Publisher Invitation: Use a professional editor first or not?

I personally don't use a professional editor, they are very expensive and not usually worth the money.

By "invited" do you mean you queried said novel or that it was a cold contact from the publisher? Either way, I hope you checked them out.

I recommend that you don't pay for any editing if you already have a publisher interested in reading your work. There are quite a few situations where I could see the value in getting a freelance edit but this isn't one of them IMHO.

I would recommend first checking the publisher is any good, very few decent publishers go fishing and asking for manuscripts they have never seen.

You queried an incomplete novel? A--in your words--a draft? *headdesk*

Words of advice--don't do that again. Query only when the novel is complete, polished, edited and ready for submission.

That being said, let me tell you a story.

Two weeks ago, I read a query and first twenty pages of a story I really liked. I requested the full. Turns out the AUTHOR wasn't the one who queried me; it was an EDITOR on behalf of the author. She emailed me to let me know that she was still working on the manuscript and as soon she was done, she would send the ms on to me.

Here's what I DO NOT LIKE about this situation:

1--the manuscript was not ready to be queried.
2--the author didn't send me the query; a third party did.
3--I queried based on the MS I read, not the editor's version.
4--an outside editor may change the work to the degree that--if I buy the story, I may have to change completely back.
5--as a result of this query, by the time I actually get the manuscript, all I'm going to remember about this story is how annoyed the author/editor made me.

Short answer--NO.

Submit what you have. If Penguin asks you for a MS from their slushpile, you send it before they have a chance to forget they even asked. Maybe you're an outstanding author who writes cleanly on the first pass; I certainly hope so. But, if you're not, you'll have burned a bridge with Penguin for that book. Go through it yourself, turn off your content editor, proof it for obivous grammar/spelling/punctuation errors and ship that bad boy off within a week. Otherwise you may have wasted a golden opportunity.

Best of luck to you.

Okay. So you queried and they bit. Send it.

Ditto, ditto, ditto everything mcselina said. Take it to heart.

I'd recommend not sending it at all, but instead, spend some serious time editing and polishing, and then start looking for an agent.

Reason being--it's not worth the risk. If the manuscript is good enough for a publisher to offer for it, it's good enough for you to land a decent agent with it, who can then work out a much better deal than you would have gotten from the publisher directly.

If the novel is not good enough for Penguin to offer for it, then you've burned that bridge forever, at least with that manuscript.

BethS said:

I'd recommend not sending it at all,

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Ignoring an editor is far, far worse than writing something one doesn't like.

But if Penguin *does* offer you a contract, here's what you say: I'll have my agent get back to you in a few days. Then, you go off and get yourself an agent. Happens all the time.

Karen Junker said:

But if Penguin *does* offer you a contract, here's what you say: I'll have my agent get back to you in a few days. Then, you go off and get yourself an agent. Happens all the time.

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Um, no. Do not EVER lie about something like this. Don't say you have an agent when you don't, because if you can't get an agent 'in a few days', it'll be very clear to the editor you were lying. After all, if you had an agent, why did you submit directly in the first place? And if you don't secure an editor and therefore your 'agent' isn't the one who contacts them in a few days, again, it'll just prove you were lying. Editors aren't idiots. And lying is NEVER a good way to begin a business relationship that requires a lot of trust on both sides.

Sure, say you need a week to decide, and in that week, contact agents...one very well might pick you up. And if one doesn't, you can proceed without having a Very Obvious Lie hanging over your head.

But DO NOT EVER lie and say you'll have your agent get back to them in a few days if you don't have an agent.

NEVER.

EVER.

allanco said:

It's Penguin. They didn't fish; I queried.

