We editors are often misunderstood. So, I want to clear the air on some common misconceptions I’ve observed:

Misconception #1: Editors kill the story

I’ve heard many say that editors gut their client’s writing. Entire paragraphs and pages scrapped, major scenes recommended to be changed, characters amended, morals neutered, vulgarity censored; I get it, I see it a lot.

Happens more in the film-space, where a book is practically stripped to the bones and the rest are just details assigned to the screenwriter (at least when the author isn’t the one writing the screenplay; protect your film rights!), however in the publishing space, your book is just as vulnerable to see editors break apart your story to the framework.

Your manuscript goes through multiple rounds of edits before it ever hits a bookshelf. You can hire an editor, or hire a beta reader who’s review leads you to doing your own round of edits, your agent goes through a round of edits, then the acquisitions editor and their editorial board go through a major round of edits, and at every stage of this, the story is chemically altered. It’s whisked around like a bill through Congress.

Editors enhance your story.

Readability is everything. It’s the bread and butter. If even Vonnegut, Hemingway, McCarthy, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and all the great American authors needed their works heavily edited for readability and clarity, yours will too.

If your writing is all fluff and no substance, all big-words and no style, witty one-liners but bad grammar, mise-en-scène without clarity, you’re selling me an unfinished product.

That’s what your editor is for. They’re here to polish your writing and make sure it’s ready for print. They help with readability. You could have the most immaculate double meaning of all time, and it would mean absolutely nothing if your readers cannot understand your wording. Flipping a sentence around, replacing a word with a synonym, hyperfixiating on grammar; these may seem trite and trivial, but they go a long way toward ultimately improving your novel.

Misconception #2: Editors take too long

Imagine asking someone to read and edit your book and expecting it to take a month. The icing on the cake is you ask them to do it for $50. [Life as a freelancer on UpWork.]

Editors work on several manuscripts simultaneously, give or take, and that’s a lot of reading. I do know readers who crank out 30-40 books a year off their TBRs. Hats off to them, but I am not one of those people. And more than likely, your average readers aren’t either.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Learning to allocate your time online is a life skill. No, really, it is. And editors will have to allocate their time to your manuscript.

I still remember the days I was capped at an hour of internet per day, which may feel like an eternity ago, but since then there’s been an explosion in my time spent online before and after, whether for work or personal use.

So since then, learning how to manage that time has often been make-it-or-break-it for me as far as productivity goes. When a job is freelance, and the hours are inconsistent, maintaining that productivity can be a daunting task. I realized this immediately upon starting my career, and I’ll confess, I did not adjust well. It took a lot of work, burnout and stress.

Once I could better allocate my time and build better author-editor relationships, the more I improved and said goodbye to burnout. A lot of times, that came at the cost of fast-paced, author-friendly timelines and embracing slow-paced but efficient editing that made for a better outcome in the long run.

Misconception #3: Editors charge too much

If anything, editors charge too little.

Editors (as well as publicists) set their rates based on what works best for them and their business. Most do not operate on a book-by-book basis, and thus are well within their right to charge however many cents per word.

As an agent, I edit for the quality of a book. Agents are paid via commission, their cut of the publishing earnings and the author’s advance when a book deal is finalized.

For freelance editors (as in: non-publishing house affiliates), it’s purely a reciprocal relationship. And curating a great writer-editor relationship is where their real income comes from.

That’s why you’ll see most editors and agents stick to a handful of dedicated clients where they can focus most of their attention.

Editors do the same amount of work regardless of whether or not your book sells. Book sales depend on way more than just the quality of the prose, it’s a variety of factors.

Editors seek quality over quantity.

The expectation for edits of a book north of 50K words for less than $100 flat pay is something that needs to be addressed on freelancing sites, and makes me appreciate sites like Reedsy where the editors are much higher quality and are paid a fair rate.

Believe me, when you see your self-edited book on the shelves and realize there’s a typo on page 53, you’re gonna wish you were nicer to your editors.