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In this episode we talk about what’s involved in editing your book. What are the steps, whether or not you should hire an editor, different types of editing, how to find and hire a professional editor, and how to save some money and energy in the polishing phase for your books.

Curious Jar Question to answer:

What author or story made you want to be a writer? 

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Complete Episode Transcripts

This site contains affiliate links to products that we have used and love, and that we think may be of help to you on your authorpreneur journey. We may receive a commission on sales of these products, which is how this podcast stays independent and free of advertising. Thanks for your support! Click here for a full list of recommended tools and resources. 

Transcript for Strategic Authorpreneur Episode 004: A Deep Dive into the Editing Process

Crystal: Hey there, strategic authorpreneurs. I’m Crystal Hunt

Michele: And I’m Michele Amitrani. We are here to help you save time, money and energy as you level up your writing career.

Crystal: Welcome to episode number four of the strategic authorpreneur podcast. On today’s show, we’re going to take a deep dive into the editing process. So looking at when and how to hire an editor, how to save yourself money by preparing your manuscript properly. Bet you didn’t know there was a proper way, but there is.

And uh, talking about the different kinds of editing and what stages a manuscript goes through before it’s ready for publication. So tell us what, what all do you know about editing? Yeah, dive in!

Michele: This episode should have been like, divided in like 12 or half a dozen different episodes because there is so much to say about the editing process.

Which in my humble opinion, I think it’s one of the most important things a book can go through. And one of the things that can level up, it more. I would say it’s even more important for some aspect of the cover. Even though the cover is like the very first thing that a potential buyer, a potential customer, potential reader sees.

But like, when you are preparing your book and you dedicated to it so much of your time, and I’m talking about months, it could have been years. Um, the editing is basically the thing, the thing that can break, make or break really your story. And, um, we’re going to talk about the different kinds of editing and level of editing.

Broadly speaking, when we talk about editing of a book, we mean, we mean this. If we are not an editor by profession, we basically hand our manuscript; it can be at different stages, to somebody else, which is a professional, which she or he does know what she or he is doing on that manuscript.

Now, the way you see your story, it’s um, maybe interesting and brilliant on your side of things, but you need to have like another view of that manuscript and that’s where the editor comes into place. What is it that the editor does is taking a critique. Or a critic view over your manuscript over all your story.

If we’re talking about fundamental editing, so if we’re talking about , uh, just to really make sure that your story kind of makes sense for somebody that is not you. So that’s why you need that external eye on details. Um, so the job of an editor is to make sure that your book, it’s really um, and it’s really, interesting for readers read.

This is the first kind of editing that you can decide your book needs, the fundamental editing. There are other lines of editing below, I would say. Uh, there is like a, something that’s called, uh, the  line editing, copy editing then there is a proofreading each of these, it’s a different kind of service by itself.

And I do know like there are self published author that like, they asked for a fundamental editing, then they get the manuscript back. Implement the changes that the editor gave, and then give it back to that same editor or another editor for a completely different editing. That can be the line editing, which is a more like paragraph by paragraph, line by line kind of things.

The proofreading is actually, I would say maybe the very end of the process of the editing when you polish things up. Coma, semi-colon, uh, all that kind of stuff. So there are different levels of editing. I can’t; me myself, Michele Amitrani, possibly do this. And it’s because like one of the reason is because English is my second language.

And so there are so many things that I do not know of the grammar and all the things, but even if that was just a secondary reason why I will hand my manuscript to an editor, it’s not the only thing that covers it. Again, there are things that I don’t see. When I write my own book. And I’m sure that this is completely the same for any other authors. Things that I don’t notice, things that make sense for me.

That’s why I gave my book to an editor. I’m curious to know more of your process Crystal, but basically what I do is when I finished the first draft, and I read it once, maybe twice, what I usually do is I would give these rough, not polished manuscript to, one or two test readers. So this is even before I give the book, the manuscript to an editor, because I want to understand if this story makes sense overall.

So I asked him: completely ignore grammar and structure and stuff. Does the story make you turn a page. And then when I get the feedback, I implement the feedback of the test readers. And then I rewrite the story. And then after that I give it to an editor. What do you do?

Crystal: Well, yes, I have, um, a fairly involved process that I have developed over the course of the last sort of dozen stories. And I have found I don’t use a lot of beta readers necessarily. So when you’re—when you’re saying you’re looking at test readers, a lot of people would know that phrase as beta readers. So some people do that because it is a good way to kind of polish things up, before you hand it over to an editor and that developmental edit stage where they’re giving story feedback is a really interesting part of the process.

But a lot of people do that work not with a professional editor. A lot of people do have sort of readers who give them feedback on that stuff. For myself, because of the pace that I usually work at, which is when I’m in writing and publish mode, I tend to go pretty hard.

And for me, I really wanted one consistent feedback source for developmental edits. So when I write, I actually “underwrite” a little bit. I’m putting that in air quotes for those of you who are listening. But if I know that I want my finished product to be 25,000 words or 30,000 words, I will target about 26 or 7,000 words. If what I want is 30 in the end, um, I think maybe a scene needs to be added here, or maybe it needs to be added there.

I won’t fill in both of those blanks and then take it away later in the editing process. I will actually just leave a space and, um, if I don’t have like a clear vision of how that needs to go and I will very rough draft, send it to my editor. And Amanda will say, okay, here’s where it’s working. Here’s where I’m not sure about this character’s development or motivations or, you know, the, the always present, not enough conflict!

