Info for Authors
Don't Do It All Yourself
Although it doesn’t "take a village" to publish a book, it will be tough to become an author without help. Here’s the cast of characters:
The writer is probably—but not necessarily—you. It’s possible that you have a great story to tell or important information or a valuable new insight to deliver to the world, but you’re just not a good writer. Maybe you just don’t have the time to write. In these cases, you’ll need a co-author or a ghostwriter.
The cost of ghostwriting depends on book length, complexity of your topic, research and other preparation, and the ability and experience of the ghost. You could pay $5,000 or $50,000—or more. You’ll probably have to pay this even if you sell just a few copies of your book, so consider hiring a ghostwriter very carefully, Ask to see sample books be¬fore you select your spooky supporter.
The editor could be—but shouldn’t be—you. Obviously it’s important that you read, re-read and re-read some more to polish your text to near perfection. However, it’s a fundamental fact of writing that the creator of the words will never catch all of the errors. Maybe some words, sentences, paragraphs or whole chapters should be shifted, chopped or even completely eliminated. These are choices best left to someone other than the creator.
There are several kinds of editing which can be done by one or more people.
There are several kinds of editing which can be done by one or more people. Sadly, as in much of publishing, the terminology is often ambiguous and imprecise. Some people use the same words to mean different things, or different words to mean the same thing. When dealing with editors, pay attention to what they plan to do for you, not what they call themselves.
Copyediting (or “copy editing” or “copy-editing”) is looking for and fixing all of the tiny errors that infect every written work. A skilled copyeditor has good vision to spot typographical errors, is an excellent speller and a perfect grammarian. She should have an excellent memory to notice inconsistencies, such as “3 a.m.” on one page and “5PM” 100 pages later.
Copyeditors generally follow specific semi-official “styles” for writing, promulgated in such books as The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, The Associated Press Style-book, and The Chicago Manual of Style. The books dictate such things as spelling, capitalization, abbreviation and hyphenation. Sometimes they agree with each other. Sometimes they don’t. You can establish your own style, and perhaps get help from your copyeditor who may have more sense than you do.
DON’T EVEN DREAM of relying on your spell checker to do the work of a copyeditor.
Copyediting fees can be based on the size of the work, the time involved, or may just be a negotiated flat fee. If your book is technical and requires specialized knowledge or familiarity with the subject, expect to pay more.
A typical range is $200 to $1,000. This is not a job for a neighbor or a relative. If you need to save money, see if you can hire an editor from a local newspaper, or even a good college paper, rather than a full-time professional copyeditor. Check references, and read some examples of her or his work.
Copyeditors don’t need to be familiar with your subject and may not even need to understand what you are writing about. They work on the micro—not the macro—level.
A word of warning: no copyeditor is perfect. None will catch every error, and some may actually insert errors where there were none before. Read. Read. Read.
Hard editing (content editing, substantive editing, line editing, developmental editing, structural editing) is an effort to actually improve what you’ve written, not to just correct little errors.
After working as a writer and editor for over 40 years, I don’t bother paying someone to hard-edit my work. I do admit, however, that after seeing my finished books, I sometimes wished that I had someone looking over my shoulder to ask, “Are you sure you want to include that?” or “Is that what you really mean to say?” I initially hired Sheila to copyedit a book. She made so many important suggestions and improvements that I “promoted” her to editor.
A copyeditor can work on just a sentence or a paragraph or a chapter, but a hard editor should get to know the entire book before actually editing.
While the hard editor probably won’t contribute more than a few words, and is not a co-author, she or he may suggest major changes in structure, particularly rearranging sequences, changing viewpoints (from first-person to third, for example), emphasizing or playing down characters or events, killing or adding material, etc.
A hard editor may be paid by the word, page, hour or project. Typical fees are $25 to $50 per hour, $1,000 per book, or two cents per word.
You may save money if your hard editor is also your copyeditor—but be careful. The hard editing process may cause errors that copyediting should remove.
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An editor is not necessarily an expert.
No editor knows everything about anything, and certainly not everything about everything. Authors should not assume that editors are experts. And vice versa.
