Put Your Money Where Your Book Needs It

How to Prioritize Editorial Services When You’re Self-Publishing on a Budget

Photo Credit: Andrew Neel at Unsplash

As both a freelance editor and an author looking to self-publish, there’s one aspect of publishing that’s on my mind for both: budget. I want my services to be accessible to indie authors and publishers because everyone deserves a quality editor. At the same time, I have to pay myself a living wage and charge prices that reflect my work history, skill, and time. The context I had from my editorial background did help me prepare better for the freelance editors I’ll hire to edit my book (knowing the stages and their price tags), since no matter how good a writer I am, I will need an editor. Several, if I can afford it.

Self-publishing (KDP, B&N Press, IngramSpark, BookBaby, etc.) is where the author is in charge of everything. It’s our responsibility to find an editor (or not), a designer (or not), marketer (or not). Self-publishing is what we make it, and is really open to anyone writing a book, which is why it has a sometimes unfair label of the books being “the ones the trad publishers didn’t want” and “bad quality writing or story.” This is, I believe, becoming less and less true. Self-publishing authors know if they want to have a quality product, and for readers to view it as quality, they need an editor, and they’re going to have to pay for one.

Cost is the looming threat on every book’s plate, no matter if it’s traditional publishing or self. But not all indie authors can afford several editors, especially if you’re book is long, like mine (165k). Bigger books = bigger budget. Because let’s not forget, the book still needs to be laid out, a cover still designed, need money to do an ARC campaign, pay for reviewing services, and get materials to start up a booth for festivals. There are tons, and I mean tons, of little items that pop up. And money in publishing isn’t always guaranteed to come back.

So without that guarantee, where do you decide to put your money where your book needs? How do you decide what your book needs at all? First, let’s go through the four editing stages, and then I’ll provide my personal recommendation of how indie authors should prioritize them when they’re on a budget.

The Four Stages of Editing

1.      Developmental Editing

Developmental editing focuses on the major content: character arcs, plot, tension, structure, stakes, pacing, etc. It strengthens the overall story, making sure it flows, is understandable, has a good hook, and is compelling from start to finish. In my experience, a developmental editor is more hands-on, does phone or video calls, performs a manuscript evaluation, and reads your book after each round of revisions. You could be working with a developmental editor for three months, doing anywhere between three to four revision rounds.

For a smaller fee, you can ask for a developmental editor to do only a manuscript evaluation instead. A manuscript evaluation is a packet (typically five to fifteen pages) of summarizing a manuscript’s strengths, weaknesses, areas of improvement, potential plans for improving, and general writing advice. The difference between asking for a developmental edit versus a manuscript evaluation comes in: (1) how personal the editing process becomes, like video or phone calls; and (2) rounds of revisions. Many developmental editors start their editing with a manuscript evaluation, using it as a launching point, but with a manuscript evaluation, once they hand that packet back to you, the service is over. They do not read your revised manuscript, like a developmental editor does. This is my personal experience with developmental editing and manuscript evaluation, so other editors could run their processes differently. 

2.      Line Editing

Another term for line editor is “word smith.” In line editing, your editor reads for language, tone, clarity, and some content. If something sounds clunky or out-of-tone, they will suggest rewording either by providing a sample edit for you to accept/reject in track changes or, if it’s a longer revision for a whole paragraph, provide feedback as to why the paragraph doesn’t work so you can adjust yourself. They also check your grammar. They may track facts throughout your story and start your style sheet for you, though this is not a requirement of most line editors. 

3.      Copyediting

While there are some universal benchmarks of what makes for a good story and prose, not every story or prose style will resonate with every reader, making the two editorial stages above more subjective. However, every reader needs a seamless reading experience, and this comes from polishing grammar, punctuation, and spelling. This is why authors hire copy editors: to edit for errors and consistency.

Your copy editor should be familiar with the most-recent version of the Chicago Manual of Style (CMoS), and have Merriam-Webster be their dictionary of choice—the publishing industry standards of editing. CMoS has rules for capitalizing, punctuation, indentations, formatting of words (whether it should have a hyphen, space, or the words need to be combined), and numbers— among others.

A good copy editor will create a style sheet for you that tracks facts and author style preferences, such as using “okay” versus “OK,” or if you have specific words capitalized. Anything unique to the book gets listed in the style sheet and becomes a reference for the author, project manager (if your book is under contract with a publishing house), or proofreader to keep the manuscript consistent.