You really could just as an editor, buy a stamp. And if you just like, for yourself, if you buy a stamp that says “not enough conflict”, you could be your initial beta reader and you could just stamp every page of your work with it and that would save you certainly a certain amount of money on editing. But you know, Amanda will go through it at the developmental stage and she’ll say, okay, here’s where I think we need more.

I really wish we were a little bit longer than this scene or a bit more here, or a bit more there, or you know, whatever kind of feedback she’s going to give me. And then I will take that feedback and do a rewrite at which time I will add in those extra words that were missing to get me to my target word count.

And from an efficiency perspective, that just means you’re not writing a whole bunch of stuff that you’re then throwing away if it wasn’t correct. And so. I think that’s one of the differences from when you’re learning, it’s really good to just, you know, write things out, like figure them out by writing them, and then you can cut away at stuff like making a sculpture. Right?

You’re cutting away the bits you don’t need. When you’ve written a lot of books, then it’s in a process for you. It is nice to kind of underwrite a little bit and then just add where you need it to be added. It just saves a bit of time, a bit of effort. And then you’re also not so attached.

I have a really hard time cutting things out. Like once they’re in there, I feel attached to them. So for me, it also saves me from killing a few more of my darlings, right? If I’m just producing them where they’re needed, then that has value. So I bounce it to Amanda when I’ve got my first draft done, I bounce it to Amanda for developmental feedback.

I go in, I do a rewrite of the story, and then I will, um work through it a few times on my own, actually, at that point, I will take a run through looking for consistency errors. So things like, does my character’s hair change color part way through, like did I, you know, switch a character’s name in the draft process.

And, and often I’ll make a switch and just keep writing and then go back and fill in the blanks. But sometimes you miss stuff. Uh, how does it work with my other books? Like, is there. If there’s another book that’s tied to that one in the series at this point, I will often reread that other book to make sure that I don’t have any contradictory details.

I will look at the spreadsheets I have for my town and my people and everything else, and just make sure that everything lines up. And then at that point, I generally will let my husband and my mom see it. And that sounds kind of funny, but they are actually my beta readers.

My husband is also a writer. He’s really good with plot and structure, and also, some of my books have magic and he’s been big into the gaming world for most of his life. And so he’s really great at world-building. Game Master. We call the GM, or DM if you’re into Dungeons and Dragons. But he’s able to tell me if I mess up the magic or if there’s, you know, stuff that just doesn’t make sense in the rules of the world, then he can identify that for me and if there’s issues with the plot again, and he does not read romance, which makes him a great feedback for that kind of thing.

Because do you want to have a good story regardless of what genre you’re in. Just because you can get away with some things in certain genres doesn’t mean you should. So he’s my story, quality and magic, a detail reader. And then my mom is actually just really good with, yeah, worldly kind of details.

And so things like, you know, if my Christmas lights are, I’m describing them as strung around the power lines in a way that she’s like, “you just fried your town. Like you can’t do that”. She’s got a really interesting mixed background. She’s good with construction and whatever. And again, like she reads some romance, but she’s not a die hard romance fan.

But she does live in a small town, which happens to be startlingly similar to my fictional small town. So she’s able to highlight some things for me around that, or if there’s an inconsistency with a character or whatever, um, she’s got a good memory and she really pays attention to details. So she will point out, well, you said over here that this was the case. So yeah, it’s not going to fly.

So I’ll make the changes that they suggest. And then once I’m feeling really good about it, I will send it back to Amanda for a full line edit or copy edit. So this is the kind of edit where you end up with like. I dunno, I think I had like 30,000 suggested changes in a 30,000 word manuscript, but it’s just a line by line.

Dotting the I’s, crossing the T’s, adjusting phrasing or whatever, and giving really specific feedback, um, at each of the stages

Michele: You were mentioning her name; Amanda. So I was like, just wondering like how did you choose her? Yeah. I think this is important for people that are listening to us. Like, okay, they’re talking about that editor.

How do I choose mine? How do I choose a good one? Because from what you said, from your story. You’re going back to her and like, you trust her. You’ll really develop this this like connection. Uh, how did that happen? Like did you have, because I’m a different phase, I do not have like an editor that I go back to every single time I have to start from scratch.

And it will be very interesting for me. And I think for us, a lot of people do understand. How did you get to find her? What were the criteria that you were following? What made you realize that she was the one.

Finding an editor

Crystal: Well, it’s interesting phrasing a use that she’s the one than it is kind of like getting married a little bit.

It is a relationship that you’re going to have with somebody. It’s like choosing an agent. If you’re traditionally publishing, it’s a relationship that you’re going to have and you’re going to work really closely and you have to really trust somebody. If you’re willing to share like an unpolished draft of a book with someone is kind of a gut wrenching experience.

You feel kind of naked and exposed and vulnerable! Oh, it’s, it’s nerve wracking to let somebody in when you know it’s not perfect. Right. And you need to let them in before you think it’s perfect because you need to have that real feedback and stuff. So for me, it was just looking around in the networks I had, and Amanda and I are actually part of the same romance writers groups.

So I wanted somebody who was comfortable with romance and I also knew she has a PhD in history, so there’s a certain amount of nonfiction knowledge there as well, which for me, because I write in both genres, I wanted to develop a relationship with somebody that could potentially work on anything that I was working on.

So that was a good fit. And then I, I asked her to give me an estimate of how much it would cost to do a story that I had ready, and I asked her to do a couple sample pages. And so I looked at the sample pages that she sent back and I loved that she had put super funny little comments in the margin. So not everything was just a red Mark that was like, Oh, change this, fix that.

