Most of the people in the book industry I know will say ‘Yes, definitely.’ Even if you’re a talented writer, you’re probably too close to your work to be objective.
Editors aren’t proofreaders (although they will make spelling, punctuation and grammar corrections as they work). They’re there to sit in your reader’s shoes and then to help you to make your book the best it can be.
They’ll help to make your message not just crystal clear, but shine out. They’ll help you to explain things, so that people who don’t have your wealth of knowledge still ‘get it’, without being patronising.
A good editor will spot that section in Chapter 5 that would work better in Chapter 2.
They’ll ask you to add stories and anecdotes to help bring colour to your narrative.
They may ask you to expand on some points – and may cut some of the ‘fluff’ in other places, to reveal the point better.
Their role is to transform your facts into fascinating and hold back that purple prose that emerged on a day when you had a rush of blood to the head!
If you’ve chosen to go with a mainstream publisher (and have an agent who can get you a contract), they will provide editing and proofreading services. However, if you’re working with an independent publisher or are self-publishing, the editing is mostly down to you – or, if the publisher offers it, there’s a cost.
Editing isn’t cheap – for a number of reasons.
It’s time-consuming. How long did it take you to write 1000 words? Depending on the quality of the writing, an editor can edit between 1000 and 5000 words an hour. Most non-fiction books are between 35,000-60,000 words. Even if you’re a really good writer, that’s a minimum of 7 hours work.
Editors are specialists. Good editors have spent years learning and honing their craft – they’re not going to charge minimum wage. You’re trusting them with your work, you’ll need to expect to pay a reasonable rate for that. Yes, you may be able to find someone cheap on one of the freelance websites, but you know that saying ‘You pay peanuts; you get monkeys’?
What about AI?
Could you get one of the AI tools to edit your work? Yes, you could. I know people who have used AI to edit their first rough draft, but have still gone to a human for the proper edit. I also know people who have given AI their draft and it’s completely screwed it up – adding lots of unnecessary adjectives and changing the style noticeably.
AI doesn’t produce original ideas, it simply gathers information from elsewhere and regurgitates it. There’s never a guarantee that the information it gathers is good quality.
To some extent it’s down to your brief too – the more specific the instructions you give it, the better the output, but I still think it’s a risk to trust it completely to delivery YOUR book and not just a ‘version’.
The point is – if you want your book to be the best it can possibly be, you do need a good editor.
