How to Find Your Editor

Finding an editor can be, and often is, quite the arduous journey. We’re going to talk about how to tell when the editor is right for you.

Horror stories float across the internet, especially for independently published authors. Editors who change the voice of the manuscript, degrade the author, abandon the job, or outright scam those trying to make their mark on a new venture. 

It’s terrifying. 

What’s more . . . quality is hard to determine beyond adequacy. For example, my first novel released in November of 2020, Dick, Stan Greene. At the time, I was largely clueless to the world of publishing. Thankfully, I spoke to my boss at the time, and he suggested someone in the company who he knew edited on the side. 

This editor was Pete. We like Pete. His editing was clean, correct, and he hit all the things you want an editor to grab: killing passive voice, copy and line edits, grammatical crimes against the Geneva Convention. But he changed the voice of the story a bit, though it was likely for the better at the time. 

Even still, I learned what a good editor was with Pete. He did the job and he did it well. But then I wrote another book, The Cruelty of Magic.

In essence, I don’t know that I can actually say Cruelty was ever truly edited, not the way it should have been, not until now. I initially hired someone from the university I attended, a tenured member of the library staff–Charlie. He had a good eye, but he was rushed . . . by me. Not intentionally, you see, for I had set deadlines and I meant to keep them. 

I didn’t time things well. 

Then, in a pre-ARC read by my wonderful co-host, Megan Mossgrove, I was shown a wide array of errors which found their way into the manuscript, after Charlie’s edits. A few other early ARCs also came back with the same feedback, to which Megan went into hyperdrive and edited the entire manuscript, again, in maybe three days. 

Thus, once again, the editing was rushed. It never went through a developmental edit and Cruelty is my writing from nearly four years ago! I’m honestly lucky it was still good enough to be bought by a publisher, and I’m thankful. 

But that’s not the point, nor the lesson. No, the lesson comes in truly recognizing when someone enhances you as a writer, when your voice truly transcends what your own limitations place on you because you found the help, not only that you needed, but that you deserve. That’s what happened to me with my publisher. 

I wrote a short story, The Cruelty of Love. Now, funnily enough, this was supposed to be a gimmick of sorts. I made a bet with Booktok that if I hit a particular threshold of sales during my release week, I’d write a spicy short story.

Did I hit the goal? Nope. But I wanted to write that story, so I made a prequel, about 15,000 words, about the dwarves in Cruelty. And, if I do say so myself–which I do–that story turned out pretty great. 

I was in talks of Cruelty being acquired by the publisher when they asked about my other writing. Of course, I told them about the short story. They immediately wanted to edit for me so I could submit it for awards. 

By the way, they aren’t publishing the short story. They edited it for free just to help me get it out there. And, fun fact . . . it was already edited.

I paid an editor on Booktok to edit the story. One, because I wanted to self-publish it at the time. Two, because I wanted to see how we would work together. Honestly, she was great. Loved her feedback, and grammatically, she was on point. Though, developmentally, and for my particular voice, we had disagreements, which was ok.  I considered working with her the best experience I’d had to that point, though technologically, Pete was clean and made everything super easy. 

Then my publisher got a hold of the short story. Grammatically, there were still some misses, but I noticed something. The grammar changes made more sense, but weren’t necessary. They’d applied the use of things such as the comma and semicolon and other tools to match my traditional style of high fantasy prose. When line edits were made, my verbiage never changed. They moved a sentence here and there, but it was the same story with a little more meat to it. 

They strengthened my voice, rather than just corrected grammar. 

It’s worth noting my publisher, until bringing me on, doesn’t carry high fantasy. My genre was the passion of one at this publisher, and they are the one who got a hold of my story. They loved it, and they made it better. 

So, how do you know when you’ve found the right editor? They don’t just correct your writing, they embolden it, bring depth to it, and amplify your unique voice as an author. Don’t accept someone that just knows the rules, find someone who loves the story. 

Editors accept it as industry standard to provide a sample. Pay attention to that sample, and pay attention to who they are, and what they read. 

Shawn Amick