How to Hire a Book Editor for Your Non-Fiction Book

You're done your first draft and now you know it's ready for a professional. Maybe you're even savvy enough to know the first editor you need to hire is a developmental editor, also called a content editor. So if you know that, your question is how do you hire the right one for your project? If that's where you're at or you're getting close enough to needing an editor, then this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the book broad, multi award winning author and founder of a fabulous self publishing services company called called Book Launchers. Now if you're looking to understand what a developmental or content editor does, and I'll use those words interchangeably, by the way, I have a fabulous video I did with our master of manuscripts, Kelly Reagan. I'll get that to you at the end. But if you're trying to figure out how to hire one for your nonfiction book, I'm really excited for you. Because a content edit is the very edit that will make your book something that is great to read. It's that, you know, 30,000 foot look at your manuscript to assess it for structure, flow, connection to the ideal reader and your credibility in writing this content. The one thing to know is that developmental editors are not marketers. They're rarely reading it. To make sure you've got a strong hook for marketing purposes. And if your audience is defined in a way that makes it easier to market to if you're writing your book to grow your business, build a brand and lead to speaking or monetize something else beyond the book, then I highly recommend you hit pause and go to book launchers.com application and apply to work with us. Our developmental editors work in conjunction with our marketing team. Book Launchers exists for the very reason that I do not believe that you should or really can separate book marketing from the book writing and book production process. When you do that, you can end up with a book that's really a good read, but it's tough to market and and struggle to sell. My team is marketing focused right from the very first conversation. So you really should consider working with us. But if you're not going to, then here's what I would recommend you do in your search for a developmental editor. Now first you have to make sure you're clear on what genre the book is in and who your ideal reader is and even what your marketing objectives are. Because you have to communicate that to your editor and explain to them what that means in terms of what you need to to see from the Manuscript edit. Get clear on what your expectations are for this editor. Are you looking for an opinion? Are you looking for someone to ensure it reads as a credible resource? Maybe you think it needs a better story structure. You also need to be clear on how much time you're going to give the editor for this work. It's good to know that before you hire someone. And keep in mind a developmental edit is different than a copy edit. A developmental editor is going to make suggestions, ask questions, move material around, and make some changes. When you get an edit like this back, you can expect you've got some writing work to do. Many of our clients after a developmental edit get paired with a writing coach so that they can work through that content edit and have support to get through all those edits or the suggestions. If you get an edit back that is largely correcting sentence structure, punctuation, and word choice, you got a copy edit, not a content edit. Your book might be polished now, but it's not structured to be engaging and something readers want to read. Okay, now you're ready to start the hiring process. So where are you going to find these fabulous editors? Well, there are some really great editors groups and editors associations, and many of them allow you to post jobs there, so you could do that. We've had some really great success hiring editors from Reedsy. You'll see right on their site that they actually break up the types of editing you can get and what you need to do to get those editors. We've also had success placing ads on upwork, or posting to writing groups or posting ads on. Indeed, we've also had some success asking other authors who they liked and who they used for their editors, so you can try all of those things. When you place the ad, make sure you include the following size of the manuscript, the timeline that you're working on, the genre of the manuscript, the ideal reader for that book, and any concerns or your primary goal with getting this person on your team, and you likely should or need to declare a budget for that. Reedsy has this guide. Now, I have to tell you that I think their quote here is extremely light for a copy edit. It's really rare that our copy edits are done for less than $1,500 paid to the contractor, and we get preferred rates as we send our contractors a lot of manuscripts. For most nonfiction projects that are 50,000 to 60,000 words, expect to budget closer to 4 to $5,000 for developmental editing, copy editing, and proofreading. If you're hiring experienced professionals and when it comes to editing. There's definitely a threshold of lower cost editors where you get what you pay for. If you can't pay for the best, that's okay. But there are trade offs in this journey. Now, timing wise, I've heard a lot of developmental editors taking months. We turn projects around in 10 business days. But we're all about process and moving manuscripts forward at Book Launchers. So our approach is different than some of the other editors out there. Just be ready to wait a month or more for many of the good editors you hire through these sites as they have multiple projects on the go and they can take their time. Now you've got the ads out there and some responses, it's time to narrow your choices down. Now this can be tricky for developmental editors. We found that it's best to have our ghostwriters or writing coaches do developmental edits, as the same skills that make them great at coaching and writing usually allow them to see the opportunities for improvement with the manuscripts in that developmental edit. Plus, having already worked with them within our noboringbooks process allows us to ensure we have content editors looking at the marketing potential as well as potential problems. All that said, the common threads we find that make a good developmental editor tend to be people with a journalist background because they're used to hunting down the facts who hooking readers with their words and establishing credibility, or they have experience with ghost writing in a similar genre to the book they're editing. And we've also had success with content editors who have screenwriting experience, in particular for those that work with memoirs. Basically, what I'm saying is that someone doesn't have to be only an editor for them to be a great content editor for your book, but they should have relevant experience in your genre or a neighboring genre. Now, ultimately, the next criteria is simple. Are they available on your timeline and within your budget? The next consideration is what have your interactions been like? Do you feel good about the way they've responded to your ad so far? Okay, so they've passed all of those pieces. Now it's a good idea to give them a test if you can. Now, there is a little bit of a word of warning for you on testing people for content edit versus Copy edit. Developmental editing is really tricky because to give a good content edit, you have to read the entire manuscript. That said, we have found that a chapter sample can at least give you a sense of their tone, their approach, and what they'll be looking for. So it would be better than nothing before you pay them a thousand plus dollars for their work for us, our writing coach and ghostwriter Test Take chapter one and two of a project we worked on and we look for five specific structure suggestions. It's a project where the first chapter was obviously not in the right place and chapter two was the stronger starting chapter. We look for the people who can identify that along with some of the other issues we know existed with that project. Now you won't have a standard test like this handy, so you just have to use your judgment. And when you're testing busy, highly qualified editors for a one off project, you also have to be careful how much you send to them to do for free. This is why I do like the and recommend using a service like Reedsy because you can read up on their experience, you can read reviews, and you can get a good sense of them before you make a decision. So you still should test if they are open to it. But if you aren't finding great editors who are open to a test, you can use that to make your selection. Once you've done all of that, make your selection sign a contract again with some of these services. The contract is taken care of. But if you're working outside of some of those services like Reedsy and Upwork you, you really should make sure you're taking care of your IP with a work for hire agreement of some kind that makes it clear what the payment structure is, the timeline, and that you retain ownership rights. And then you can let them work their magic. You may also want to find out if you will have a call with them to discuss the editing at any point. Congratulations on taking this important step to make your book great. Any other questions on hiring content editors? Because there's a lot more I'm sure you want to know, go ahead and post below. I love meeting you and when you comment the day a video is released, you get entered to win our latest hashtag noboringbooksswag and we become friends. So make sure you subscribe to the channel so you can start commenting the day a video is released. And turn those notifications on now. If you want to know what a content editor does, check out this video right here with Kelly Ragan. And if you're looking for the video YouTube thinks you should watch next, that is right here. I look forward to seeing you on the next video.