I finished another (and last) edit of Once Upon A Time In Argentina this morning and just uploaded the files to everywhere it’s being sold. It will probably take a few days to update in the systems. Don’t worry, no content was changed. Lots of punctuation and a few grammar errors got an upgrade. Also some spelling mistakes and the occasional wrong word were fixed. I have a very silly tic of sticking commas in places where they don’t belong while pounding out a first draft and then never ever seeing them again. Apparently, the first editor I hired also never saw them.
This book did receive a “professional” (I paid for it) edit before it was published. I hired a freelancer who came well recommended by someone who always had incredibly clean copy (@Bradyputzke). What we both discovered through this process was that we had both wasted our money. His copy was always so clean primarily because of him and not his editor. Subsequently, Brady edited this version.
Being a self published indie author is in a lot of ways the most expensive hobby in the world. Before you say it’s a business, yes, I get that. But it’s really a hobby until it becomes a business, and it doesn’t really become a business until it starts making a profit. I believe I’m almost there.
I think good editing remains the largest roadblock to anyone just starting out. Trad-publishing often receives up to six rounds of edits from professional editors. If an indie author tried to do this the cost would sum to several thousands of dollars, probably in the $5k range if they were being conservative.
Most indie books, especially in the beginning, will never make that back no matter how long the long tail is. Most authors don’t even have that kind of money lying around. There are of course authors like Brady Putzke who are something of a savant and turn out very clean copy all on their own. I can think of at least one other author in this sphere that has similar freakish abilities. I am not one of those authors and while I might hope to be a million more words from now, I have a feeling I won’t ever be. My brain is wired for story and structure and starts to smoke if I think too much about grammar rules and punctuation. I wish I wasn’t this way. But I am. Which is also why I’ve always had my novels edited “professionally” at least once.
And this isn’t a diatribe against freelancers. I don’t think they purposefully phone it in (for the most part, but also everyone sucks at everything now) nor are they necessarily grifters. I think the words run together on them just as easily as they do me. Remember, trad-pub gets up to six rounds of edits. It seems unreasonable to expect one edit to match that. I do think there are grifters out there, and there are likely some who have started to lean on AI powered tools to burn through edits. I have no proof of this, but it’s not exactly a huge leap to presume that is going on. All these, are the things you think about when you get a draft back and find sections that don’t seem to have been touched or you catch new mistakes that both of you have obviously missed. Editing is hard work.
Another problem with this business is that each book you do, if you are only getting one edit, is a chance to try out a new editor if the last one didn’t do a great job. If the next one does poorly too, well, c’est la vie. You pay your money and move on. I truly believe editing is important, the trouble with the math is that you need to find one who can deliver a three-to-six-rounds-of-editing standard for the price and time of one! That’s a white whale worth searching for, and one much harder to find.
But this shouldn’t stop you from publishing. Do your due diligence. Try to make it as clean as you can for as affordable as you can and turn it loose. Audiences are largely gracious towards some bad editing as long as the story and characters are good. Don’t let the pursuit of perfect ruin good. Nor should you let it get in the way of doing the thing. There is only one way to learn and get better and that’s by fucking things up. Failing as fast as you can is how you get better. And when people mention the editing could be better in reviews, then you have to take it on the chin, and you either try to get it fixed or you let it lie. It’s up to you and your wallet at the end of the day.
This has been a very long way of saying that Brady Putzke has hung a shingle as editor and I was quite impressed with the copy I got back from him. Hopefully, what editor I use going forward has been figured out for the foreseeable future and I can focus on turning more novels out. That’s a rather large weight off my shoulders to be honest. If you are in the market, I would send him a dm. His prices are reasonable and I have a feeling he will be in very high demand in a few years.
For the rest of you, I appreciate you reading. I appreciate the gracious reviews. And I appreciate the ones that pointed out the edits could be better. Here’s too many more to come.
Onward and upward!
Brady is fantastic. I just finished working with him for my project and he is incredibly thorough, and also informative. There is a lot of stuff I learned I was doing incorrectly, particularly as it pertains to dialogue (I like using a ton of action dialogue tags, but was formatting these incorrectly). Fixing this issue ADDED—and I shit you not—50 pages to the finished copy. I think Brady will also add a new addendum to his contract after one particular plotline in my story (oops) and I cannot endorse him enough
Once had an editor who came highly recommended, was editor for one of the biggest names in historical fiction, "edit" my novel for what got strung out to be 9 months, then just ghosted and lost all contact. Maybe I shouldn't have been bothered because I was getting a good deal, but at the time it was a lot of money. Lesson learned: I did it myself. No regrets.