Your first book is history — the hours (or even years) of research, head scratching, and pushing through writer’s block have finally paid off, because you have a completed manuscript. So, what’s next? You may be thinking along the lines of the following: Well, publishing it, obviously. I’ve gone through my book countless times, I’ve used the spell checker, and since hiring an editor is expensive, I’m going to get one of my friends to read it and catch any typos I might have missed before I start shopping for publishers.
This train of thought appears to make sense, but here are three good reasons you’ll want to hire an editor:
- Writers miss errors in their own work, even if they’ve looked it over dozens of times.
The reason is a simple one: you and only you know what you mean to write. As a result, the intent of your writing is hardwired into your working process, so you focus on the larger scope of your work rather than the small details. The solution is to get a new pair of eyes on your writing, by hiring an editor who cares about your work but can also maintain the distance necessary to catch the sentence that contains the word pubic instead of public.
- Accurate writing is key to establishing your credibility as an author.
This is especially true in historical writing, and even the best historians can write down the wrong year or forget to properly cite a source. Maybe a burst of energy led to you pulling an all-nighter to finish one of your chapters, and you typed 1988 instead of 1888. Likewise, you got so excited about the saucy letter you found in the archive that you transcribed it into your manuscript, and thought, I’ll put this in the endnotes tomorrow. Except you forgot to do it. And where did you find the stat on the number of female electrical engineers in Canada in 1947 again? All history writers run into these problems, so maximize your credibility by hiring an editor to help you fix these slip-ups.
- An editor can identify inconsistencies and gaps in your manuscript; these are easy for you to overlook, because you already know so much about your subject.
Ironically, deep knowledge of a subject often leads to a writer making assumptions about what their readers know in the telling of a story. For example, you come across archival documents which tell you the woman you’re writing about had owned the deed on her family’s home starting in 1912, and you include this small detail in your book and then move on the next paragraph. Your reader may ask, “Hold on — could Canadian women even own property in 1912?” An editor will flag this and suggest ways you can research this topic further.
Similarly, one source you come across says a person was born in 1853, while another has a birth year of 1851. This is a common problem in historical sources, and your editor can help you address it in your work.
Basically, you need an editor in your corner when it comes to writing accurate history your readers will love. Sure, there’s a cost (although it may not be as much as you think), but given the investment of time, effort, and passion you’ve put into your project, it’s worth it to hire an editor to solidify your credibility and publish history that matters.
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