1, 2, 3, edit! Things to do before you hire a copyeditor

By Katy McDevitt

Are you ready to get your manuscript edited? Here’s a quick guide to help you figure out whether you’re as ready as you think.

1. Have you tied up all the loose threads?

This sounds really obvious, right? But it’s surprising how often I come across bits and pieces in a manuscript that indicate a thought that the author didn’t quite finish, a sentence that circles round on itself, or even an ‘X marks the spot’ indicating a bit of research or fleshing-out that the author meant to come back to. Go back through your work and resolve all those small, but accumulative, outstanding issues. Your copyeditor can certainly help spot missing or incomplete elements, and raise them with you as author queries, but it’s not the editor’s job to create or research content on your behalf, and it will take longer and cost more to complete the editing stage if you don’t fully resolve your work. Tie up as many loose threads as you can, before submitting your work for editing, and your editor will thank you for it (and probably bill you less).

2. Have you done your self-editing duty?

What is self-editing? It’s when an author attempts to anticipate textual issues that an editor might find during the copyediting stage, and fixes as many of them as possible. Why do it? Because it makes the editing quicker, smoother and (if you do it right!) cheaper. Self-editing can be a painful chore if you’re not a detail person, for sure, but it’s well worth doing. My fellow workshop presenter Patrick Allington will be giving guidance on how to do it during the Editing Bootcamp. Look critically at your chapter titles, headings, paragraph structure, syntax, and punctuation; run spelling and consistency checkers; proofread your own work, onscreen or on paper. Step back, for a short time, and pretend you didn’t write the book. Be your own worst critic. What would distract you from the core meaning or message if you were reading it for the first time? Where do you see inconsistencies of fact, style, language or formatting? Remove the tripwires.

3. Have you run your work past someone else?

A copyeditor is certainly a fresh pair of eyes. But if you’re hiring a professional, you can expect to pay a professional fee, and a copyeditor isn’t going to review your work for issues like narrative drift, irritating protagonists or a downer of a conclusion (though a developmental editor will – but that’s another post!). So, it’s a good idea to get someone you think is an eagle-eyed reader to do an editorial dummy-run. They won’t pick up all the textual details that a pro editor will spot, but they will be able to give you a good idea of what kinds of issue a new reader will find in your work. Again, it’s about testing out your writing, at one remove from you, so that the manuscript is as tight and resolved as possible by the time your editor starts work.

So, you’re ready? Let’s get started.

How do you find a qualified professional editor, assess their suitability, figure out what to pay them, and brief the editing work you want done? I’ll be sharing tips on all this at my ‘What is Editing?’ workshop on the morning of Friday 16th May. Come along and find out whether your manuscript is truly ready for its editorial close-up.

Dr Katy McDevitt AE is Principal Editor at Katy McDevitt Editorial Services and Publisher at Simply EBooks SA. She has worked with dozens of authors throughout her career, as a copyeditor, proofreader and publisher, and she loves collaborating with writers to help them achieve their publishing goals. She is leading a workshop for authors, called ‘What is Editing?’, as part of the Editing Bootcamp on 16th May.

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