Finding a Professional Proofreader
I’m almost there! While awaiting beta reader feedback to make any remaining story edits, I’m also planning for the final step to get LISHKA ready for design layout.
Proofreading is the last editing phase, where the writing is edited for things like typos, grammar errors, and inconsistencies to the style guide. Essentially, it’s the final polish.
I’ve known for a while that I want to hire an experienced professional for this part. In my recent update (The biggest challenge of self-publishing), I talked about my struggle to feel confident that LISHKA will live up to the expectations for a traditionally published novel. Hiring a professional with experience will go a long way toward helping me feel like the book is ready. The only problem? I had no idea how to find such a person. So I began in the place that I always do when I need help: good ole’ Google.
A search for proofreaders yielded an overwhelming number of companies promising to make my draft perfect, with 0 personal connection. After scrolling through several company websites, I quickly modified my search to best way to find a professional proofreader. I landed on a blog listing the top sites for hiring an editor, and within maybe 30 minutes I had created a user profile at Upwork and flung out my job posting for editing LISHKA.
As this was my first time requesting professional editing services, I wasn’t sure what to look for. After receiving and reading through 26 applications, I learned more about what I needed in an editor.
Below are the top three things I considered when reviewing the applications (note if the bid came within my stated budget, I didn’t put a lot of weight into cost).
Personality!
The applications I gravitated toward the most were warm, personable, and showed the person had very clearly read both my post and the sample of LISHKA I provided. Some expressed a lot of excitement about the work, and even visited my website! I quickly realized that I needed to get a strong sense of who the person was and how they communicated to feel comfortable with making an offer (humor also got extra bonus points).
Many of the proposals were written in a more formal voice, like a traditional job application. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, as long as the editor still clearly communicated their working style and qualifications. That being said, I wanted more of a partnership that would require collaboration, vs. just an edit handoff with no discussion (the take it or leave it mentality).
Full disclosure, I get nervous about asserting myself when I dislike an edit. This means I need to feel comfortable in the relationship, so I can ask questions to understand how critical the edit is before making a decision.
Essentially, I need both myself and the editor to really vibe with each other. Which brings me to my next priority…
Editing Samples
To the people who provided samples of their editing, especially those who provided edits on my short excerpt from LISHKA, THANK YOU! This was so insanely helpful in assessing a person’s editing style: what they caught, how they edited, what liberties they took with my writing style, and any additional insight they provided on why they chose to edit the text.
I also looked for subjective markups. Did the editor make unnecessary edits to LISHKA? I saw this happen in a few of the samples. Essentially, the way I had written the sentence was not technically wrong, but for whatever reason the editor chose to suggest an alternate (and not one that I liked). While I can totally appreciate this type of edit if the sentence is unclear or cumbersome, I would hope the editor would try to avoid revising my style of writing into their preferred voice. This type of line editing usually happens in earlier drafts, while the final proofread focuses more on straight up errors (to my knowledge anyway, I am admittedly a newbie in this process!).
The person I ultimately made an offer to not only provided edits that excited me—as I reviewed them, I kept thinking oh good point! That’s a good edit!—but they also left me comments on why the sentence required an adjustment. While this is not an expectation I’d have for the entire book, this helped me immensely. Their comments invited me to participate in the ‘fix’, as well as helped me learn for future writing improvements. I’m so excited to work with this person because I am going to learn so much from them!
In hindsight, I’m quite relieved that I submitted an excerpt from LISHKA with my post. I did not explicitly ask for an edited sample back, having not thought to do so, but found this instrumental in choosing the right editor for both my writing style and communication needs.
Generic vs. Personalized Applications
This one probably goes without saying but it is so important, so I’ll say it. I only looked at applications where it was clear the person was talking to me. What do I mean by this? I mean I received more than one application that was obviously a generic copy + paste.
LISHKA is my debut novel that I have worked on for 15+ (eeps) years. I want to partner with someone who is genuinely excited to help me make this novel the best it can be. Because of this need, I only reviewed applications where it was clear that the person had actually read through my post and sample, and wanted to work with ME (and not just do another job).
I received several applications that appeared to be generic submission letters. One started with “To whom it may concern” (despite my name being on the job post), and contained no personalization to my project. Another lengthier letter stated they would work with ‘your authors’ (I’m clearly just one person). Again, there was no mention of anything specific to LISHKA nor my job post. I immediately ruled these out.
All this to say, I genuinely appreciated every person who took the time to apply to my job posting, and I made sure to reply to each with a quick message thanking them for their time.
While this proofreading phase may require more work than I initially thought, I am beyond excited to enter this phase with my new editor.