4.      Proofreading

Once your book is copyedited, the common course of action is to send it to a designer, who will lay out your book. Or, if you spend the time to teach yourself, you can lay out your book.

After a small trip down the design arm of publishing, you’ll come back to editorial and hire a proofreader. Your proofreader will generally do two major quality checks: design and text. First they check for page numbers, running headers, paragraph starts, orphans and widows (lonely lines at the bottom and top of pages), etc. Once that’s done, they will read the book, marking any egregious errors such as spelling, grammar, or cut-off sentences that your copy editor may have missed. They will flag errors and suggest what the appropriate edit is. Then, once that is done, you can send it back to your designer and have them integrate the edits. (Note: Not all designers work the same, so please ask if they will integrate your proofreading marks for you, and if they don’t automatically include that in their services, ask what an hourly rate or such for them to do it would be, if they are comfortable.)

Essentially, the copy editor and proofreader work together—but in different stages—to make your book as error-free as possible.

A Note on Stages

For each stage, you should have a different editor. Yes, four different editors. While there are editors that offer “bundle services” for multiple editing stages, I’d caution against this. The more an editor reads and works on a book, the more likely they are to understand it and let errors go by.

As much as us freelance editors would love to work with our favorite authors all the time and/or have consistent, repeat business, what we want for you more is your book to be a quality, error-free read. I’d say the same thing to me if I was your friend/you were my client. If you loved your DE, ask if they have a recommendation for LE, CE, or proofreading! Freelance editors are often connected to other freelance editors.

Now that I’ve gone over the four stages of editing, how do you decide where to put your money? And if you can only get one, which one? 

How to Prioritize Editorial Services When You’re Self-Publishing on a Budget

To give a brief, one-size-fits-all rankings for editorial services, this is how I would recommend to prioritize your self-publishing budget:

1. Copyediting

2. Developmental Editing (or Manuscript Evaluation)

3. Proofreading

4. Line Editing

Whether you are a traditional career author of a new self-published author, copyediting is—at a minimum—what every book needs. Making a book as error-free as possible impacts how professional readers believe it to be.

I’ve ranked developmental editing second because it focuses on what we’re all after when we pick up a book: a good story—something that we are happy to give our time up to in return for a satisfying and entertaining few hours.

A proofreader is a great safety net to make sure all those little errors missed in a copyedit are caught, and they make sure your laid-out book looks good.

I rank line editing the lowest not because it’s the least important, but because out of all of these, it’s the most subjective. One’s writing style may not fit with what a reader wants, or it may fit exactly. If you have messy writing on a technical level (CE and proofreading) or the story isn’t engaging (DE), it doesn’t matter how good your prose is—often, readers don’t stick around. 

Ultimately, you decide what is best for you and what you think you need the most, though from my experience, every author needs a copy editor. However, you may need to put your money elsewhere for other means.

How to Figure Out Which Editing Services You Need

Every book, and every author, will have their own strengths and weaknesses. When you’re picking which editorial stage to prioritize, my recommendation is to look for your own writing weak points (we all have them) and make that the service you absolutely, at a minimum, get done. I know this is scary—admitting you need help, especially in the aspect of writing you’re most insecure about. But humility is one of the most admirable qualities an author can have when being edited. Being humble and asking for help because you aren’t as good in one area of writing than another is nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, I admire you more for knowing you need help—and your book will come out stronger because of it.*

If you’re most worried about content, hire a developmental editor.

If you’re less worried about content overall but feel like you don’t know if you’re getting ideas across in your writing, hire a line editor.

If you are 100 percent about your prose and content, hire a copy editor.

If you have laid out the book yourself, hire a proofreader. (This being said, if in proofreading, your proofreader comes back with hundreds of marks in the first couple pages, asking if it underwent copyediting and the answer is no—be truthful, and expect them to upcharge you for performing above what a normal proofread entails.)

Overall, know what the editing services are, research how much an editor may charge for them, and figure out what you think is your book’s/your writing’s weak point. Hire an editor that: (1) is not you, (2) who is trained and well-versed in that specific stage of editing you want extra support in, and (3) who has the book’s overall success as their first priority.

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*A personal note: I’ve already slotted my copy editor and proofreader, and set aside my budget. I know that while I love copyediting for other people, I need eyes that are not my own on my book. Wish I could hire a copy editor for my blog posts too, but c’est la vie—money.

I’m also in an extensive beta reading right now with some of my friends from my old in-office publishing job and am looking at getting sensitivity readers. I will handle how these phases of the writing process play into your overall book production in another blog post 😊