There was also, she would identify if there was a part that really made her laugh out loud or if there was a part that she really liked. Um. Or whatever. So she, you know, she was sort of,

Michele: She went above and beyond

Crystal: She went, yeah, she went above and beyond. But also just personality wise, like the way somebody gives you feedback, will make a difference of if you’re comfortable taking that feedback or not.

So just the way that she interacted and the editorial letter that she wrote up for me that first time. You know, it made me not hate the editing process. And so many people talk about how, like their editor will send them their editing notes or their line edits and they just don’t even want to open the email because they just don’t want to see what’s in there.

And it’s, you know, it’s stressful when you’ve handed something to somebody and said, tear this apart, please. That is scary. A little bit, not gonna lie, but you know, I like that when I get edits back, I’m like, Oh, I got edits. Okay. And then I, I can start reading and I see all the funny little comments and the, you know, I see the suggestions, but they’re all framed in a way that is like, know, okay, here’s, here’s what you might want to think about for this, and whatever.

So it’s, it’s, she’s not very like, you have to do this, this, and this. It’s more like, okay. Here’s what I would think about. And then often I find the solutions are kind of buried in the language that she used to suggest something needed to be changed. So for us, it just works very well. Yeah. And so then we just did another project and another project and another project, and now it’s just really nice to have somebody who knows your work and knows your voice. And so once you’ve worked together a few times, you’ve become much more efficient because if you’re sticking with the same person, they get to know you. You’ve built up like a style sheet for your book or your series. And so a lot of the questions, you know, an editor, it needs to ask you to know how to edit your work. You don’t have to do that every time. So it just kind of compresses that process.

Michele: That’s basically, with this, like we know and we understand how you chose her, why she was a good fit for you. Why was it a good fit for the kind of stories you write for the kind of book, books that you write because you said like, she’s helping me in different kind of genres, is that correct?

Crystal: Yes

Michele: The romance and the nonfiction. Okay. I think one question that is attached to that, I think this one is going to be a bit sensitive maybe, uh, because like it requires us to give the audience numbers. It’s okay that we found a good editor, but what is the way that we understand how much do we have to budget for the editing?

Like what does it cost them?  I’m asking you this because I know you have more experience than me on that front being you being, uh, having published more books. I do know by my experience that, for example. I commissioned the editing of the 50,000, well, 47,000 word novel, and it costs you around $500.

I was very happy with the editing. I was, I think it was a very professional kind of editing. But if somebody had to ask you, what does it cost? Is there even an answer to that? Depends so much from, you know, the words, the genre, the person that you, you’re looking for. How would you answer that question yourself with experience you have.

How much to spend on an editor

Crystal: Yeah. So the only way to answer that question is to say “it depends”. I can break down for you this things that it depends on, and that will help you to make those decisions for yourself. So I could take the same book and I could give it to three different editors and say, okay, what would it cost to edit this.

And you could get estimates from like $200 to $20,000 depending on that person. Right? It’s just like anything. Yeah, it depends. And what it depends on is, as you said, like how ready is your manuscript to be edited? What type of editing are you asking for? Because if you just say, can you edit this for me?

And you hand over a manuscript and they say, sure, it’ll be $200 they’re probably talking about a bit of a developmental edit or just like an editorial letter where maybe they just read your story and they give you feedback on it. Maybe that person has never done editing before and they’re giving you a super cheap estimate because they’re trying to build their resume and they’re trying to build up a portfolio of clients that they have as examples for future people who are interested in their work. So it depends where your editor is at in terms of their own experience, their own qualifications. Because there isn’t a standardized, it’s not like saying I’m a doctor.

And there is a body who certifies you and an organization that gives you a license each year to practice. I mean, there are those, there, there are professional editorial associations, but not everybody belongs to them. And not all editors had been through the same certification program. So one of the things to look for is in fact, what qualifications does your editor have and the level of qualifications they have will influence how much they charge.

Another thing is how fast are you asking them to turn it around? Because that’s going to have a big impact on price as well. If you’re saying, Oh, you can fit this in anywhere, you have a gap that’s different than, I need this in two weeks, you need to bump all your other clients to fit me in. Right? And so there’s often like a rush fee or an additional charge if you are trying to sneak something in really quickly through the system.

So, that’ll be one of the things. So the type of editing you want, that’s one piece. Right? Proofreading rates are different than developmental editing, which is different from copy editing. How experienced or credentialed your editor is, will also make a difference. The quality of your writing. So how much polishing does it need? Right?

If you are asking for a copy edit. But you have already done like three passes and you’ve had the readers look at it and you’ve run it through pro writing aid beforehand, and you’ve cleaned up literally everything you can. That’s very different than handing somebody your first draft. So when we said we’d talk about the ways you can say it’s money.

This is one of those ways. If you get Grammarly or Pro Writing Aid and you practice running your work through it and you clean up everything you can, you did a whole bunch of the work for that editor and the price you have to pay for your editing will be reflected in that. So I think that’s a really important thing to remember as authors is every bit of energy you put into editing and polishing your own work is money that you are saving on the editorial side, which is partly why I will get a developmental edit before I do any polishing on my work because I don’t want to spend a lot of hours polishing something that may not end up in the final book. Right?

It’s very tempting to go back and just perfect, perfect, and perfect and perfect everything. Well that makes you extra resistance to removing it. If your editor in the developmental stage says, I don’t think this scene needs to be here, you’re like, no, no,

Michele: I just spent two or three weeks on that!

Crystal: Then you are really resistant to kill that darling.

