Blogger to Author Part 8.2: The Editing
By: Cody Smith
Tags: Blogging Tips, Blog, Authors, Writing, Blogger

We’re knee deep into the editing process for your book you’ve created from the very content that you’ve posted to your blog.

So far we’ve:

Copied and pasted our blog posts into a text editor (ie Word, Google Doc, etc) — Part 1

and pasted our blog posts into a text editor (ie Word, Google Doc, etc) — Part 1 Determined what path we’re going to take with our book — Part 2

what path we’re going to take with our book — Part 2 Organized the content in a logical order — Part 3

the content in a logical order — Part 3 Brainstormed in areas of our book that could use more attention — Part 4

in areas of our book that could use more attention — Part 4 Outlined our mind map to guide the writing process — Part 5

our mind map to guide the writing process — Part 5 Written out the last few pieces of our book guided by the outline — Part 6

out the last few pieces of our book guided by the outline — Part 6 Reviewed our draft manuscript like a pro — Part 7

Like it was mentioned in the last post in Part 8.1, the editing phase of the writing and publishing process will be broken out into several different posts since there is a lot of moving parts in this phase.

In 8.1, we talked about the different types of editing.

Today, we’re actually going to go look for one!

Simply doing a Google search for book editing services, you’ll find a kagillion (totally a word) different places to find editors. It’s a little more than overwhelming.

I like to keep it simple. I’ll ask around to anyone I know who’s written a book and ask if they’d recommend their editor. That’s exactly how I found my editor I use for all my books.

If you can’t find a referral, I’d recommend using Upwork.com to find a freelance editor. On Upwork, you can submit a job post to find an editor.

After you create an account and log in, you are ready to post your first job post. Upwork will ask you some questions to get a better idea of what work you are looking for.

Enter the name of your job post:

Type in something like:

Editor needed for non-fiction fashion tips and strategies book

Editor needed for penny stock investing book

Editor needed for a vegan cookbook

etc

Job Category:

Click “Editing and proofreading”

Job Description:

It’s time to get technical. Give the freelancers details about your book and what you are looking for.

Book description: tell them what your book is about. This helps to find editors who have experience in your niche. It’s always better, in my opinion, to find an editor who has an interest in your topic.

tell them what your book is about. This helps to find editors who have experience in your niche. It’s always better, in my opinion, to find an editor who has an interest in your topic. Word count of your book: this helps freelancers determine how big the project is so they can bid accordingly. Don’t make a rookie mistake and put in the page count. The page count can change drastically by the margin settings in your text editor, font size, page size (5x8 versus 6x9), etc.

this helps freelancers determine how big the project is so they can bid accordingly. Don’t make a rookie mistake and put in the page count. The page count can change drastically by the margin settings in your text editor, font size, page size (5x8 versus 6x9), etc. Type of editing: As we discussed in the previous post, you’ll want to include exactly what type of editing you are looking for. Is your book laid out in a logical order and organized in a way that easily digestible by a reader? Cool. You may only need line editing and proofreading. Does your book need some more love from an expert eye? Substantive editing + line editing & proofreading is what you are looking for. Be sure to add what type of editing you need in the job description.

As we discussed in the previous post, you’ll want to include exactly what type of editing you are looking for. Is your book laid out in a logical order and organized in a way that easily digestible by a reader? Cool. You may only need line editing and proofreading. Does your book need some more love from an expert eye? Substantive editing + line editing & proofreading is what you are looking for. Be sure to add what type of editing you need in the job description. Sample edit: I never recommend blindly working with an editor. I always have editors submit a sample edit of one of my chapters (or at least a portion of a chapter) to determine their skill level. I choose a chapter in the middle of my manuscript versus the first chapter simply because I’ve probably worked on and read through the first few chapters more than the rest.

I never recommend blindly working with an editor. I always have editors submit a sample edit of one of my chapters (or at least a portion of a chapter) to determine their skill level. I choose a chapter in the middle of my manuscript versus the first chapter simply because I’ve probably worked on and read through the first few chapters more than the rest. Standardized Editorial Test : Alternate to the sample edit mentioned above. You could have everyone do a standardized editorial test. Dave Chesson over at Kindlepreneur.com offers a Standardized Editorial Test that you can have everyone who wants to bid on your job take. This test will show you each editors strength and weaknesses. Simply download the test here and upload it as an additional project file.