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Penguin? Are you sure, because they don't accept unsolicited ms. In fact, they are pretty hard to get to even consider a shit-hot agent, never mind an author with an unfinished ms.

http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/cs/uk/0/aboutus/index.html#question11

shaldna said:

Penguin? Are you sure, because they don't accept unsolicited ms. In fact, they are pretty hard to get to even consider a shit-hot agent, never mind an author with an unfinished ms.

http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/cs/uk/0/aboutus/index.html#question11

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But some time ago, Penguin uk did open themselves up to unsoilicited subs from authors, for a limited time. There's a thread on this somewhere here. I jumped at the chance, and subbed two mss with two different pen names! Never heard back. I was wondering if this request came from that door of opprtunity?
ETA: the link

allanco said:

I've just finished a draft of my novel. Beta readers' feedback was good.

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When you've made 50 posts on AW, sub it to the beta readers here. Go to the "Share Your Work" forum, find subs in your genre and read those and the comments left. Some of them will apply to your work. You'll find yourself going back to fix things! Give feedback and get feedback.

If your betas are not writers or editors you won't get the same feedback as you'll get here.

I've been invited by a publisher to submit it,

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It's a first draft. Even with betas telling you it's wonderful, it's not ready.

but it will be once around and out.

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Why sub to a publisher if you know it's going to be rejected? Why waste your time and that editor's time? Polish it. Learn to self-edit. It's part of the job. There are books available on just that topic. Read them all.

My quandaries are:
1. whether to have it professionally edited before I submit it, an expensive decision.

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Don't waste your money. Get feedback from other writers, not family and friends who love and want to support you. Post 5 pages here on AW when you're ready. Learn to edit yourself. We all have to do that.

2. If edited, can anyone recommend a brilliant, creative professional?

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The most brilliant editor out there cannot make a manuscript publishable if it's not ready. She can make suggestions, but it's going to cost you cash because their time is worth something.

http://www.sff.net/people/doylemacdonald/editorial.html

http://www.vampwriter.com/VAMPWRITER_Rates_FAQ.htm

They're offering bargain rates, BTW.

You're on the first draft and impatient, which means you're in for disappointment. Most debut novels never get more than a low 4-figure advance. You could spend that much on editing and it still wouldn't be publishable.

http://www.brendahiatt.com/id2.html <--how much some writers make.

I thought my first draft was brilliant. It had the positive feedback from betas, everyone loved it. I based my judgment that it was brilliant on the fact that it was a fairly original idea and I'd worked harder on it than on anything else I'd ever done.

But the pro publishing world doesn't give points for effort. They want something they can sell and make a profit on.

It got 25 rejections. It just wasn't ready. I had to do rewrites, one after another, to bring it slowly up to a professional level. I got feedback from kindly editors and ripped my MS apart and put it together again over a two-year period. I read every book I could find on writing and 100s of similar books by others to see how they handled the problems I faced.

"Hm--my climax is 5 people sitting in a room staring at each other--not too exciting. How did Agatha Christie/Dashiell Hammett/Conan Doyle deal with it...?"


Had AW been around back then my path to that first sale would have been shorter. My first feedback came from readers, not writers. Many here are professionally published and can tell you what an acquisitions editor would say if she had the time.

Over a long two-year trial and error period I found out about data dumps, slow starts, action stopping characters and scenes, and every other writing mistake that was possible to make that stood between me and that first sale.

If I'd had the money I might have self-published, I was that desperate. Thankfully I was broke and didn't do anything so career-destructive.

There are no short cuts. I could edit your book (for a price, and I'm NOT cheap) but you're better off putting a bit more patience and effort into it at this stage.

If your book truly IS brilliant, then that editor at Penguin will still want to look at it in another few months after you've polished up succeeding drafts.

I can suggest shutting the file down for a couple weeks, work on something completely different to clear the cobwebs from your head, then go back for a fresh look. Most writers do that. I do, and it only helps improve the writing!

You said it's been betaed. Are your readers people who 1) understand the genre 2) know the market and 3) are grammatically strong? In short, do you have faith that your readers will be able to catch problems? If so, you really don't need to hire a professional editor.