And so you don’t want to get attached in that way. You don’t want to be so invested that you can’t cut it out. Right? So I think that’s just really important to keep in mind is that it’s really smart to invest in your own sort of evolution as an author of how much of that self editing you can do. And I think it’s really interesting to work with something like pro writing aid where you see each time, and I know that that working with an editor over and over again on multiple books means that as I’m rereading it before I submit my new book to my editor, I will be thinking, Oh, she’s totally gonna say X, Y, Z about this section. I’ll just fix that now.

So you know, you can, you actually start  to like  learn from the comments. And so working through those line by line edits, you will start to internalize the changes that you made from before.

So you’ll probably find the more books you do, and you know, the, the closer attention you pay to those edits as you make the changes, the least likely you are to actually do those same things again in the future. So yeah, that really doesn’t answer it. How should you budget? You should take your basic information, you should say, okay, I have this kind of a project in this genre.

It is this many words long. Here’s a sample, three pages. I would like a developmental edit or just a copy edit, or can you give me a price for all three types of editing? If you do them all. Lots of editors don’t do them all. And then you send them that request and they will send you an estimate and you should ask multiple people for estimates just to make sure that you know what your options are.

And that you pick the one that fits your budget the best. And it might be that you have a dream editor you want to work with, but you can’t quite afford them yet. So keep their business card on the side of your desk and go with the editor you can afford for right now. And then, you know, get that product out there and have it start making money and you can always switch down the road.

Or if you know, you absolutely want to work with that person, then you have a goal, you have a card with a number on it sitting beside your desk. And do you know roughly how much money you need to save to be able to afford that editor for that project. And then you start talking money away and you don’t have that latte or whatever it is, and you stuff that money in your editing jar.

I used to actually have a little tin, when I was- I served for years in the bar to make my tip money was what I put into my writing career. So I had an actual jar I counter and I used to stuff my tip money, anything over what I needed for like my basic household budget got to go in the writing and fun fund.

So the, I literally was stuffing a jar with money that was like, okay, well I can pay for my next book printing when this jar gets to X amount or whatever it was.

Michele: You still have a jar and we use it on a daily or weekly basis. So I’m just telling them, just saying that the jar thing, like, it seems like very important.

Yeah. It’s something that repeats itself. But like concerning the, the editing, there is a couple of things that you said. Very interesting. So the suggestion that you gave prior; it is very useful for people that have no idea how to find an editor. So you just said if you really don’t know where to start, just send out four to three or four different people a piece of your novel.

See what kind of answers you have. See what kind of specific feedback did you get. What kind of, you know, the voice of the editor? I think you can see that. Then you can see personality through emails too. I can say this from experience: I had the pleasure, sometimes not so pleasurable experience of working with, different kind of a editors. And I could see like, a person that was working or might have work with me and my genre, based on the kind of answer that I get that I did get via email.

So what we basically are saying is, try different things. Especially if you’re at the beginning. Take some time to see what kind of editing those people gave you in those two to three, four pages that you gave to them and then make an informed decision if you don’t have the luxury as an author like Crystal, for example, that already had like a partnership with another person, right? Really trusted somebody. You have to start from some somewhere. And I think the suggestion you gave, like: look for different options when you’re starting out, is very, very, very important. And again, as again, as you said, you might have already an editor that you really, really want to work with, but it’s like a bit, you know, out of your range, keep the business card on the side.

There might be a time in which like you then definitely can go confidently, and be sure that you have the resources, you have the will, you have whatever you need to work with this person that has been in your dream kind of a team all along. Now, we talked a bit about like the, the four phases of the editing, which is interesting, both from the side of an author like yourself, who has already found the editor that works best, but also for people do not have an editor and how to take the first steps to, to find one. But there are other things-

Where to find an editor

Crystal: Can I- I’m going to break in here for a moment. I just want to add one thing. So we kind of skipped over like, where can you actually go to find an editor?

So you can look up like the editor’s association of Canada. You know, there’s different organizations that are editors associations around the world. So you can Google that. Personally, I think the best way to find an editor is to go into your writing communities and ask for recommendations.

So if you belong to, you know, a local writers group or a critique club or something like that, great. If you don’t come join the Creative Academy, you can come on in there and you can post, Hey, I’m looking for an editor. I’m in this genre. Does anybody have any good personal recommendations? Because I think anybody can put up a nice looking website and you know, answer a couple of questions well, but it’s really hard to tell. What that experience is really like for somebody.

But you should be able to always ask for references. It’s just like any other contractor you would hire any other job situation. You are hiring somebody to be on your team and so asking for and checking references should be an expectation.

They should be able to give you names for some other clients who have been happy with their work that they can connect you with, so that you can ask questions. And then also, you know, using some of these online forums. So there’s loads of Facebook groups for writers, and there’s loads of online groups for writers that you can access for free, for the most part.

So go in there and just ask. And, get those personal recommendations, because the best way to find somebody good is too, find them through someone who has been happy with their services. And often you’ll get recommendations of people who maybe don’t have a website or don’t widely advertise that they do this because they have a pretty decent client list already.

Or maybe there are retired librarian, and so they’re doing this because it’s also kind of fun for them. And so maybe that is the perfect fit for you at the stage of your career you’re at. You don’t have to have somebody with 14 letters after their name. They just have to be good at what they’re doing.

And so if that is going to be an opportunity for them and matches your budget, and it means you can get help with your book when you might, not have been able to afford it yet, then you just have to pick the option that works the best for you.

