You’ve slaved over a hot keyboard for weeks, or maybe months or even years. Your manuscript is finished and you typed that final full stop with gusto. Ta-dah! It’s done. Is it time for a huge sigh of relief, a little celebration or the next stage in your plan to become the author of a successful book?
They’re not exclusive! It can be all three – but it definitely needs to be the last one.
The first draft is your raw material. Now it needs polishing, so the next step is an editor. Ideally an editor who gets you and will work with you to retain your voice, your unique take on the subject and will make constructive suggestions, changes and give your work a professional shine.
Think of your editor as a partner, not a critic. Their role is to sit in your reader’s shoes and ensure there are no points where that reader will get confused or find your message hard to process. You don’t want them to think ‘I’ll just put this down and get a cup of coffee.’ When that happens, the book rarely gets picked up again!
I was once at a presentation by an American literary agent and their research revealed that non-fiction readers rarely got past chapter 3!
You don’t have to be the world’s best writer
The good thing about working with an editor is that you don’t have to be a brilliant writer, you just need to have a strong message and be able to verbalise that.
A good development editor can work miracles with even the most basic of manuscripts; your job as author is to have the ideas and create a structure to present them.
You don’t even need to write at all – in today’s world of AI, you don’t even need to write at all. If you’re more comfortable speaking, you can use a note-taker to record your message and transcribe it for you. Although you might want to do some pre-edit editing as most of us don’t speak fluently for long periods, there’ll be a few ums and ers in there somewhere!
Using AI to transcribe, doesn’t count as using AI to write your book – so you won’t need to make any ‘AI wrote part of this book’ statement anywhere.
Talk to your editor
Editing should not be done at a distance. The more you talk to your editor, the clearer your voice will be and the better they’ll be able to ensure that it’s heard in your manuscript. Whether you have phone chats, virtual meetings or actual face-to-face time, keeping the lines of communication open is essential.
This will mean they won’t edit out some of the phrasing that is uniquely you. One of the greatest compliments I’ve had is from someone who knows me well, reading my book and saying “It sounds just like you’re talking to me”.
Some books take more than one edit – for all kinds of reasons. There may be restructuring needed or development of some sections, which will then need another edit when it’s done. There might be discussion over content that could come out, or be relocated in the book. At the end of the day, it’s your book – your editor is there as a guide and expert collaborator.
Editing isn’t proofreading
A good editor will correct typos, spelling and punctuation as they go, and amend grammar where needed, but that’s not their primary purpose. With the best will in the world the occasional comma can go walkabout during the editing process. That’s where the proofreader comes in.
Proofreading is the last thing that happens before the book goes to be laid out, whether that’s with a layout artist or the publisher.
Before you give it to a proofreader, make sure they have your preferences when it comes to punctuation. For instance, do you want double or single quotation marks for speech? Will your bullet lists have a full stop for each point, a comma or nothing?
Failing to do this will mean the proofreader will ‘correct’ everything to their normal standard. That can end up with having to do a lot of work if you don’t like that.
So, that last full stop is only a stop along the way!
