Indies Who Are Looking For an Editor: DO YOUR RESEARCH. PLEASE. – Kayla Howarth

By Kayla Howarth, indie author

Over the last few months, I’ve been contacted by people offering editing services. As someone who has been screwed over a lot in the past, I’m wary. But I realised today that there are so many new authors out there, and any of them could fall for the bullshit lines these people are trying to sell me.

You know that old saying, those who can’t do, teach? What does an author do when their books aren’t selling? I swear a lot of them these days are waking up and saying “I think I’ll be an editor today.”

Now, I’d love to be paid to read other people’s books and help them out. But there’s one thing I recognise that most of these other authors don’t. And that is I’M NOT QUALIFIED TO BE AN EDITOR.

ndies who are looking for an editor. Do your research. Please. Article by Kayla Howarth, indie author. Recommendation for Kelly Hartigan and XterraWeb for book editing.

My copy editor/proofreader (*waves* Hi Kelly Hartigan, you’re the awesome to my sauce … or something like that) has said to me that my drafts I hand over are some of the cleanest drafts she’s ever seen. And you know what? She still has hundreds of corrections to make. Aside from being too close to the project, I also don’t know every grammar rule in the book. MOST AUTHORS DON’T. I have serious issues with commas. In particular, omitting them when they are needed before a conjunction separating two different clauses (look at me! I have the lingo down … but please don’t quiz me on using the rule), and then adding them when they’re not actually needed. *sigh* I give up. I’m sorry I’m not learning, Kelly. But hey, I barely leave participles and modifiers dangling anymore 😉

I’ve asked some of these authors who are trying to now break into the editing business what makes them qualified. I’ve heard all different types of answers:

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6 comments

I’ve been writing my whole life (well, you know what I mean) and I still make loads of grammatical errors. You definitely need to be an expert to call yourself an editor 🙂

Being an editor is really not that easy. You should study all well to be a great editor.

Grammar and spelling are so important, but I think proper punctuation isn’t as critical when you’re writing in your own voice.

What an awesome post, It’s not easy to become a editor and you need to check if your sentence or spelling if are right.

Research is always important when you want to hire someone. Especially an editor. There are tons you need to make sure the editor has a background in.