Any suggestions for someone who can edit my work please?

[Whoopdedoop]

Just that really - first draft finished and I’ve read through it myself, so would like to pay an editor to fine tune it. Need some suggestions please. Thanks.

What level/type of editing are you looking for? Do you want someone to do structural editing on your first draft's cohesion and consistency? Or stylistic editing that focuses on your prose? Or just a more technical copyedit?
How long is your work and what are you expecting to pay?

Have you looked to see what AI would do with it?

Before you do that, check out your potential publisher's guidelines on using AI!

Not got a problem with AI but would prefer a person.

Technical editing I think, grammar and paragraph spacing, things like that. 87,000 and I honestly don’t know what to pay - I saw a site called Fiverr and the cost was around £1000. I wasn’t sure if this was a legitimate sight and if that figure is reasonable? Thanks for responding.

I would use the CIEP site (www.ciep.uk/directory.html) to find a freelance copy-editor (which is what you are asking for). Depending on the state of your manuscript, an editor should be able to edit between 1,000-1,500 words an hour. Your book therefore should take between 58-87 hours. The CIEP suggested minimum rate for copy-editing is £37.11, which would price the editing of your book somewhere between £2,152 and £3,230.
Unless you are planning on self-publishing your book, I would be very wary of running it through any AI programme for heavy editorial "help". The submission guidelines of many publishers explicitly ban or require disclosure having used AI.

Before paying for editing, you'd be best doing more than reading it through after finishing - and definitely not AI.

If you have a trusted friend that can be honest, that would be fine as a starter. I use Scribophile for critiques, and found that doing my own critiques also helped my own writing. So I ran it through two lots of critiques from there before I paid for anything, and there were many changes picked up by other people that were really helpful.

There are many places out there for editing if you're happy to pay.
I've done two:
Iaminprint and Cornerstones.
The latter was far more expensive, but also far more useful and a lot deeper.

That's very cheap. Fiverr doesn't have a great reputation.

Have you tried Reedsy?

Whoever you go for, make sure you get endorsements from previous clients and examples of what they've worked on. It's all too easy for someone to just set themselves up as an expert and claim they have signed NDAs for everything.

Good luck and congratulations on your first draft!

I would second the suggestion to try the CIEP for a high-quality edit. I’m a copyeditor myself, as it happens, and I’d be happy to DM you my website. I’m assuming ‘sight’ instead of ‘site’ is the kind of typo your MS doesn’t contain 😁.

Stop suggesting AI for everything! It’s literally the death of creative arts.

Don't use AI or your hard work writing something original will bw lost. Personal recommendations are best. Or send a small sample to someone on Fivrr.

Good spot!

Copyeditor here. Congratulations on finishing your book - that’s a fantastic achievement !

First, I don’t recommend Fiverr; it tends to be a race to the bottom re fees, and therefore you don’t get that many good editors on there IME.

Have you tried searching the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading directory? Pop in your keywords: https://www.ciep.uk/directory

Or ?

Have you sent your MS to beta readers? That’s a good first step. Then you can think about what you need: a development edit or a copy/line edit.

Good luck with it all!

Are you a member of ALLi? It’s incredibly helpful if you’re a self publishing author: https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/

To add to what others have said, I can edit about 1750-2k words per hour, plus time for formatting your MS, running consistency checks and spellcheck, creating a style sheet and character list, so that’s going to be about 40-45 hours.

Many editors don’t work on texts that have been created using generative AI, so that’s something to think about too.

Thanks for your suggestions everyone. I think those prices are a little out of my range; I was thinking of publishing on KDP and don’t imagine I’ll get many, if any, sales, so can’t really justify spending that much. I want it to be the best it can be for my own satisfaction, so I might try a couple of friends first and take it from there.

If you’ve only written the first draft, OP, then you’re way off the copyediting stage. Let it sit for a while before a second draft. There’s no sense in fine-tuning sentences when you might cut the entire chapter or plotline.

Has anyone had any experience of London ebook House please?

This is absolutely spot on

A first draft is not in need of editing

Your final draft will need some editing

As well as commercial copywriting, I have done some novel editing for friends. Obviously, I didn't charge them! If people are still paying editors, maybe that's something I would like to do.

I think all of the resources you're looking at are going to come out quite pricey. But you are not at this stage yet.

Thanks for the advice about not needing to think about editing yet, I’m planning on taking the next month to go through it and maybe pass it to a couple of trusted friends.

Good decision. Leave it for long enough so that when you reread it yourself, you’re encountering it as a reader, rather than its writer. That way you can see what needs changing. With the friends, are they readers, and readers of the genre you’re working in? Will they be brutally honest?

@SilkSilkThey will be - my mum volunteered but she’s unlikely to be impartial!

I’m an editor and I charge a minimum of £550 a day - usually quite a bit more more as I have several niche specialisms and many years of experience. £1000 to edit 87,000 words won’t get you even a half-decent edit, especially at the structural/copyediting stage! You’d be best off joining a writing club or similar and swapping critiques, then once you’ve got more of a refined draft together you can start looking for an editor. Good luck! 😊

ETA my tip for revising your work is to read it out loud (even if it’s to the dog) - it helps you spot long or awkward sentences and narrative breaks in a way that reading to yourself doesn’t.

May I ask how important is it to have a specialist editor or is all editing just editing?

So if you have non-fiction do you need a specialist non-fiction editor?

If your fiction is crime, do you need a specialist crime editor?

If your book is a memoir about gardens do you need someone specialist in memoirs or specialist in gardens?

What are the difference in editing styles that specialist editors make?

What kind of editing are you talking about, and on what kind of project? I mean, are you planning to self-publish, or try to get an agent and publish traditionally?

If you're publishing traditionally, obviously you will have an actual editor whose job it is to edit your book, and who will have bought your book because he or she wanted it, and because it's right for the imprint they work for (crime, gardening etc).

Though to get to that point you will need to impress an agent with your work to the point where they think they can sell it to an editor. I assume some people do pay someone to look at their MS before they query agents -- and there are various manuscript consultants out there. If you look at this page, one of them groups what they offer into different categories, depending on what stage you're at, anything from developmental editing to a copy-edit:

https://literaryconsultancy.co.uk/editorial-services/start-here/

But none of that is in any way necessary. Neither is doing a writing course.

Many people just write an MS, get it as good as they can make it, possibly exchange critiques in a writers' group or have it read by an honest friend, and send an excerpt off to agents.

ETA I have nothing to do with The Literary Consultancy, I should say! I've never used them for anything, and only put up the link because it shows what one editorial service offers writers who want different things.

You need an editor who is very familiar with, and who enjoys reading, the genre you have written. That way, they will know all the ‘rules’ of the genre (eg a romance must have a HEA ending) and they can make sure the book will satisfy audiences.

A general editor will be able to edit the text but may not be able to ensure a book fulfils all genre expectations.

Never heard of them.

Remember that if you’re paying a middleman for services such as editing, you will pay more for editing because the middleman organisation needs their cut too.

This is a good source of trusted organisations: https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/services-directory/