Michele: Yeah. Yeah. There are several different options and you should be able to find the one that works best for you. And just look outside your…garden, I would say and see and ask other people, people that you met, people that maybe know somebody that you don’t know. So yeah. What Crystal just said is basically a word of mouth is sometimes is even more important like a blog. A post somewhere, a website, maybe it’s shiny, but you don’t know that person.

You don’t know exactly where she or he is coming from. And the other thing that she said that is vulnerable is like, ask for references because like if you don’t have anything to see and check or ask, it’s not good. It’s not a good indicator of maybe professionality or past experience that that person should have in order to take care of your manuscript.

Crystal: And it’s okay to work with somebody who’s new, but that means that they need to give you a sample or something. Like, you can, you know, negotiate with them to kind of try it out and just make sure that that works. Some editors will do like a couple sample pages for free. Others will charge you, but it’s still better to pay for a couple of sample pages to be edited and then make an informed choice than it is to just commit all of your dollars then and your whole book editing process to somebody without trying that on.

Michele: There was a, I don’t know if you have something else to say about the, this particular face of the subject, but I had some, some other things, more on the editing. So once you have like a polished enough, let’s say, like a piece of work which is way ahead of the first draft manuscript or second draft manuscript, like what do you basically do with this kind of product that you have, which is not completely ready, but it can be used. For example. If you think of ARC readers and giving out advanced review copies, which don’t have to be perfect like on the grammar side. You get something that you use immediately as a resource to gather feedback and then potentially in the future. Reviews, or something that you keep for the latest step. Like, how do you use it?

Steps to make with your first manuscript

Crystal: So, okay, so the first steps were, I send it to the editor. She does a developmental edit, sends it back. I rewrite it all. I get a couple of beta readers to read it. I send it back to the editor. She does a full line by line copy at it, and then she sends it back to me.

At that point, I will sometimes let a couple people read it, but usually I do all the layouts and everything. At that point, she will have done sometimes a proofread. I have an interesting, relationship tools wise with my editor and she has most of the same tools that I do. So sometimes we pass things back and forth in a format that you wouldn’t normally use with your own editor.

Like Amanda could open my Scrivener files or my Vellum files or whatever along the way. And often editors will only deal with a Word Document. So it comes back to me. We do the polishing, the proofreading, and then I lay it all out, and then usually Amanda will take one more look at it. So do like a final proofread once everything is in place, because it’s easy to muck things up when you’re doing the layouts, right?

Sometimes you change things, something gets deleted or added or, or just scrambled in the layout process. Vellum really reduces the risk of that, but it doesn’t entirely like omit. So I will do the final, final proofread, make any last changes that she noticed. And then I have a review crew, I call them. So it’s like an ARC team and beta readers kind of mashed up, but they don’t see the book until it’s really about to be published.

So I will give my arc team the book and I, I usually have about a hundred people on that team. And the assumption is they will catch anything that we didn’t because it does not matter how good your editor is or how good you are, you know, you will miss stuff. There will be things that you didn’t see.

And we have kind of a game now because I have a lot of retired librarians and teachers, and just really keen folks on grammar who are on my ARC team and they are on a mission to find errors. And so it’s very exciting if they find something that I need to correct a certain amount of, it comes back because I’m Canadian.

My town is Canadian. I use Canadian spellings. I have giant like warnings at the beginning of the books that say. C O L O U R is not a typo. That is how we spell colour in Canada because you are welcome here. So, um, you know, we, we try to make that as clear as possible, but there are other words that kind of fit into that category.

So I collect all the feedback from my ARC team and change anything I need to change before that book actually gets released on Amazon. So the idea is I will have it as polished as it can possibly be before that digital version goes out. I don’t release the print versions until after the digital version has been out for a little while because I want to correct any issues that come up in the digital version in those first couple of weeks after release.

So there’s usually about a month of like, collecting feedback from readers, just if they find anything that we didn’t. Sometimes it’s a little consistency detail, like, Oh, that kind of truck doesn’t have that kind of seatbelt or whatever, you know? Um, and so then we fixed all of that. And then once everything is totally polished and totally ready, then it can go to the audio book production company as well.

So the last thing I want to do is be fixing errors in an audio book. So I do from the easiest to fix to the hardest to fix formats in a row and at each stage, get a little bit more feedback and make sure I correct anything that needs to be corrected and then go onto the next phase.

Michele: That’s how you polish basically the product, because like a ebook wise, is super fast, 24 to 48 hours to where we upload it. Then paper book, back cover, or whatever it is that you use and then, or audiobook even because like, paying to do that. That’s a lot of money.

Crystal: Yeah. And most of my books are on version 10 to 12 before they hit the actual publication, like that’s, that’s how many cycles of revision in through before they get released. And even still, I have a couple of family members who will be like, I found a typo. We have a lot of very type A, very detail oriented people in our family, many writers. And so yeah, they are happy to point out what all of the rest of the world has missed.

Michele: Would you thank them profusely?

Crystal: I totally do because I don’t want any errors in my books! And so I know some people get very upset or take it very personally when readers point out that there are typos, but the way I think about it is if they were willing to spend their time to like document an issue and they think you’re the type of person who wants to fix it, that’s why they’re reaching out because they think that quality matters to you and they think your books are worth being the best books they can possibly be.

So for me, I just think of it as they are generously willing to spend their time helping you make the best products that you can have. And so, just say thank you. They just saved you heartache down the road of your next format of that book being incorrect. Or, you know, a future reader, maybe not sticking with your books when they would have, because that was one typo too many, or it was just push the wrong button for them. Right?

