Why EDITORS MATTER
Traditional publishing is almost every author’s dream. For those that don’t know, traditional publishing is the painstaking effort to query agents, get 1,000 rejections, and keep trying until that elusive “yes, please send the full manuscript,” arrives. It often involves, after all that anxiety, the author sending that collection of words, phrases, and images they so carefully put together to the agent only to be told, “Oh, no, sorry, this is not for us. You need to work on this more. Good luck on your journey.” The beleagured author rewrites for the fiftieth time and follows up with 1,000 more rejections before another request for the full manuscript comes and they get that enthusiastic “Yes, sign here!”
Sounds amazing to get to that “We love it!” moment, right?
Except what the agent typically loves is you and the idea of your story. They have to convince others to see what they see in your work. So the agent approaches their editor contacts and sends submissions to Random House, or Bantam, or Tor, any of the other big publishers, their imprints, or some small indie presses. The agent receives more rejections before they finally find a publisher who sees what they see. The author gets that acceptance and moves onto the elusive publishing contract.
Big win! pop the champagne!
Hold up. The author still isn’t done. What comes next is two to three years of edits. If the author refuses the edits the whole deal could fall apart. The editor is a professional. The editor knows what sells and what doesn’t. The editor curates through carefully blocked doors to allow only the cream to come through. And for the author, after all that blood, sweat, tears, panic attacks, heartbreaks, and triumphs their manuscript, which may look very different than where they started, is now on the shelves at Barnes & Noble all over the world!
The dream. Or is it?
The whole ordeal was a moonshot to begin with (I really do love this term.) But a lot of control is taken from the author at this point. Traditional publishing will tell you that this is for good reasion. And they’d be partly right. The author may have the most perfect manuscript. It’s still going to get rejected more than accepted. Traditional publishing is almost impossible to break through. Join Threads, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, or any number of social media sites and start following authors. There’s a consistent theme that pretty much matches the above.
Enter Independent Authors. You’ll find a plethora (this word really is overused but what’s a better word for it?) of Independent Authors on Amazon. But it’s always had a stigma. Some of it is fair. Much of it is not.
Independent publishing, or self-publishing, has evolved over the years. The term “self-publish” existed at least as long as Jane Austin. It’s not a new concept. Small independent presses exist because the market for them exists. In 1996 Ingram began Lightning Source, a way for independent authors to get into distribution channels. But the system punishes the author for returns and pays little in royalties.
KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) started operations in 2007. Arguably the largest and easiest way for Independent Authors to release thier work, this offered the same services as Ingram Spark but with the added benefit of not punishing authors with returns.
But here’s the pitfall—the process does not require the author to collaborate with anyone. Any person can throw words into a .docx file, print it to pdf, and submit to Ingram Spark (Lightning) or KDP. The ease and speed with which this can happpen has proliferated the number of independent authors exponentially.
Traditional Publishing does one thing right. It makes literature collaborative. And that’s important. Films are collaborative. Every move ever made has a team of professionals with specific expertise. Every step of the way is scrutinized by those experts.
It would never occur to me to believe that I can do it all in any endeavor. Especially in writing. Every single human has sent and email, posted on social media, or blogged some thought only to find they said “will” instead of “with”, “and” instead of “an”, or the dreaded “to, two, too” and “there, they’re, their” mistake. Unfortuantely, that’s what most folks think editing is and many independent authors rely heavily on grammar checkers and spell checkers. But editing is more than just fixing grammar or typos.
Editors look for content. They ask tough questions. Does this action make sense? Does the action lag? Does the author explain too much and show too little? Does the prose hit beats that are awkward or clunky? Is this scene necessary?
I know I'm guilty of violating all of the above. Every single author is. Even Stephen King has editors.
Without editors, authors publish works that have more errors than a drunken short-stop at a night game during a blackout. We miss things because we’ve looked at the manuscript for so long, rewritten it so many times, talked about it with so many people, it’s impossible to remember what was versus what is versus what we meant to do.
Editors catch all of that.
For independent publishing to be truly viable and competitive, we, as the independent authors, must treat this as a vocation. We must recognize the need for the village that is the editor, proofreader, book designer, or cover artist.
But the barriers to entry are difficult. These services are not free. Still, there are talented, inexpensive options if you look.
The work of the independent author must be taken with serious gravity. We are important voices in the market place. Most of my favorite books over the last 12 months are independent, self-published works. ALL of them were professionally edited. As indie authors we owe it to each other and our readers to find the editors we can afford and work with. Editors make us better at what we do. It ensure we put out great product.
If we want to be taken seriously as artists and writers, we owe it to ourselves to get that second, third, and fourth set of eyes on our manuscripts.
For the record, no editors viewed this blog post. I’m sure I mucked this up somewhere and errors abound…