Lost in the Shuffle: Editing

I suppose after over a year with no blog input I might mention that I'm back, but the fact that you're reading this makes that statement superfluous -- which is something a good editor would notice.

Yup, I'm on a tack here, because I've just spent the last couple of months honing and refining -- i.e., editing -- a number of already written projects that were nevertheless not marketable. All good projects, all the type so many aspiring authors would take directly to a POD printer/publisher and pay good money to have made into a finished book. And therein lies the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the American public: that having a pretty book means you have a marketable book. Oh, so wrong, so very, very wrong.

Why? Because the the one thing the vast majority of self- and subsidy published books (where you pay to have the book published) have in common is No Editorial Accountability. That's why bookstores seldom put them on the shelves. That's why they don't get reviewed by major sources and their authors can't seem to make it beyond local talk shows. Anyone who picks up the book and reads for even a few minutes knows that no one other than the author (and, perhaps, a few friends or critique groupers) has gone over the text! It doesn't flow well. It's over or underwritten. It's full of word-choice, punctuation, or grammatical errors. It's inconsistent. The plot is obvious, the characters are flat, the dialogue is static, the thesis is buried or unclear, the chapters are erratic -- in short, it hasn't been edited.

Okay, yeah, editing can be tough. I did a two-page sample edit on one manuscript where the opening line was buried toward the bottom of the first page and the main character "bled" all his emotions in a gush of redundant paragraphs. When the author initially read my edit, she was aghast. But after she lived with it a while, she called back to thank me, admitting how much more impact the edited version had -- and that was just the first two pages!

Such is the power of editing! Editing can make your writing stronger. Editing can make your nonfiction arguments more compelling, increase your plot's dramatic tension, heighten your dialogue's impact -- even spice up your love scenes! Who was Francis Bacon? Probably Shakespeare's editor!

Okay, end of rant, beginning of offer. Before you spend your hard-earned, carefully saved $$ on self or subsidy publishing, give your book a fighting chance in the marketplace. Send me your first two pages, and let me show you just how much more powerful and clearer your literary message can be -- No Charge! You've worked so hard to produce your manuscript. Don't consign it to a life in the shadows! I've spent a lifetime helping make people's literary dreams come true. How? Editing!