I think  you want to reduce resistance to your readers to keep reading and typos are something that creates resistance. They’re like, Whoa, must be bumps. Right? Yeah. You can only take so many speed bumps before you’re like, I’m getting off this road, none of this. So that’s sort of the way I think about it, is just they’re generously helping you keep people on your reading road.

Michele: So there’s this thing that happened actually a couple of weeks ago. One of my readers in Italy, she sent me like a PDF filled with like, a couple of pages of typos and stuff like that, that she found. And I was really grateful because like, she was taking the time to do that for me.

So I sent her back an email thanking her. So I think like the approach you give and you have to these things which are imperfections and we are imperfect human beings is completely fine. Like, you should give yourself permission to feel too bad when you see there is that thing that you work so hard and maybe you thought that there were no typos or nothing to fix, but yeah, actually, there is. So it’s important that you understand that it’s just another part of the process and the process is almost mean to us because there’s always going to be something maybe not quite the way it should be. You can’t catch everything.

Crystal: No, you can’t. And I think maybe one useful tip to share is how I keep track of those things. Because you know, people send you notes here and there, but it, you need everything in one place. And I do dive into this, there’s a section of the Strategic Series Author book that actually talks about like how to manage feedback that comes in about your book. And one of the best ways to do it is have one place, whether it’s an Evernote note or a word document or you know, whatever system you want to use, have one place that you collect up all of the feedback and then you can see when stuff just coming in, do I already have a note of this or do I not? And you can do your updates in batches. So you know, you don’t want to be updating your book file like every day for the first couple of weeks as it comes out, one thing at a time. And then you don’t remember, did I already change that or did I not just collect everything for the first couple of weeks, assuming they’re minor issues to correct.

I mean, if you’ve completely misnamed a character or like included something that’s totally wrong, change it right now. But if it’s just like a little typo here and there, just collect up a few of them for the first couple of weeks and then do a re-upload. And correct everything at once and keep that document, just cross them off or highlight them in your word document so that if somebody notices something later and sends you a message, you don’t know if they’re reading an older copy of that book or if they just downloaded it now.

But if you can see, Oh, I already corrected that on April 7th or whatever, then you don’t need to go back and hunt for it again, because you can spend a lot of time looking for errors that no longer exist. And you know, it sounds silly, but if somebody downloads your Kindle book and they don’t actually read it for two years, which has actually happened to me, they are going to see stuff that you have corrected a long time ago.

And so you being able to see that and say, Oh yeah, actually, you know, I did correct that. You should be able to download an updated version of the book, but I always tell them like, if you can’t upload, download it, or if you can’t download a new version from Kindle. Just fire me back an email and I’ll give you the BookFunnel link.

Sometimes I just send them a book funnel link automatically because I know they obviously got the book from somewhere already, so I’ll just say, Ooh, actually I updated that, but here’s a link. You can download a free copy that’s the most up to date one so that you don’t find any more errors in it.

And that’s just another, like it takes you one minute to grab your book funnel link and send it to them. It doesn’t cost you any money because you’re already using the service and it makes them feel very like excited and heard. And also that’s some good customer service that you were able to take the sort of a negative situation and turn it around in a positive way. And people remember that and they respond differently. They feel valued as readers, which they are and should be. You don’t have a career without our readers. So, you know, I keep them at the center of the things.

Michele: Always the hub, always the heart. You’re sending it to them, and at the same time learn from them every single time.

Now, after all of these things that we said, do you think like people can get along without a professional editor?

Crystal: There are definitely authors who do. Um, there, there are a number of authors who I know don’t have professional editors and they publish a ton of books and they seem to sell a ton of books.

I think it depends a little bit on who you’re selling your books to and who your readers are. Certain categories of readers and certain sub genres of books are a little more forgiving than others. So, I mean, you have to know your audience. I think. I think ideally everyone will have professionally polished books, but I know that isn’t the reality.

And especially when you’re starting out, you just can’t always afford it. You know? And, and what you really need is to get your stories out into the marketplace to see how readers are responding. And so I think you can test that, but I would say if you’re going to skip the professional editor, definitely spend the money on a tool, whether it is Pro Writing Aid or Grammarly.

Make sure you make that investment because you need something outside of you to help you polish that work. You cannot, your brain literally cannot see all the errors because our brains are magical and they, they switch things to be what we expect them to be. And so that’s why even if you are a professional editor, don’t edit your own work.

You can do the first couple of passes, but you I always need other eyes. When we were running our publishing company. Our rule was a minimum of 12 people had to look at each book, and we would still be finding issues after 12 separate professionals looked at the book. So, you know, we, we just, we all see different things and we all pick up on different things and we all have different things that stick with us as far as grammar and language go.

So I think, yes, potentially you could skip the professional editor, but if you’re going to do that, make sure you take it every step you can to be as polished as possible. And that means knowing your craft, that means also reading your reviews. If you publish a test book that has not been professionally edited, you better read every single comment people made, and that’s where you’re going to find out.

If you have a bunch of bad reviews and comments about typos, then obviously you cannot build your career off of that kind of a reputation in the publishing world. So you need at that point to make some adjustments. But if you’re getting really good reviews and nobody is commenting on typos and stuff, well, maybe can get away with it. So it’s gonna really depend on your own language skills and your own comfort level with you know, punctuation and grammar and everything else. And, and your own comfort level with the craft of writing. Because if you don’t understand what makes a good story. People are not necessarily going to identify, well, you really, Hey, you know, your climax came a little too late or too early in terms of your story structure and you didn’t have enough internal conflict.

They’re going to be like, that was boring, and they’re going to stop reading at, you know, chapter two or whatever it is. Or they’re not going to get into the dialogue or they’re never going to connect with your characters. So I think you know, people will select out. And so you don’t want to take that risk if you don’t have to.

