Working w. publisher or editors on your novel, how to do it?

[moderntimes]

Most of us need someone else to help edit or review our novel. Yes, some of us self-publish and do all the editing and revisions on our own.

But most of us either pay for an edit or have a close friend perform the edit, or if our novel is published professionally, the book is put thru a pro edit as part of the publishing contract.

Now my novels are published professionally (meaning that I was offered a contract for a standard agreement, royalties and such), and as part of that agreement, the publisher has the right to review and edit the novel for problems, and the contract states that nothing critical to the tone or content will be changed.

For those who self-publish but also either pay for or otherwise have a 2nd person review and edit the book, the situation is essentially the same.

Because it's all about how we "protect" our books and are understandably cautious about letting anyone "fix" the greatest novel ever written, ha ha. It's a matter of individual effort, of course, since we invest months and months in writing that book and don't want it messed with. Concerns like this are perfectly normal.

So what do we do? Well, first of all, I recommend that if you're going to let someone else review your book and make changes, you should use MS-Word with the "Track Changes" feature. Like or not, MS-Word has become the standard for submitting novels or other writing. I do know that there are lower cost packages of word processing software, sometimes "freeware" but you will need to ensure that whomever you send your book to for publishing can accept submissions in that particular software. I bought the latest "Home & Student" version of MS-Office (with MS-Word) for about $90 and it can be purchased for a little less than that. Point being that if you can acquire the most powerful and widespread software package for less than a hundred bucks, it's not gonna kill you. And once you buy it, you're good to go. That software, MS-Word, isn't hard to use and it has many great features, among them "Track Changes".

What is "Track Changes"? Well, you can take your book, and turn TC on, and sent it to the editor with that option active. Now, when that other person makes changes, the changes aren't "permanent" but instead show up on screen with either red or blue highlights (you can set the colors as you wish) and so if something is altered, the old shows up in red, the new in blue. And therefore, that editor or reviewer can make suggested changes but they aren't permanent, but instead the TC option keeps both the old and new.

Then, when the editor sends the book back to you after making recommended changes, you can scroll thru the changes, and either "accept" or "reject" the changes as you wish. Sometimes the editor will make a change which you halfway like, so you can then enter a new change, and the Track Changes option retains ALL of the changes, and the document can be sent back and forth and it will stack up all the proposed changes for your review. Notes can also be added and they appear outside the right margin just like some proofreader might do on a physical page.

Now I'll tell you what just happened to me, and you can ask me about this, and hopefully we can discuss the various ways or methods you may want to use for getting a review or edit of your book...

Last fall I sent my final manuscript of the novel to my publisher, per their request. Being a busy publisher, I had to wait my turn for publication, and this is pretty standard for any active publisher. This is the same for a "vanity" (subsidy publisher where you pay them) or a conventional publisher, where they pay you. I'm of the latter group.

So my publishing schedule is set for March, and yesterday afternoon, my editor and publisher sent me the revised version of my novel. They used MS-Word Track Changes per our agreement. And so I had the busy task of reading thru my whole novel and finding all the places where the editor had made changes, and choose to accept or reject them.

I pulled a "late night" and wrapped up the new re-read and revision of my book about 230am this morning. Whew!

What did I find? I found that the majority of the changes were small stuff -- a comma here or there, a rare change of word, teeny things. And as I read thru the book -- and no, I didn't just read the changed stuff which was shown in red/blue -- I re-read the whole damn book, all 70,000 words, just because -- and I found that the recommended changes were minimal, and in fact, if I were writing that particular paragraph, I may have just as easily used the phrasing the editor chose rather than my own original. In other words, I had very few objections. My "rejection" amounted to a grand total of 6 items thru the whole novel, and among those, 2 of the changes were errors which both the editor and I had missed all thru the process. But I found and fixed them, and all went well.

So now the new novel, my 3rd private detective novel, is sent back to the publisher with 99% of the changes "accepted" and only a few rejected. I also wrote the publisher a brief memo where I described each change or alteration I made from what the editor had recommended, and why I thought otherwise. Now that I have reviewed the final galley proofs of the book, it's on its way to publication setup and should be out in a week or so.

My point being, do NOT be fearful of someone else making a review and edit of your book. If you use the "Track Changes" option, you will have the choice of making the final decisions anyway.

Even if your book is professionally published, the only things which the publisher can force to change is for legal issues, such as your defaming someone who could sue you and the publisher, or maybe saying that an actual restaurant gave you food poisoning and you name the restaurant. Or other really silly things, such as not fixing mechanical errors or typos. But the other things, your choice.

