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> Of course, in practice, this doesn't seem to happen very often. I'm not sure why. It is probably twofold. One is that you might simply don’t know what you d

> Of course, in practice, this doesn't seem to happen very often. I'm not sure why. It is probably twofold. One is that you might simply don’t know what you don’t know. Maybe what the author really needs is a developmental editor (one who goes through with them the big structure of the work) but if the author thinks of editors as glorified spellcheckers that is what they are going to seek and pay for. The editor might have an opinion about the structure, but if they are not paid for that they won’t get into the details enough to help. And that leads to the second problem. In a self-publishing context the author has all the money and therefore all the power. They decide when the editing process is done, and every extra week they spend editing comes out of their own rapidly dwindling funds. In a traditional publishing context failure is an option. Many books don’t get published. If the pitch is not good enough, it gets dropped. If the first few chapters is not good enough it gets dropped. If they can’t polish it to satisfaction with an editor the work gets dropped. I’m not saying that quality is the only rubric the publishers use to judge when to drop a book vs when to publish, but it is heavily judged at every step of the way at multiple gates. In contrast the main and only selection force on self-publishing is if the author has the funds and the gumption. Is it possible that someone has the time to write a book and the talent to be good at it? Furthermore is it possible that the same person also has enough money to not skimp on the editing? And furthermore that they find the right editor for the right job and has the wisdom to give enough time to the process? Certainly. But of course more often than not one or the other is going to go awry from this. And i believe that is the answer to your question. This is why well edited self-published books don’t happen as often as well edited traditionally published ones.

derefr 5y ago
> In a traditional publishing context failure is an option. Many books don’t get published. If the pitch is not good enough, it gets dropped. If the first few chapters is not good enough it gets dropped. If they can’t polish it to satisfaction with an editor the work gets dropped. I’m not saying that quality is the only rubric the publishers use to judge when to drop a book vs when to publish, but it is heavily judged at every step of the way at multiple gates. Maybe I come from a different writing "culture", but most of the books I see being self-published are restructurings of works previously published online in serial format (if nonfiction, as blog posts; if fiction, as several-times-weekly mini-chapter serial fiction), where the popularity of the output is effectively pre-determined, as the creation and publication of a standalone purchasable book is entirely being driven by demand for such by the existing audience of the source material. Further, those serial publications are often, these days, being sponsored via Patreon, or published via apps that charge to unlock chapters and give some of that money to the author, and so forth — so the author already has an income stream from their work, that they can reinvest into their work (through editing) to multiply the amount they're making from their work. In that sense, "editing" for their books becomes exactly the same as "editing" for e.g. a YouTube channel: something where there's a direct proven correlation between "production values" and "attach rate", where that and a steady existing revenue stream will be enough to get you a business loan from any sensible bank.

derefr 5y ago

> In a traditional publishing context failure is an option. Many books don’t get published. If the pitch is not good enough, it gets dropped. If the first few chapters is not good enough it gets dropped. If they can’t polish it to satisfaction with an editor the work gets dropped. I’m not saying that quality is the only rubric the publishers use to judge when to drop a book vs when to publish, but it is heavily judged at every step of the way at multiple gates. Maybe I come from a different writing "culture", but most of the books I see being self-published are restructurings of works previously published online in serial format (if nonfiction, as blog posts; if fiction, as several-times-weekly mini-chapter serial fiction), where the popularity of the output is effectively pre-determined, as the creation and publication of a standalone purchasable book is entirely being driven by demand for such by the existing audience of the source material. Further, those serial publications are often, these days, being sponsored via Patreon, or published via apps that charge to unlock chapters and give some of that money to the author, and so forth — so the author already has an income stream from their work, that they can reinvest into their work (through editing) to multiply the amount they're making from their work. In that sense, "editing" for their books becomes exactly the same as "editing" for e.g. a YouTube channel: something where there's a direct proven correlation between "production values" and "attach rate", where that and a steady existing revenue stream will be enough to get you a business loan from any sensible bank.