I think if you’re choosing what to spend your pennies on: the cover, because if they don’t by the book in the first place, they’ll never get to read it. So the cover and you’re editing, are your two things to just not skimp on. If you’re choosing what to spend your money on, because you can always add Ads later, you can always scale up how much money you’re spending on promotion or what you’re doing to promote the work. But if people don’t by and read the book, you can’t scale that. There is no way to scale a bad story into success other than pulling it down, rewriting it, paying for the editor at that later date and rereleasing it.

Which some people do, but that’s such a lot of work. So personally, I would rather upfront focus on the cover and the editing and writing part, and then I can scale all the rest of it later. That’s just my opinion. Okay. So if you could go back to your prior self, let’s say like the beginning of last year, right before you did your first in English publication, what advice would you give your past self about the editing process now to change things?

Michele: I would probably sit with myself. And make sure that he knows one thing that I did, not quite, know, like a year ago. I would say 2019 when I started really focusing on the project of a releasing the first English book, which is- the way people perceive the stories is slightly different from Italians.

This is why we have what’s called, for example, European science fiction, which is slightly different from the American one. There are a few things that are different. I’m not going to go into details, but if there is this distinction, there is a reason. All of them are from the Western world. And this is something that maybe for you, Crystal is different because like, it’s really like part of the Western world, Europe and the United States, Canada, you know, Australia.

But there really is a difference. So, when I published my, for example, science fiction work in Italian, they were not meant for the Anglo-Saxon audience, if you will. Now, the moment I decided to write in English, what I was doing is transferring what I learned. What I did with my previous books in Italian into English.

And that didn’t necessarily work because you have to understand your audience as you, and we. I repeated more than once. I didn’t do this at the beginning of the year. I only started the really shifting my attention over how the audience on this part of the Atlantic thinks. When I attended the conference, deeply creative festival actually, which we were both there, in Burnaby.

I for the first time was put into a situation where I will have to listen to authors like myself in my genre. They were sponsoring their products or talking about storytelling things, and I realized there were some things that were different, fundamentally different from the way I was thinking.

Tension, pacing. They’re not completely different, but there are these differences. The moment I finished listening to this three day conference, I really stopped to think about it. And I started rewriting the book that I was writing at that time, which turned out to be Lord of Time.

Previously it was called the Wicked Time. And again, the title before even the title if you think about that, it’s a misconception of what I thought Wicked could mean. And to make long story short, like wicked, for me, it was like something just evil or not very good. But wicked can also be a feature as a part of the title in many romance books because there is the wicked love component.

So when I tried to release Wicked Time as a short story. And this is funny, but I’m going to tell you this story. Many people believe that was a Male Male Romance, You saw this in a very previous cover, which was worth completely different from mine.

So that definitely came from my, I’m understanding and different culture of kind of things. So to answer, your question is, I would probably see it with Michele. And really made sure that he understands, yeah. That the book that he is writing now, what the book says right now is different from the previous one, different from whatever he thought was good for the European or Italian market.

So this is probably the most important thing that I will say if I, only a little time to speak with him, and tell him one thing. Just know your audience better. Read more books of that genre. After the creativity festival, I really started to read a lot of English books and I then I understand. Oh, so that’s what’s tension.

That’s how these climates happen. So yeah, and after reading books in general of English, I started reading books generally focused on science fiction, dark fantasy and urban fantasy. This is really, really important for me, Crystal, because like it’s not something you can learn from a book or grammar book.

Just something you learn just by osmosis, like just by reading other books that are similar to your genre. Talking with other authors that publish or release books in your genre. There’s no way you can learn this in a book.

Crystal: No, not in a book. But I do think this relates back to our conversation about editing, because that’s part of an editor’s job, if you have a good editor and they are giving you story feedback, they should understand the marketplace.

So if you are somebody who’s new to a certain genre or new to a certain country or market or whatever, then that is a very valuable role that an editor can play. So if you maybe are looking at a developmental edit, that’s a good way to approach that is they can help you identify those things that you need to look at because you may not even be aware of what the differences are. Right?

When you’re inside of it, you can’t see it. And so that’s a really valuable role for editors to play, is to draw your attention to market expectations, and usually an editor in your genre will have read hundreds, if not thousands of books in your genre. And that’s how they got into that in the first place.

So it’s usually a love of that particular genre so that is why also it’s important to match up with an editor who has your same back ground in terms of your genre interest. Because if I hand my romance book to an editor who only does Epic fantasy, then all of the feedback they give me is going to be about how to make that book into an Epic romantic fantasy.

And that’s not what I want! So you do need to make sure that you’re just matching up in that way. For sure. And yes, we could never drill home too many times, know your market and your readers as a strategic entrepreneur, which of course we all are. We are going to pay attention to all of those things.

And, because we are curious, strategic entrepreneurs. It is time for the curious jar and I stuffed a bunch more pages in it. More questions came in to have a rainbow colors here. I am going to do this. Tell me when to stop

Michele: Uhhh now!

What author or story made you want to be a writer?

Crystal: Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Yeah. Green one

Michele: Another green one

Crystal: Okay. So. Question is, what author or story made you want to be a writer? No pressure.

Michele: It’s just one, or it’s several?

Crystal: Uh, it just says one, but like, if you have to branch out to a couple, maybe we can think about that being okay.

Michele: Okay. I would say Isaac Asimov for the science fiction side. When I read the Foundation series, which is like three books, and then became seven.

