I am so pissed off right now. I spent $500 on an editor and caught errors. In the past I had edited my stories and then published them, but I kept hearing how good it is to have an editor and thought I would save some editing time. The problem? It's not the first time it's happened. I bartered services with two other people (who supposedly were good at editing) and had the same thing happen. It's just this time around, I thought if I paid a professional, then I would get better service, you know? Does anyone else have similar experiences, do you have a good editor who catches everything, or do you do fine on your own?
Editors are not perfect, and no single editor can catch everything in an 80,000-word document. Which is why books need to go through an editing/proofreading process that involves many reads. What was most interesting to me was in the comments. Several authors posted vague references to the editor “correcting the situation.”
My question is: What does that mean? How does an editor compensate a client who is unhappy with the level of mistakes? Do you offer to read/edit again for free? What if the book has already gone to print? Do you offer money back?
My second question is: What is an acceptable level of errors? Do you measure it per page, per total word count?
I haven’t encountered this problem yet, but I’m doing more and more fiction editing and I’d like to know how others have handled this. Authors and editors, tell us what you think.
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L.J. Sellers is an award-winning journalist and editor and is the author of the Detective Jackson mysteries, The Sex Club and Secrets to Die For. Her new novel, Thrilled to Death, will be released in August. She also loves to edit fiction and works with authors to keep her rates affordable. Contact her at:
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