: Alternate to the sample edit mentioned above. You could have everyone do a standardized editorial test. Dave Chesson over at Kindlepreneur.com offers a Standardized Editorial Test that you can have everyone who wants to bid on your job take. This test will show you each editors strength and weaknesses. Simply download the test here and upload it as an I also request bids to include at least an initial and final review. You’ll want to have your editor to send you an edited manuscript that you can review, make edits as needed, and send back for a final review/edit.

Anything else you’ll feel you need to add and share with the freelance community. I like to add that I’m looking for someone who is comfortable using Microsoft Word’s Track Changes function to record their edits to the draft manuscript.

Additional Project File(s):

Speaking of project files, this is where you would upload your draft manuscript. You can either upload your entire draft manuscript, a portion of the manuscript, and/or a proposed outline of your book. Some people don’t feel comfortable releasing a draft version of their manuscript for the world to see for a variety of reason. You can simply choose to only provide the full manuscript to whoever you hire in the end.

If you require a sample edit of one of your chapters (or a portion of a chapter), make sure you upload that as a project file.

What skills or experience are most important to you?

Upwork makes it easy to click exactly what you need from your freelancer. I typically just click the following for an editing/proofreading job:

Deliverables: style guide, commenting, document version control, error checking, and proofreading marks.

Skills: grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

You can also add a different skill if what you need is not there.

Level of Experience:

I typically only pick an intermediate skill level. I like my freelancers to be someone in the middle of the pack to find someone with experience that won’t break my bank account.

Freelancer Location:

You can choose whether to find freelancers only in the U.S. or worldwide. I go with “U.S. only” for jobs like this.

Who can see your job?

There are three different options:

Anyone: Freelancers using Upwork and public search engines can find this job Only Upwork freelancers: Only Upwork users can find this job Invite-only: Only freelancers you have invited can find this job

For the sake of simplicity, just choose “Only Upwork freelancers”.

How many freelancers do you need for the job?

I would imagine you’d only need one so click “One freelancer”.

Budget:

Here you can either pay by the hour (not recommended) or pay a fixed price (recommended).

If you choose to pay by the hour (again, not recommended), Upwork has suggested hourly wages for this type of work. For proofreading and editing, the typical hourly rate is between $20-$40/hr.

If you choose to pay a fixed price for the project, you will have to enter your budget for the job. If you have one, great! Put that in. If you have no idea what to enter, there is a quick calculation you can do to give you an idea. Take the word count of your book and multiply that by 0.02.

For example, if your word count is 20k words, multiplying that by 0.02, your estimated budget would equal $400.

NOTE: this number is not necessarily what you are going to be paying for the job. Each freelancer will bid on the job will price points that will be lower or higher than your budget. Some of them will be dead on.

It will be your job to determine who to go with based on your budget, their experience, and how they did on either the sample edit of one of your chapters or the standardized editorial test.

The last thing you will do is view a summary of your job post before you submit it to the entire Upwork freelancer community. After you look everything over and determine everything looks good, take a deep breathe and post your job.

Over the next several days, you’ll get proposals from freelancers bidding for the job. It’s actually a lot of fun getting in new proposals. I just got in 10 proposals for someone to do my podcast intro. It’s a blast.

As you are reviewing proposals, you can message each of the freelancers if you have any questions which also lets you get to know them better before choosing who to hire.

If I message a freelancer and they don’t ever get back to me in a reasonable amount of time, that tells me they are not very responsive and I probably don’t want to work with them.

As fun as reviewing proposals can be, it will come to a time to actually choose one of them to work with. Use your best judgment based on what we’ve already talked about and go for it. It can be scary to actually click “Hire this freelancer” and start the process, but this is the next big step to finishing your book and publishing it out to the world so you can actually monetize your content.

Next post: How to handle the blood bath after you get your draft back from your editor the first time.

Comment on any questions you have below.

More to come. Stay Tuned.

**fist bump**

— Cody

P.S. I have 101 days until my first paycheck from this blog. For those who don’t know, I’ve created this blog from scratch with no email list and no following to show others how they can make money from their blog even if they are just starting out. I’m blogging almost ever day for three months and 30 days after that I expect to see my first royalty paycheck from turning my best content into a book. Join me on the journey and I’ll show you how to do it, too.