Editors and Selling Books

Editor Advertising

Be careful what you pay for. Recently I have been seeing more and more ads for editing services on Twitter, Facebook and in eMails sent my way. I have no problem with those who solicit work but would like to mention that if trying to find customers for an editing service,  it would be best to have a clean copy for potential customers to read. Last night I read through an ad on Google + with two errors in the first sentence. Another had so many errors I was not sure if the potential editor was trying humor, in showing things he would correct, or that far from being able to write clean copy. Don’t take this post in a negative way, good editors can be a great help to writers, but a bad editor helps no one, and hurt the entire image of the Indy author-industry. Much like paying for book covers, before you pay up, make sure you are getting what you want.

Great time of the year for hiking - we are enjoying the great wildflowers 

Selling Books

I am still experimenting with different ways of advertising my books and looking at how each influences sales. So far, I have found some eye-openers. First I have noticed that advertising has boosted my KDP pages read. Second I have found that sometimes the cost of advertising can be as much as the revenue added through additional sales. I will stay the course for another two months and then decide to continue or try something else.  

Click here to see my Amazon Author Page – did you know that Amazon keeps authors books in order by how they are selling at the present time?

Big Weekend Coming

Looking forward to a big weekend, Saturday, Fur Trade Days, at Fort Laramie and Sunday in Denver for Rockies vs. Giants.

2016 Fur Trade Days

Meanwhile

Keep on reading and keep on writing.

Osprey sitting on a fence post

Edit or Self-Edit and Book Covers Too

I have been spending more hours than I want to count this week updating two of my book covers. I like the new ones, probably because I may have a better understanding now than I did when I built my first ones two years ago.  I am not going to re-do all of them, right now, but likely will do one or two more soon.

I am also back working on my nonfiction book. I took five months off to finish up some other projects and am now enjoying the research and writing of nonfiction once again.

At one time in my life, I spent a lot of time, often too much, editing other writers works. I don’t do much of that any longer as I mostly worked with historical nonfiction although I did take on a few fiction projects. Now I mostly edit my own. What am I getting to here? All the advertisements I get in the form of tweets or email offering, book doctor or editing services. Often the promo starts with a line telling all who read that there are so many, maybe millions, of books and eBooks for sale that are chalk full of errors. And, it’s possible there are, but I would rather read a book with a handful of errors than one that is perfect but without a good story.

 I have downloaded, read and enjoyed, self-edited books by several authors. All were people I follow online or on Twitter, and most were pretty good reads. I did not notice a multitude of errors in any of them and the things I noticed can sometimes be found in mainstream novels. As I said above, if the story is a good one, I will read it.

My point is not that books do not need a good edit, but that some self-edited books come out pretty clean. If you are writing a book and hope to sell a thousand copies, which is what you will need to sell to pay for a middle of the road priced editor. I mentioned book covers above, and good ones will help sell books if the book can be found among the 8,000,000 or so on Amazon. Once again writers like myself, who sell books, steadily but not spectacularly, need to be weary of not spending too much for the creation of a cover. I am not crazy about many of the new covers that seem to be black no matter what the subject, they all look the same to my old eyes.

Today’s photos are from my backyard.

Meanwhile, keep on reading and keep on writing.

Oh - one of the redone covers, this for my first kid's chapter book

Photo Time or Edit Time

Someone asked me last week if I was a professional photographer, I said, “nope but I am a professional photo taker.” I took about 9,000 shots last year and was lucky enough to have a few picked up for use by organizations or other media outlets. I am always glad to oblige when people ask for some of my photos.  Looks like I may have a couple of book covers this year.

15 Minutes from town on a photo quest

I spend a lot of time out in the country looking for photo opportunities, some days are good, some not much to shoot. But every day is enjoyable. This takes up part of my writing time but it also clears my mind when I get outside. I especially enjoy going out when I am editing because editing hurts my brain. But I am just about done, three books, two young reader and one nonfiction. And yes, these are the same projects I have been blogging about since January. But I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel, there is an end in sight.

Mountains on a frosty morning - but not too early

Editing is hard work. I enjoy writing but when I am done with something I want to write something else, but then the old editing red pen creeps in.

Think I will go look for some wild turkey tomorrow they are starting to move around, maybe a few other shoots, only a hundred or so.

The river the wagons west followed - The North Platte

Then back to editing.

If old houses could talk - what a tail they would tell

Bull Elk in the warming sun

A Good Edit

Getting a good edit is important. Do it yourself or hire someone, it doesn’t matter. But be careful of random editors soliciting on the web.

 I just read an advertisement from a, so called, editing company that bordered on unbelievable. I hope writers are not this gullible. The article explained why a cheap edit was a bad edit, and writers should hire this company to get a good and correct edit. The problem? In one paragraph their math said editing eight pages at two dollars per page netted ten dollars.

Hum –

8 X 2=10, new math I guess.  They also used the word here for hear and rambled so bad that their entire argument for hiring them seemed laughable.

My take, edit. But do it yourself, research and find a good professional editor, or with good luck, get a book contract and let them edit.

Good Luck!

**NOTE – If you find errors in my stuff, the above is an unedited post, but then again I do not claim to be an editor.

But then again, if you want to send money my way, oh never mind.

Fort Laramie Officers Quarters

Professional Edit or Not

How many times do I need to write the same book? Have you, like me, ever asked that question? I have a novel that I have went through six times and am still not willing to attempt to publish it. Why? Because it is not ready. No, not because the book sucks. I feel like it is a very good story. But it needs work. What have I learned by this process, two things?

The best edit is still with a red pen on paper. The last edit is reading the text of the work aloud. I have edited, to death, on the computer and still recommend it for the first go through. On my new work I used a red pen edit for my second edit, a red pen edit by someone else for my third edit and a read through, oral edit for my final.

No professional edit? I don’t think so, not for these works. I may seek additional input from another outside, non-professional, editor but have decided to go it on my own. I have published numerous short stories and at times, must admit, when I read the published version, I found something I wish I had edited, either more or better.

Why all this? I tried, in vain, to find a professional editor and could not. They charged too much or too little, wanted to change too much or too little. Makes me sound a bit like Goldilocks from, The Story of the Three Bears, I just couldn’t find a, just right, fit.

Will it work? Not sure. Remember in the old days when people said, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”? Guess I will find out. I spent years doing content edits and rewrites for graduate students while teaching in Laramie, but never edited grammar or punctuation unless it was so bad even I could see it. Until a year ago I still did some editing for two print magazines.



View of my little part of the world from Roundtop Mountain, three miles from town.

There is my unedited story about editing. My conclusions, do it the best you can, or until you feel good about it, then be done with it.