WHY HIRE AN EDITOR?

Look, I’m with you. This whole editing thing can get expensive. And you love writing, you’re good at it! Why would you need to waste money for someone to make sure you’ve used your quotation marks correctly? Does it really make a difference?

As a writer myself, I know just how useful another set of eyes can be. How many hours have you spent re-reading your manuscript trying to find things to revise? How many times have you come to a certain scene and thought, "This is close, but not exactly, what I want and imagined, but I have no idea how to improve it." That’s what an editor is for. I’ve never seen your manscript before, so I’ll catch all those little mess-ups your eyes have learned to habitually glaze over. I’ll help you find the right way to express exactly what it is you wanted your protagonist to say to their love interest. I’ll help you fix any plot holes you may have missed. I'll point out potential problems so that your readers never will.

Trust me, I’ve read a lot of self-published books where it’s obvious the writer did not hire an editor beforehand. It shows in the writing. Although you may still impress your friends and family with the simple fact that you finished a novel at all (Which is indeed impressive! Congratulations!), you’ll never attract any other readers if your dialog is stiff, or if you keep mixing up affect and effect, or if your story just doesn’t make any sense.

There’s a reason even the greats continue to use editors far into their careers. If what you want is the best possible version of your book, an editor is pretty much indispensible.