Authors & Reviewers discussion

Authors, how do you edit your book? Do you pay someone to do it, or do you do it yourself, and have other people help you?

I can't afford the $1200-$1500 it costs for a professional editor. My first book was edited by one friend and two family members. My little sister got a hold of it and found a bunch of things they missed.

I sent her my second book to edit and she did a really good job, so she's now my official editor. We are both waiting for our editing copies of my third book.

Just as a side note, I'm reading a book that was published by Harper Collins and I've found a few spelling/typos already and I'm only on page 98 of 422. No doubt this was professionally edited and there are still errors.

I do find it funny that I can find them easily in others books but not my own. Hmmpphhh.

It is always like that. And there is never going to be a perfect book.

★Ms.Jackie ★ wrote: "It is always like that. And there is never going to be a perfect book."

And that drives me crazy like you would not believe. It just blows my mind that 10 people can read my book and miss "he kisses her on the check", including myself. LOL

Personally, this is part of why I go the traditional publishing route and let someone else publish my book. Because I get a cover and an editor, neither of which I can afford if I were to self publish. My agent also edits before she sends my books out, and she's a grammar Nazi. lol

Found an awesome editor through a fellow author. She is amazing and gets like 99.9% of errors and it only cost me like $250 for my entire second book. Denise D. Gottshalk. I don't know if she is taking on new clients now or not but she is very good

Thanks for this, this is great information to have :-)

Thanks for the info!! :)

S.K.N how many words was your book?

GR says 390. Is that right?

390 pages, about 70,000 words. It is 390 when it is formatted but she goes by how many pages unformatted. It was 1.25 per page and it was 199 pages unformatted I believe. But she charges as low as 75 cents a page

LOL, she said words, I put Pages LOL

lol. That's Ok. I don't think word number is listed. most of my books are/ will be around 70,000. However the third one is looking to be closer to 80,000 or 90,000 even...

Wow, that's crazy

The last book that I wrote is over 70,000. The first two are around 50,000 to almost 70,000.

I'm just having the worst time with the editor I hired. It's been truly awful. :(

There are quite a few listed around goodreads too. Go to the goodreads authors and readers group (the huge one) and look at the editors folder. Also check out some of the sites that will say if they are credible or not. I don't know any off the top of my head but there are a bunch listed in that group. If you can't find one and you want a new editor; I can email Denise and see if she would be willing to take you on as a client. Would you like me to do that?

Unfortunately, with the money I just spent ($100) on books that are trash, because of errors she missed, and the fee I had to pay her, I'm out of money to spend on the books now. But, I will keep it in mind for the other two. I need to find someone, but have to have the funds first.

Thank you for all of your help.

I've seen a few in that group as well, and people said they are really good.

Just shoot me a message when you get the funds. I'll send her an email to see if she can help you out. I am always hesitant to trust editors because of ones that are pretty much scamming people but this one edited quite a few indie books that I've read and she does an excellent job. Plus you don't pay until you get the work she did

I like that! Thank you! I had to pay this editor upfront and I wish I had not.

Do you want me to send it now or wait until you are ready?

Hold off for now, but thank you.

Will do :) Just let me know whenever you're ready.

Has anyone ever used their services?

http://ebookeditingpro.com/?page_id=6

S.K.N I like your editor, I'm just afraid at $1.50 per page I can't afford her. My 3rd book is 478 pages. :(

Ah. Yeah, that is a lot longer than mine was. And I have heard very good things about that publisher. Just to be safe look them up on predators and editors. Make sure.

What is predators and editors? I tried to search it on Goodreads groups and got nothing.

It's a website

Ohhh okay! Thanks Shay!

No problem :)

It's been a while since this thread was touched, but I'm newer to the group and wanted to share my little tip for the self-editors out there, myself included.

I've been writing for a year and a half now and between not having the extra cash to hire a pro and my fear of sending someone I don't know on the internet my work just for them to turn around and call it their own, I've continued to do my own editing.

One of the best things I ever figured out to do during the process is to take my Word document and turn it into a pdf. Then I take said pdf and open it in Adobe Reader (free and these days probably installed on most computers). The program has a read out loud feature and instead of reading along and correcting the words in my mind as I read without correcting them in the manuscript, the nice computer generated voice let's me hear where the mistakes are.

It's not something you can do while your mind is occupied on other tasks. It works best if you are listening and reading along. I've gone through and read a book three or four times and thought it was in good shape and then turned on the audio and found a dozen more issues that made me wonder how I missed them.

Anyway, I highly recommend the method to anyone that does everything themselves. I do it usually two or three times just because I have "oh look a squirrel" moments and have been known to get distracted.

How do you make it work? I clicked read out loud but nothing happens. GREAT tip!

You click to activate it and then you have to go into the menu again and click read until end of document or page. I think those are the two options it usually gives. It sometimes takes a second once you click one of those options to get going, especially if you click the whole document because it does a little process thing.

