Why you should hire an editor for your manuscript

There's nothing much better than reading a great book. Unfortunately, even the best books can be cheapened by writing errors. It is demoralizing when readers return poorly written ebooks for refunds. In the past six months, I have returned a number of Kindle books for full refunds. The stories were excellent in most cases; however, the writing was not good enough for a published work.

Ebooks are not new; however, the sheer volume of indie ebooks has grown phenomenally over the past several years. Unfortunately, not all indie authors are careful about publishing a polished, error-free ebook. People all over the world have been reading professionally published print and digital books for years and years. Readers have been exposed to professionally edited publications their entire lives and this is the main standard of comparison. When you self-publish, your writing is judged by those commercial publishing standards.

It is never acceptable for books to exhibit a lack of writing expertise with errors in grammar, mechanics, or word choice. Incorrect homonym, homophone, apostrophe, and verb tense usage exhibits a serious lack of expertise in written language on the part of the writer. Sometimes writers decide to allow friends and/or family to proofread manuscripts and, frankly, this never works.

All indie authors should find a professional editor to proofread final manuscripts prior to publishing an ebook. Even so, editors are not all created equal. A good editor can correct all types of writing and language errors during the proofreading process. When an editor is not well-versed in written language, the result is a self-published book that reflects poorly on the writer.