Tag: editing
New information for Squatchcon, and Left Coast Crime has been posted to the Events Page.
Pretty exciting stuff for me: teaching a Magic Systems Workshop at SquatchCon, as well as hosting a Writers Meetup there and speaking on some cool panels. Some small changes to a reading at Norwescon, and updates on the Left Coast Crime panels I’ll be on in April. Check it out!
Due to back-to-school pressures and rescheduling, I have open editing, consulting, and coaching slots for the rest of August and September!
So, if you’ve got a project in need of Developmental or Line Editing, or you’re interested in some personal coaching or consultation on a project or just some one-on-one about your writing, get in touch!
So it’s been awhile. Doing some Editing and Writer Coaching, but still looking for more clients, got an account on BlueSky Social (you can find me there as @katrichardson) in hopes of dodging the Social Media apocalypse on Twitter, and throwing myself against the wall of some short stories and an attempt at A New Novel (or whatever it turns into.)
The Edgar Allen Poe inspired anthology Kickstarter at Falstaff Books was successful, so that’ll be coming out before the end of the year (sooner, IIRC, but check the campaign link updates or Falstaff Books for info as that moves further in production.
In the meantime, it’s mostly dogs, digging/filling holes and grading roads on the someday-house site, and trying not to eat all the tasty baked goods Mr. Kat has been learning to make.
I currently edit only a little Romance, but I have a coaching client who writes nothing but romance and he (yes, he) finds himself a little squeamish about “the sexy bits.” But the fact is, not all commercial Romance is “hot.” While spicy romance is high-profile and big-selling, there have always been—and always will be—categories of mainstream Romance which are not graphically detailed with respect to sex. These are broadly categorized as “sweet” romance and entire sub-genres of sweet sell in the millions of copies in the US and elsewhere every year.
There’s a silly idea running around among some non-Romance fiction readers that this genre is mostly soft- to hardcore porn for middle aged heterosexual women. It’s not. Romance covers a lot of ground, and a lot of romance is pretty mild in the bedroom department. I’m also pleased as punch that the Diversity movement is opening up more room for Romances that center on wider relationship options than ever before. While there have always been books about same-sex relationships, older and second-time-around romances, “sweet” Christian romance, Amish romance, Westerns, and YA romances (just to name a few), now there’s not only room for more, but room for damn-near everything.
If you’re reading or writing any story with relationships (and that’s all pretty much every story to some degree) you now have a lot more options for your characters to engage in ways that aren’t either “hot sexy times” or chaste kissing and a quickly closed bedroom door.
I engaged in a conversation recently on The Twit (@katrchrdsn) and FurryElephant (@kat_richardson@universeodon.com) with an #IndieAuthor, and others, about editing costs. She was quoted $6K for an edit based on word count and is aghast. I’m not, but then, I’m old and have been in the editing game since 1991.
Editing and Cover Art are vital to any book’s success and they are worth paying for. Yeah, $6k for editing may be high, however, cost depends on how much work the edit represents; word count, genre, level of edit expected, degree of interaction the editor offers, and so on make a big difference in the cost. Also the editor’s rep and hourly rate have a price. In-demand, well-regarded, and/or award-winning editors charge more for their time.
My editing prices start around $2.5K for developmental edit on 90-120K genre fiction manuscripts. Longer books, Coaching, Non-Fiction, line-edit, and Technical editing cost more. I don’t do Copyedit or final proof. Those are specialized skill sets and they should be performed by someone other than the author or dev/line editor, if possible (it helps to have new eyes on a project at that point, among other reasons.)
I will occasionally do “single pass crits,” which are super-light and get the client a short—usually bullet-point—crit letter to work from, but I still have to charge $800 for my time, because it takes most of a week to read 90-100K and write up the notes (plus my bookkeeping/invoicing). I try not to do a lot of these, since they take more hours than I charge for, and I bill at less than half my normal rate.
If the writer’s new to the self-pub systems, getting some help on formatting can also be worth some cash first time through (or trading services with another writer who’s more experienced). This is also something I don’t do, and which writers should not expect from a freelance editor.
If a writer doesn’t have the money for some services, they’ll have to settle for something less than their ideal. Shopping around and being willing to spend less on some things, and do more themself is necessary. If you consider yourself an Indie Writer, you are also, effectively, an Indie Publisher, and that comes with all the hats. You either wear them all, with varying degrees of success, or you farm some out. Editing is worth paying for, whether you pay in cash or with an exchange of services with another member of the Writing/Editing community. I don’t say this just because I’m an editor as well as a writer, and I want your money; I know first-hand that I’m a great editor when I’m working for someone else, and a bit blind to my own writing faults when working for myself. YMMV.