I have a draft. What do I do now?

So your plan is self-publishing?

The first thing to do regardless is edit it yourself, and like, more than halve the wordcount, heh. Then edit it some more, have beta readers read it, then, if you're interested in self publishing, you would look for an editor. Prices and expertise vary; there's a section in bewares and recommends I think for editors, or a thread.

The very first thing I do when I have a draft is close the door.

In trying to self-publish a first draft, that's not always a bad idea, either.

caw

[h=2]I have a draft. What do I do now?[/h]

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Now is when the work starts.

The most useful way I found to learn to edit my own work was to start on others'. It's easier to see mistakes when they aren't in our own manuscripts. I'd start critting in SYW. If you feel awkward, you can always say up front that you're new to this and just approaching it as a reader. Also, that way you meet some people with some skills, and in time, you'll form online working relationships which come in very handy for beta swaps.

I feel you on your word count. My worst was cutting a 220k manuscript down to 119. It took me almost two years, many critiques and beta swaps, and many flash stories written as a self-prescribed remedy to wordiness. There's little room for extra words when you've got to tell an entire story in under a thousand of them. Other things may help you as well, but this is what helped me.

Right now, paying an editor would be very expensive (you pay by the word), and not a particularly good use of all that cash. Your story likely has a way to go before it's ready for that kind of attention.

Other things that have helped me:

*Learning about three-act structure, using it to cut unnecessary scenes and get my turning points at least in the neighborhood of where they should be,
*Reading passages by favorite authors whose voice is at least something like mine and trying to model my work after theirs,
*Writing something else (a certain amount of improvement is in repetition--I get tired of making the same mistakes)
*Revising with this list: http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?102594-Allen-Guthrie-s-Infamous-Writing-Tips
*Reading writers' blogs for their revision tips

ETA: Don't worry about people stealing your work. Really, the problem is getting people to read it, even when it's finished. An unpublished manuscript is valuable only to the author if they are as unknown as we are.

Zenith667 said:

1. When do you decide that your draft is ready for a professional editor's review?
2. How do you find a good editor? (Also, given the fact that my native language isn't english, I suppose a native-english editor would be best)
3. When searching for an editor, does the continent matter? I mean, I'm from a EU country, I imagine that legal / financial stuff might be more complicated than if he lived in the same country.
4. When you give your MS to an editor, how can you guarantee the protection of your intellectual property? I mean, so I wouldn't feel like I'm sending my work over to some arbitrary email address and wait to see what happens.
5. How does the process of editing and publishing work? If you know any details, or know of some resource explaining.
6. What legal stuff should I be aware of? I suppose I should be looking into Copyright, what ISBN is, etc.
7. What prices for a professional editor should I expect? I suppose it does depend on the country/region (s)he lives.

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1. Start with self editing. When you think it's polished, find some free beta readers. Send it through a few rounds of beta reading so that way when you do pay for an editor, you don't have to waste money plodding through known-issues and things that a non-professional could have spotted. I would also recommend that you don't pay for proofreading until you've done developmental editing, since it doesn't make sense to move commas around if you might have to do major rewrites.

2. There are some threads on this site for beta reader listings. That might be a good place to start. Goodreads also has some beta reader threads in their forums which contain listings for both free and paid services.

3. I don't see why it would make a difference since it's all electronic and usually the editor declares their own taxes, but I'm really not a legal expert.

4. An editor is really unlikely to steal your intellectual property. As a beta-reader who occasionally does developmental editing work, most of us A. have a respect for writers, which is why we work with them B. are writers ourselves and have enough of our own intellectual property and C. aren't going to risk our business and reputation to steal your novel. Not to mention that if you're sending it to editors, it probably needs editing so it would take months of work to polish the thing and then go through the submissions process, so stealing your stuff would be a huge hassle. Most reputable editors should have some testimonials on their site if you want to vet them, though.

Writing and editing is communal. I know it's scary to send out your work to strangers, but having faith in others will help you get important criticism and feedback, and will make it much easier to network with writers and editors.

5. For traditional publishing, the short version is that you polish your book until it can't be polished anymore, send out query letters to agents (usually in waves of 6-8) and then wait until you get a hit. They'll usually ask for a synopsis and a partial manuscript, or a full manuscript. If they like it, you'll get an offer of representation and then the agent will shop your book out to publishers. I'm not the person to ask about self-publishing, but I've heard that there are some platforms like amazon that aim to make it easy for writers.

6. Again, I don't know much about self-publishing, but if you're going through traditional publishing, don't copyright your work. Agents usually take care of a lot of the legal stuff, and if you have your own unnecessary copyright it makes you look paranoid (like you think the agent or publisher is going to steal your work--if it was good enough to steal, they'd publish it. Again, less hassle.) If you're self-publishing, you probably do have to take care of ISBN and copyright, though there's a chance that the publishing platform can help you out with that.

7. The price of the editor really depends on who they are, how much experience they have, how long your book is, and what kind of services they're providing. I know people who will read your book for $50. I know people who will read it for $1000. Shop around and see what you're comfortable with and what best suits your needs. And really, don't underestimate the services of people who are willing to read for free.

8. (The unsolicited advice bit) 200k is a really long for a novel. For traditional publishing, this will make it much more difficult to get your story looked at. If you're doing self-pub this isn't an impediment to publishing, but you should still consider the length. Sometimes a book is long because it needs to be long and there are some excellent long books out there, but length might also be a sign that there are things that could be cut. If you're self editing, I would recommend starting with cuts--go through and see if it could be whittled down, if the writing needs to be tightened anywhere, etc.

Zenith667 said:

4. When you give your MS to an editor, how can you guarantee the protection of your intellectual property?

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If you're worried about this, stay out of publishing. There are no guarantees, but nobody ever steals your work. If you don't trust that to be the case, you can't work as a writer.

The rest of the advice you have gotten is good, listen to it. But read the forums here, go back several years. All that you ask is frequently answered and the answers haven't changed.

Welcome to the insanity.

Jeff