So let's discuss the various ways we can find editing for our new novel, our experiences, and maybe warnings. And if you have questions about my own experience, please ask.

[Barbara T Cerny]

The most important thing we do is edit. I think it was Hemmingway who said that editing is the start of writing. Nothing puts me off faster than a poorly edited book. Whether you pay for it yourself or go through a traditional publisher, it is a MUST, no ifs, ands, or buts.

[moderntimes]

Correct. Now since I review mysteries for another website, I get lots of published books to read & review, and commercially published books rarely have typos. Most times it's not a "literary" typo like a misspelled word or ungrammatical sentence, it's a "mechanical" error such as a missing word or an obvious messup in the typeset process. Since I get early and often pre-release print copies of novels (uncorrected galley proofs, they're called) I find an occasional physical typeset error. What generally occurs is that these problems are quickly fixed.

I had this problem when my 2nd novel was published last year. Due to a glitch in the transfer of the MS-Word document into typeset layout for the physical printing of the book, all italics were accidentally removed. Luckily when the publisher sent me the Kindle version for my own use, I spotted this and let the publisher know and it was corrected, my previously approved final galley proof re-submitted for printing and retaining the italics. Stuff happens.

I found a "genuwine" typo in a preliminary galley proof of a mystery novel early this year, a book I was reading for review. The character had a knife wound to his left arm and he grabbed a towel with his left hand to hold it to the wound. This impossible behavior was obviously a small typo which the author had accidentally made, and it somehow got thru the editors. I immediately emailed the contact person with the publisher, and she came back with thanks, that another early reviewer had also found this error and it had now been fixed.

Hey, even amazing world class novelists like us, ha ha, can make an occasional error. During my final re-read and review of the galley proofs a couple nights ago, I found 2 errors which I'd made and had not caught, thankfully fixed them. One was not making a small paragraph which was the text of a note left on the crime scene set in italics. As you know, if you're writing the text of a quote from a fictional newspaper or a handwritten note by the murder victim or whatever, it's always set into italics to differentiate it from the general text of the narrative. I'd missed that on one occasion.

And a genuinely stupid error on my part: folks assembling at a memorial service "genuflected" when I'd meant to say "crossed themselves" (genuflecting is to kneel in a religious manner). So I caught that silly goof, too. Whew.

Thankfully I rarely find myself reading a self-published book where the author didn't get a 2nd pass edit from someone else. A guy I know slightly had been a volunteer fireman for, I'm guessing, a month or two, and he decided to write a novel about firefighters. Nice idea, poorly executed. He had the book self published and had zero outside review or edit, and the results showed, sadly. He keeps a big box of the books in the trunk of his car and tries to sell them to people. I so happened to have a few free extra copies of my 1st novel and I gave him one, and he gave me his book.

I tried to read it but there were numerous misspellings and grammatical errors all thru the text. And even if you skipped over the typos, the story and narrative and dialogue were awful. It was essentially unreadable. I never told him this of course.

This sort of poorly structured writing happens a lot, I suppose, among some who want to self publish but don't avail themselves of getting a 2nd look from either a very literate friend or paying for an edit.

I know these folks think they have a good story to tell and most of the time they're right. But they have to come to the realization that sometimes their mechanical skills with the language are lacking, and they need help.

What my point is, of this lengthy post, is that I DO understand the concern that many newbie writers have, not wanting someone else to "get their hands" on the book and then tear it to shreds. And I suppose that can happen but that's extremely rare.

I had this happen to me by accident. Last summer when I was submitting my 3rd novel to publishers, I accidentally submitted to a scam publisher (like many scams, they had a name similar to a legit place) and the guy came back with this ridiculous pitch that my book needed "extensive" editing and they knew of an editing firm who could do this. Of course the "editing firm" is the same as the publisher with a different website and they bleed an unsuspecting author with numerous fees for "fixing" the book.

To illustrate my bad writing, he sent me the first 2 chapters of my book which I'd submitted with a "free" markup. It was hilarious and I kept it for laughs. Nearly every word or sentence "needed fixing".

By contrast, after I did sell my books to a legit publisher, and received the edit a couple days ago, the "errors" in those 2 chapters when reviewed professionally? One single comma in the middle of chapter 2 was added.

So hey, gang, it is OKAY to find a legit editing service or even to allow a good friend to review your book. It's done all the time. Major professional authors who are the very best have editors. So should we.