea if for no other reason that one can avoid a lot of obvious and embarrassing mistakes. When I write, most of my time is taken up removing redundant passages, or good ideas that should appear somewhere else or not at all. I tend to lose focus when a new idea suddenly springs up. I need to keep those ideas, but I also need to finish the passage I had begun. I try to remember that the best is often the enemy of the good. (You can quote me on that. :-) )
@Hiring' an editor? You mean be paid for it? I beta-read and proof-read novels without payment. Also non-fiction reference books written in English by people who think in other laguages. Only one of them pays me, and that's because he's a profession writer who self-publishes. Though I do get free copies of the published books. I have done paid editing work for seaveral publishers in the past, but I'm too old for tht kind of pressure now.
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Jan 02, 2019 05:32AM
I am told that one can hire an editor one's self. I listened to an interview of an author who publishes independently. One editor edits for the normal grammar and spelling errors. The other looks for logic problems and unclear passages in the narrative. He also hires someone to do the artwork for the cover, usually two or three choices. I'll have to dig up a citation for that but right now I'm running out the door.
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This is a good resource for such questions. Best viewed before signing a contract. https://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/...
Here is the link to an interview of author Phil M. Williams on independent publishing. Many of his ideas will apply to a writer with a traditional publisher. He also talks about how to run a business, and how to compete against the BIG authors like... uh... well... never mind. :-) http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/freedom-through-indi-publishing
NOTE: I was the history writer for this podcast for 3 1/2 years. I loved the work and still love the podcast. However, a few minor vulgar words are uttered at times. If that will cause you to run screaming into the night, skip this podcast.
Jean, if as writer you recognize grammar or punctuation mistakes, but don't feel qualified to correct them, hire someone who does. Any friends who were English majors?
I've only done non-fiction writing, but the first set of copyeditors hired by my publisher were *awful*, and I just wrote back, gave the publisher a list of blatant mistakes chosen from all of three pages out of three hundred, and told them that that particular set of copyeditors really shouldn't be hired again. They were quite polite about it, and the second set were much better. It does need to be done before publishing, but don't hesitate to stand up for the quality of your work, especially if someone's coming along and making it worse. Also, there are a surprising number of people who enjoy casual copyediting that you may be able to hire freelance next time around.
Jean -- it looks like you've been scammed. Here's a BBB complaint about Covenant, which makes it clear this author paid Covenant to publish their book. Did you pay them? If they present themselves as a traditional publisher, that's not done: https://www.bbb.org/us/sc/murrells-in...Here's a discussion, under a post about Christian publishers, that mentiones Covenant a lot: "This is why I have not accepted the offer I received from New Covenant Books. They want 595 down and 295 a month for ten months. Too much for me." and someone else: "They want $3300 to publish a book and say they do edits but have been vague on what they mean by edits." So okay, you've probably paid a lot of money to have your book published. This looks like a scam to me. Paying a company a lot of money to publish your book for you is only half a step sideways from the old scam vanity presses where you paid a publishing company a lot of money to publish your book. In fact, a lot of the current "self-publishing" scammers are the old vanity publishing scammers, having either "expanded services!!" on their old companies, or started new companies with new names, to take advantage of essentially the same group of inexperienced writers who were being scammed before, in a slightly different way.
This comment, from the blog owner in the discussion above, shows how it's happening: "Covenant Books is a self publisher." No, they're not. But someone who seems to have some info that he's sharing with writers who know less is calling them a self publisher, which just spreads the problem.
Self publishing means what it says -- you're publishing yourself. You might (and should) hire some people to help you, but you're the publisher, you're in charge, and the people you hire have to work to your specs. There are honest companies that offer a range of services, but the good ones put their price list right out in the open, and let you pick and choose what you want, involving you in the process all the way through. Then they give you the completed files and let YOU open publisher accounts with companies like Amazon, Apple, B&N, D2D, etc., and let YOU actually upload your files and publish your book. This is important because as the account owner and publisher of record, YOU then have complete access to all sales data, and the money paid goes straight into YOUR account.
Honest companies also don't charge you $500 or $1000 to start a Facebook and/or Twitter account under the name of your book (which some scammers have done), or a similar amount to set up a web site under your or your book's name, using a free service and a template that lets them set up your web page in 20 minutes or so max. They don't charge you money for useless press releases, or other marketing schemes that won't work if you're a newbie self-publisher, and which you can't confirm they ever did anyway.
Paying a company to do all the work and (supposedly) send you occasional royalty checks is NOT self publishing, or indie publishing, or anything like that. It's a scam, period. I'm very sorry you've been taken in, but your chances of ever getting your book fixed, or seeing a dime out of these people, is very low.
