How to Find an Editor for Your Book – Starting the Search

Before you publish your book, you will need several editors to go over it so that your work is at its best! Types of editing you need might include manuscript evaluation, developmental editing, line editing, copy editing and proofreading. These are all different jobs, so you will need to hire multiple editors to get your book ready for publication. This also ensures as many pairs of eyes as possible have been on your book, giving you the most chance of catching errors. However, you will want to make sure you are hiring a reliable editor with a good reputation. In this blog post, we will be looking at where to start looking for an editor. This advice applies no matter what type of editing you are currently looking for.

Network

One of the easiest places to start is within your writer network. If you have writer friends, are part of any writer groups, or otherwise know writers, try asking them for recommendations. If they have published their own books, they may well be able to advise you on which editor they used and why they chose them. They can also give you feedback about their experience with this and how easy (or otherwise) they found the editor to work with. This is especially valuable because you know these people and can trust that these are genuine reviews.

However, there are some disadvantages to finding editors in this way. Firstly, they might give you honest opinions, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that they are correct! They could be biased in all sorts of ways that are difficult to take into account. In addition, they might not have the necessary skills to assess whether the editor has done a good job.

There is also the issue of what genre they usually write in, as different editors tend to specialise in different areas. For example, I edit some types of fiction, as well as nonfiction law books, but would not be a good choice for a nonfiction science book, as I don’t have a background in this area or any experience. Make sure the editor you choose has experience with your genre.

Professional Associations

A great way to find a reliable editor is by researching professional associations. What these are will depend on what country you live in, but it shouldn’t be difficult to find. For example, in the UK, the professional association is the CIEP and members of this will probably display the logo on their website. You may well also be able to search a member directory on the professional association’s website. Taking a bit of time to research professional associations can save you a lot of time in the long run and give you a better result.

Professional associations are useful because they help you to narrow down your search. Rather than looking at the whole of the internet, you can just browse a member directory which will allow you to pick out more specific search terms and categories. For example, you may be able to filter by book genre or the level of editing you require. Some professional associations may also require a certain level of experience or training, so you know that any editor you pick from their directory will be a relatively safe choice. At the least, there’s probably a membership fee, so you know the editors listed have invested something in it!

Internet

However, if you don’t feel like restricting yourself to members of professional associations, the internet’s as good a place as any to start your search. You can search for editors in any genre, for any level of editing, in any country. Of course, the advantage of the internet is that you will get pages of results for whatever you search, but the disadvantage is that you will then have to sort through all of this! This can take a long time and it can be very hard to judge based on what you can see online, so it can potentially be a riskier way of searching for an editor.

The internet does mean that you can connect with editors that you might not have found otherwise, such as those from other countries or ones that just happen to not be part of a professional association. It also makes it easy to compare different editors by looking at independent reviews. However, another problem with the internet is that good editors can be hidden several pages into the search results because they don’t focus as much on marketing, meaning you never find them.

Forums

Rather than just looking anywhere on the internet, you could try focusing your search to forums devoted to writing and editing. These will often have specific sections where you can either advertise for an editor or browse editors seeking work. The disadvantage of this is that you will have to carefully research all of these editors anyway to check they will do a good job with your book.

Wrapping Up

Remember that you don’t have to limit your search to one place – trying different ways gives you the best chance of finding an editor that is a good fit for your book. In my next blog post, we will be continuing with this theme, looking at how to evaluate an editor once you have found them.

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