Hmmm I can't get it to work. I did all of that. Maybe it's because my book is so long?

I think it was the document I was trying to have it read. It has a status window now and it says it is processing page 72 out of 627. Seems like a good start!

Thank you!

This was a REALLY great tip!

I'm glad it looks like it's working because I was starting to scratch my head. I haven't done anything that long so I guess it would probably take a little while to get going. I had heard tips from other authors about reading a book out loud during editing, but when I do it myself I still auto correct. Finding this feature made my life a lot easier.

The computer does a pretty good job of most words I've thrown at it. It does take some getting used to on some words like "live" where the word itself has two different pronunciations. I think the computer only says it like "I'm a live wire" when you are using it like "I live down the street". That might be backwards, but I can't remember.

I usually start the audio and then jump in my word doc and read along making corrections as I go. There are still chances that things might be missed, but I find it a lot better than just reading alone.

This might be a dumb question, but what font do you write in to get an accurate page count? 12?

Btw, I read all the helpful hints/suggestions.Thanks!

My book has ~ 146,500 words. What does this equate to in pages?

Definitely not a dumb question. I've seen a lot of different answers and I think it comes down to depending on the size of the printed page and the font settings you use. Generally for a paperback it probably falls between 250 to 350. I have formatted a couple of books for print and I tend to go with size 11 in both my ebook and print versions. The font choice may make a difference too. I've been digging the Georgia font a lot lately just because it isn't Times New Roman. I get a little bored looking at the default sometimes.

Using 275 as an average word per page, you're looking at around 533 pages, which is really just a guess. Are you planning on formatting into a print book yourself? I usually go ahead and download a Createspace template for the print size I like and flow my stories into it just to get a real feel for how long it is.

Note: I know Amazon gives a estimated page count when you upload an ebook, but for me it has always been smaller than what I ended up with in print so I pretend their number is a figment of their imagination.

Amber- thank you for your response:)
This entire printing/publishing process scares the life out of me. I just finished editing my book after 2 rounds of betas and now I'm giving it to my friend's brother to edit. I'm just trying to figure out where to begin the publishing part...everyone mentions Createspace/Smashwords/Lulu- would you need to go through more than one? How expensive are paperbacks? This book writing was a new hobby I picked up, and didn't resize what a snowball effect it's taken on. I just want to get my book out at the lowest possible cost. I'm not planning on becoming a huge success because I know how saturated the market is. I just wanted to share a sweet romance story to as many readers as possible:)

LAN

I like your attitude as it matches with mine exactly. Chances of making it big is next to impossible with the current market, unless of course you are a marketing wizard. I started out on Smashwords and then uploaded to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing as well. Scratch that, technically I started out on Wattpad posting my stories chapter at a time trying to get a hang for things. Then my husband said I had to stop giving things away for free so I uploaded to Smashwords because I'd been reading books on there for a while.

The fun thing is each place has a different way to format a book in order to upload it to their site - this line is a joke, it is frustrating as heck. Most say Smashwords is the most difficult, but I've never had a problem as long as I follow their directions. The nice thing about them is they distribute to a range of other retailers - Amazon included if you sell a zillion books on Smashwords, which I don't. So for now I submit to Smashwords, who then distributes to Barnes and Noble, Apple, Kobo, Diesel, Sony, and blah blah blah, and I also upload directly to Amazon. Both of those options for just ebooks are totally free to do, which is one of the reasons the market is so heavily saturated.

I haven't used Lulu, but I hear it is good. Createspace is an Amazon company so I've started using them for my paperback needs over Lulu. I believe technically either one of them are free and they are print on demand services so you don't have to pay anything upfront other than if you want to have a proof copy printed and sent to you, which is highly recommended especially if you haven't used the service before. I don't know about Lulu, but with Createspace you get any print copies you want for yourself at cost plus shipping. For one of my roughly 280 page or so books it ends up costing me 6 or 7 bucks to have it sent to me. Also to note, at least with Createspace, shipping for multiple books is very cost effective. I got six books shipped to me for about the same price as one book.

I'm still in the proofing stage for all my paperbacks and I've heard for most fiction books they are a fraction of the sales compared to the ebooks, some have said as high as 25%, but most is a lot lower from what I've collected. There is a reason to have a paperback version though, at least that's the general consensus. Having an ebook and a paperback is supposed to make you look more credible. There are also people that just like feeling the paper in their hand, my husband is one of those people.

Back to Smashwords vs Amazon KDP, and if you haven't guessed I'm very long winded. Personally, I know Amazon is where the market is at as far as just sheer sales vs the other publishing methods, but they have a few things I don't really like. With Smashwords you upload things and they are pretty much instantly on the site and you can make changes to anything on the fly, Amazon on the other hand has usually a 24 hour turn around time. Amazon also has some royalty limits and such. If you price your books between $2.99 and $9.99, you get 70% royalty, anything else is 35%. Most indie authors price between $2.99 and $3.99, so that isn't an issue, but it does seem limiting to me.