My advice is that you look at your contract and figure out whether you can get out of it. If you're determined to publish your book, in good condition -- if this one particular book is very important to you -- then it might be worth taking the contract to a lawyer for an opinion. Getting away from Covenant is your best move right now.
Here's a self-publishing assistance company that I haven't used, but some writer friends of mine have. Lucky Bat has all its prices out in the open, and you can hire them to do only what you want; they don't try to up-sell you into an expensive "package." Here's their price list, on their web site: https://www.luckybatbooks.com/service... Yes, it's expensive. But they do a good, professional job, and they're completely honest. They won't try to rip you off, or make a grab for the rights to your book. Any publishing service company or individual you hire should be just as open and above-board as Lucky Bat.
If you still want to self- or indie-publish, whether this book or many others you might write in the future, do your research about what independent publishing is actually about. Joanna Penn's web site is a great place to start; she has a page full of resources for authors who want to self-publish. She's not a scammer, and won't try to take advantage of you. Yes, she's written a lot of books on the subject. 1) She'll give you one for free, just for signing up for her mailing list, 2) the rest are reasonably priced, and 3) there's a huge amount of info, including links, plus topics and names you can Google yourself, on her site for free. The self-publishing page is only one; explore her site and you'll find a treasure trove of info. Also, she regularly does podcasts with people in the business, which also have great info; you can listen, or if you're not into podcasts (which I'm not) she posts transcripts to her blog.
Dave Gaughran also has inexpensive books on how to indie publish, as do Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Dean and Kris write about many topics related to writing, publishing, business, professionalism, and not getting ripped off.
If you want to do this for a living, rather than just publish this one book, it'll be worth it in the long run to invest in Vellum, a software product which is becoming the industry standard for e-book formatting. I bought a refurbished Mac laptop (because I'm a PC person) only so I could use Vellum, which only runs on the Mac OS. Chuck Heintzelman has written a great book on how to use Vellum. Vellum is easy to learn, easy to use, and once you're up to speed, you can create your book files (the ones you upload to Amazon, etc.) quickly and easily. Their formatting options are fairly limited right now, but they're working on that, and what they have is beautiful.
Yes, there's a lot. You don't have to do it all yourself, but you have to be familiar with everything required and how it works so that you can make an informed judgement about whether someone you hire is doing a good job or not. For example, you can hire a cover artist, but if you don't know what a good cover -- for the genre of your book -- looks like, how do you know whether they're giving you value for your money?
There are many, MANY people and companies out there who'd love to get their hand in your pocket. Your only protection against them is knowledge. Take however much time you need to study self- or indie-publishing, educate yourself in how it's supposed to work, what the options are, and which options are best for you. All the responsibility is yours, but all the control is yours too. You can make sure your book is produced just as you wish before you press the "Publish" buttons, and whatever money you earn will come directly to you, so you don't have to wonder whether the company publishing you is skimming. It's a lot of work, but it's worth it. :)
Best of luck!
Sorry, I forgot to link to the Christian publisher discussion:https://thejohnfox.com/best-christian...
At the risk of sounding self serving (because I'm a freelance editor), even if you're publishing through a more traditional publisher, it doesn't hurt to hire an editor before you consider your ms complete -- unless you have shor-level friends willing to donate their time. If you're being asked to "do your own editing" by the publisher, this is essentially self-publishing, or what used to be called vanity press: you're paying someone to print your book. In that case, absolutely you need to find someone to do your editing before you send the ms to yourself, and (possibly the same) someone to do the proofreading on the typeset pages.
There's also a group here on Goodreads - the Beta Reader Group - where you can find people who offer a wide range of help, both free and paid, from basic beta reading to full-on editing: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/.... (I'm a freelance editor too.)
I USED to be a magazine editor when I was young and foolish. I agree that hiring an editor is a good idea if for no other reason that one can avoid a lot of obvious and embarrassing mistakes. When I write, most of my time is taken up removing redundant passages, or good ideas that should appear somewhere else or not at all. I tend to lose focus when a new idea suddenly springs up. I need to keep those ideas, but I also need to finish the passage I had begun. I try to remember that the best is often the enemy of the good. (You can quote me on that. :-) )
@Hiring' an editor? You mean be paid for it? I beta-read and proof-read novels without payment. Also non-fiction reference books written in English by people who think in other laguages. Only one of them pays me, and that's because he's a profession writer who self-publishes. Though I do get free copies of the published books. I have done paid editing work for seaveral publishers in the past, but I'm too old for tht kind of pressure now.