When I read it, and this book has been published  60, 70 years ago, like in 1950, 52. More or less like Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, I believe.

And super short dive into what I’m talking about. Foundation series is basically Asimov then took the idea out of the way the Roman empire collapsed and he made it on a galactic scale. So you will see these amazingly well defined universe and worlds, right? Thousands of words and the humankind had to spread far and wide.

And then you will see it like crumbled. And you would see like that just the beacon of civilization left them the foundations in this case. And you will really have this feeling of like, collapse a feeling of losing something important culture in this case. So I would say Isaac Asimov really made me want to write something of that scale.

Probably that’s why I wrote my four books, science fiction books series, Omnilogos in Italian. And a fantasy wise, I will say Tolkien. But contrary of what some people might think, not necessarily the Lord of the Rings. Th other work he wrote which is called Silmarillion. And Silmarillion is basically something that precedes, the Lord of the Rings.

It’s more like a, it’s like poetry. It’s what makes his works so complicated. It’s the music between, before the Alps. It’s really how everything got to be set up. So he will talk about the gods. He will talk about how the God, there was like the good God and a bad God, how, their powers pound are over new beings.

Like how the singing of the things that like made something out of nothing. How the elves were born, how the humans, how the dwarves. It’s really Oh, gee. I would say so. It’s really like the foundation of what the fantasy can be. And I was like. This is amazing. Like that’s basically what world building is at its best, I think. You get to play God.

And that’s something that Neil Gaiman also said like world building is generally, I believe, with the moment in which an author in any genre you can think of, but even like a romance, that’s where building, when you build your own, like Crystal, build an Island, you get to play. God.

And I think the Silmarillion was really something that can inspire me. And that’s one of the reasons why I like to create my own world, doing my own world building. And I’m now curious to know it will be for you. That’s like, we write in such different genres, so-

Crystal: Yeah. Yeah. Well and I guess I would have a hard time putting down just one as well. Cause there’s a couple pieces that sort of fid into things. So the earliest one was maybe Anne of Green Gables because I loved. I loved Anne of Green Gables and I, I actually got introduced to that through the CBC, like series that was on TV when I was a kid and I recorded it on the VCR because that’s the current technology, 1,000,000,000 a half years ago.

And I watched that over and over. But Anne wants to be a writer and she’s always making up these elaborate tales, you know? And she’s telling crazy stories about every creature, everything and they’re just, you know, she lives in this amazing world of imagination. And then I was like, yeah, I can relate to that.

Okay. And so I just, I didn’t really think about it in terms of being a writer as a career that didn’t really register, but I guess that, and Little Women together. And Joe was always scribbling her stories. And you know, that those two together from my childhood was kind of planting those early bugs. But the actual like romance writing as a career thing was definitely Nora Roberts, which is super predictable in the romance world, but I just happened to be

born the year that her first book was published. And my entire life, she has been a consistent presence with new stories, and she’s like the master of the trilogy and just fun mixtures of like witchcraft and Irish stuff and all of these interesting and different careers that her characters have. And I think she just does such a brilliant job of integrating the details of that. Like there’s a trilogy that is about like the black Rose and the red Lily, and there’s three of them together and Ros was the main characters who runs a flower shop. But they, the subtlety of the language and the way it’s all blended in everything is coherent in those stories.

And so I think that’s the mastery of it is it’s just so subtly in the background and it’s accessible and people love it. And you just kind of get sucked in to the characters and the worlds. And these mini linked books. And so I really liked the way that there were connections between the books, but they weren’t all obvious series.

And sometimes characters from another set like pop up as cameos in a different trilogy and that were maybe written like 20 years apart. Or maybe it’s the kid of one of them. And so if you’re not paying attention and you haven’t read all of them, you’d never know that. But I just, I really love that. So that sense of like interlinked story worlds is really, for me what kind of got me thinking about, you know, how did I want to build my story world and if I were going to write for, you know, 40 years, like she has to date. Like if that’s what I was working towards, how did I want to make that happen? And so she’s definitely been as a person also as the writer person an inspiration as well as, I just love to read her stories.

So that’s an interesting mixture on both sides. It’s like, okay. Women can be writers. This is a thing you can do. You can have it as a career, as long as you’re willing to work your butt off for like your entire life, then it is achievable. And since I’m not scared of hard work or long term commitment, I’m like, Hey, I’m in.

So since I was, I dunno, 14 I’ve been like, yeah, I want to be her when I grow up. So we’ll see. It’s good to have goals right. I

Michele: I think you are on the right road.

Crystal: Yeah. Well, I don’t own a castle or an Island ship, but one day or a mountain, sorry, a castle and a mountain. I don’t know if she owns an Island or not.

But she definitely lives the ultimate writer’s life. That is for sure. So we would like to hear your answers to the curious question of the week. So I’m going to put it up here for a second. What author or story made you want to be a writer? Drop that into the comments on the page under the show notes, and if you have a curious jar question, please email it to ideas@strategicauthorpreneur.com and we’ll add it to the mix.

Now for show notes, links to resources we mentioned, and coupons and discounts on tools we love. You can visit us atstrategicauthorpreneur.com if you subscribe to the newsletter each week, we will email you just one thing that will help you along your writing and publishing journey. And the link to our latest episode of the strategic entrepreneur podcast.

Michele: And you’ll get the gold star and a million bonus points in the game of life if you leave a review for us, whatever you listen to this podcast.

Crystal: Thanks so much for taking time out of your busy life to get to know us and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out on our next episode where we’ll take a deep dive into the publishing side of being an authorpreneur.