{"id":35,"date":"2012-01-10T13:37:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-10T13:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/self-publishing-hire-an-editoryour-credibility-depends-on-it\/"},"modified":"2013-07-05T21:33:24","modified_gmt":"2013-07-06T02:33:24","slug":"self-publishing-hire-an-editoryour-credibility-depends-on-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/self-publishing-hire-an-editoryour-credibility-depends-on-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Self-Publishing? Hire an Editor\u2026Your Credibility Depends on It!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Edit\"<\/a>When you go the traditional route in publishing a book, editing is one of the services performed by the publisher during the production phase of the book.\u00a0 However, more often than not, when you publish a book yourself, editing is a service that you have to seek on your own.\u00a0 After reading several self-published books lately, I have a bad feeling that many authors either skip this step or \u201cedit\u201d the manuscript themselves.\u00a0 I\u2019ll be straight with you\u2014not having your book professionally edited can damage your credibility and possibly impede traditional publishing opportunities in the future.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Many people think that because they are writers, they can also edit.\u00a0 While this is generally true, it\u2019s only applicable to editing the work of others.\u00a0 Self-editing, while it is exist, is usually where authors fail.\u00a0 You can\u2019t effectively<\/em> edit your own work simply because you know what the text is supposed to say and you know the book\u2019s composition.<\/p>\n

For example, you know that the sentence is supposed to say \u201cBob took a moment to assess the situation.\u201d\u00a0 So naturally you\u2019ll probably read the following and think it\u2019s correct and exactly what you want it to say, but look really close\u2026it\u2019s wrong:\u00a0 \u201cBob took a moment to access the situation.\u201d\u00a0 Now you might have caught the error simply because you weren\u2019t the one that wrote it.\u00a0 But had you been the self-editing author who wrote the latter version, I\u2019m willing to bet you would have read right over the error and it would have gone to print as such.\u00a0 A good editor would not let this error make it to print.<\/p>\n

Another problem I see with all types of self-published books, whether fiction or non-fiction, is grammar and style issues as well as organizational issues.\u00a0 Editors don\u2019t just watch out for typos.\u00a0 An editor performs a variety of editing services including proofreading, copyediting, substantive, and developmental (you can read my post, Did You Know?\u00a0 Different Types of Editing<\/a> for more information on each one).\u00a0 This is why an editor can be a huge asset to your book.\u00a0 They can look for grammar and style issues, such as voice (changing from first-person to third-person or vice versa), word usage, consistency with terminology, punctuation, and they can even do some fact checking.\u00a0 And you\u2019ll certainly want an editor who can analyze the entire manuscript and help you rewrite or rework sentences, paragraphs, chapters, or the entire book to make sure it flows in a logic manner.\u00a0 As an author, it\u2019s hard to see that the book that you\u2019ve poured your heart and soul into doesn\u2019t really flow organizationally.\u00a0 A professional outsider will identify that immediately and help you fix it.<\/p>\n

The bottom line?\u00a0 If you\u2019re choosing the self-publishing route, be smart and hire an editor, particularly one that offers various levels of edit.\u00a0 This is very important in the world of genealogy and family history\u2014you don\u2019t want the credibility of all your hard work and research to be questioned simply because your book has typos, word usage issues, and is difficult to follow.\u00a0 Don\u2019t damage your credibility by trying to save a few bucks or a little bit of time.\u00a0 Believe me, it\u2019s worth the time and money to present a polished book!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you go the traditional route in publishing a book, editing is one of the services performed by the publisher during the production phase of the book.\u00a0 However, more often than not, when you publish a book yourself, editing is a service that you have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publishing","category-writing-writing-your-way-to-the-past","category-writing-your-way-to-the-past","cat-3-id","cat-18-id","cat-17-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3HcLI-z","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3231,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions\/3231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}