Smashwords allows you to make coupons for your book, which I love and you can also just for fun set your book to free if you're trying to get more eyes on it, whereas Amazon you have to be enrolled in their Select program to price things for free - and are limited to I think 5 days in a 90 day time period - and to be in that you can't have your book on any other retailer sites. It also only seems to really work if you have a series and you're pricing the first one as free to hopefully get others to buy the other books in the series.

I also like Smashwords' tracking better than Amazon's. You can see purchases, downloads including how many people just downloaded the sample, and how many people visited your book's page. If Amazon could roll more of that kind of thing into their platform, I would be more in love, but that's probably just because I look at traffic numbers a lot in my day job and they're familiar to me.

Royalty payments to you are similar and yet different between the two. The similarity really only lies in when you can get money. If you set up an electronic funds transfer, with Amazon it is a bank account and Smashwords is through paypal, you can start receiving royalties as soon as you hit $10. Without the bank account/paypal it is $75 or $100. Smashwords only pays quarterly and Amazon pays two months after the sales. So if I hit my nice little $10 in July, I don't see the money until the end of September for Amazon and October or November for Smashwords.

Hmm. What else can I say? I think that's probably my breakdown for now. I know Barnes and Noble and some of the other retailers have their own publishing tools, but I've just let Smashwords distribute because another format to have to learn hurts my head.

If you have any questions/need help with formatting, let me know. I'm no expert, but I am good at finding answers and haven't had anyone complain about things looking like a hot mess.

Amber- omg:) what can I say but THANK YOU!!!! your info has been so helpful to me! It's cut some researching time out for me( time that I don't have a lot of) I'll definitely keep in touch:)

What's your FB address?

mine is:
www.facebook.com/forevercarsonlillian
(Author page)

Or look up Lan Phongkhammeung on FB:)

I'm glad you found it helpful and not just a crazy person rambling on and on. After I hit post I saw how long it ended up being and shook my head.

I have an author page on facebook, https://www.facebook.com/AmberLynn00, but I'm not great at updating on it and I don't have an actual FB account, so it limits what I can do over there. Maybe it's about time I set something up. I've spent more of my social networking time on twitter and I'm on there at @amberlynnbooks.

I'm sure others here have other ideas about the different platforms available and I'm interested to see if they've found things to be different than I have or if anyone else in the group has used something I haven't heard of. I tend to be a decent technical person so I'm sure my experience is completely different from someone that isn't and I'm totally willing to help anyone that needs a little techie help.

You can ramble on and on as much as you want! New indie writers have to be everything in one so every little hint or suggestion goes a long way- especially for me. I'm more of a FB than anything else...Twitter doesn't seem to do anything for me, and GR is all new to me, but I'm really getting a lot out of it so far:)

I'll look you up on FB right now.

Thanks

How do I add you on here, Amber?

The hardest thing for me on any social network has been trying to gain followers. On Facebook without an actual account, it doesn't seem like I can like anyone else which makes it a little weird when I can't follow people back. Twitter is easier for me to find people and hope they follow back and that's the only reason I currently prefer it. I guess I also like the character limit, even if it took a while to get used to, so I can't just start typing and go off on a tangent I really shouldn't.

Do you use Google+?

I hadn't set it up because it always wanted me to add people and I'm always scared to do that for some reason. I just went through and skipped that step so I'm signed up now and it tells me I'm going to be lonely. That's just a little depressing. I will probably have to spend the rest of the afternoon figuring out how it works.

When you set it up leave a link here!

Amber, I totally know what you mean about FB 'Likes'...I've been begging my friends(shameful act, I know) and only about half of them did. Really??? I'd' like' for anyone if they were my friend needing me to help them out??? I've learned that I can't count in everyone:(

There are a few authors who have had huge success gaining readers...don't know how they do it because their books aren't even out yet??? I can't figure this social media thing out...who has the time when I'm suppose to be writing? I do have a Google+ account too

That's the whole thing, finding time to get out there and market yourself while you're trying to do all the steps it takes to get a book published. I spend time searching out book bloggers and bookmarking them for when I have the courage to send them one of my works. You probably couldn't tell from my posts so far, but I'm extremely shy, like in real life if a person even talks to me I turn bright red - with really fair skin it's pretty embarrassing - and these are people I talk to every day. For some reason I have got over the fear of publishing my work, but I tend to lock up anytime I go to ask someone to actually read it.

Amber, we're so much alike!!! Since I passed my book on to several betas, I started feeling more insecure. Two of them dropped out around chapter 16, so I'm wondering what happened around there in my book that made them want to quit??? It might not even have anything to do w/my book, but w/out an explanation, it leaves me thinking only the worse. Asking people to read and give you feedback is one of the biggest hurdles. All an author needs is at least a like or don't like, so they can get a feel for what they've created.