Sometimes an editor will assume that the author must know what’s right and does not correct an author’s error. Sometimes an editor assumes the author was wrong, and then changes right into wrong. The author may not notice the change, or might assume that the editor was right.
In Orange County Choppers: the Tale of the Teutuls, there are several silly mistakes which were missed by five co-authors and the editors at Warner Books.
“Paul Senior” said his childhood home in Yonkers, New York was within walking distance of Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx. The stadium is about 8½ miles south. The 17-mile round trip is not walking distance for most people.
Paul mentioned his house in “Muncie,” New York. Muncie is in Indiana. The Teutuls lived in MONSEY (pronounced “Muncie”). Someone besides me should have noticed.
In Release Your Writing: Book Publishing, Your Way!, Helen Gallagher says that POD printer Lightning Source is owned by Amazon. It’s not. Maybe Helen’s editor assumed that Helen knows her subject better than she really does.
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Technical editing is major-league fact-checking and is not necessary for all books. If your book deals with solar energy, Renaissance art or the Cold War, you’d better hire someone who is highly familiar with photovoltaic efficiency, Michelangelo or the Warsaw Pact—and knows the reliable reference works in the field.
Technical editors don’t work only on technical books. They might get involved in cookbooks or historical novels—any book that could be tainted by incorrect information. You can pay a few bucks per page, or hundreds or even thousands of dollars per book.
Proofreading is not the same as editing, but it’s related. At one time, a proofreader would simultaneously view the author’s original manuscript and a near-final “proof” provided by the printer. He or she would constantly look from the original to the copy and back to try to spot errors and mark them.
Today, there is little chance of a printer’s introducing an error, especially when the author provides a Word file or PDF file. Modern proofreading is usually just a close “final inspection” before the printer starts turning out books to be sold.
It’s a good idea to have at least one additional set of eyes to look over your proofs. Good, inexpensive proofreading can usually be provided for $10 per hour by English majors or journalism majors from a local college.
You and your proofreaders must do your best, but don’t expect to catch every error. It’s extremely unusual for a published book to be error-free. If you strive for absolute perfection, your books will never reach the market. Each time you make a change—even a correction—you may create a new error that must be discovered and corrected. Be careful!
The interior designer could be either you or a professional. Someone has to devise (or copy) a standard for the way your pages will look. Before you commit to a designer (or to your own design), look through a lot of books and try to understand what makes them appealing or unappealing.
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What to expect from a first-class designer
According to Michele DeFilippo of 1106 Design, “It’s possible to hire someone who applies a template that has been used hundreds of times before, or who rushes through the job to quickly format paragraphs. A quality job involves looking at each paragraph and adjusting it for the best possible look, carefully balancing page bottoms, and following all the other rules of quality page composition. Hiring a designer who pays attention to these important details and who is willing to spend as much time as needed, is more expensive, but you'll wind up with a better-looking book.”
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Sometimes a bad decision can kill the reading experience. I own a book called Semantic Antics: How and Why Words Change Meaning. I love reading about words and thought I would get a lot of pleasure from this book. Unfortunately, my prime emotions were frustration and outrage.
Some unnamed book designer chose to use a smaller-than-normal page size and, in order to squeeze all of author Sol Steinmetz’s text into a reasonable number of small pages, she or he chose a tiny typeface that looks like what gets printed on the back of a credit card. When I was in advertising, this mini-printing was scorned as “fly poop” (actually, we used the “s-word”). It has no place in a mass-market book.
A photographer could be you or another amateur, or a professional. She or he will provide any photos you need for the interior or front or back cover. A pro will probably want from $250 to $3,000. Renting props and hiring models will add to your cost. For the front cover, it’s really important that the photo be first-class. Stock photos from such sources as iStockPhoto and Fotolia are an alternative to just-for-you photos and illustrations. They cost much less, but are not exclusively yours.
An illustrator will provide any paintings, drawings, graphs, etc. needed for page decorations or to help you explain concepts in your text, or perhaps to provide the main graphic image for your front cover. You could pay anywhere from $50 to several thousand dollars for original artwork.