The credit of a bestselling book invariably goes to the author and the publishing house. The relentless hard work put in by a fiction editor to make the book a success is often forgotten in the literary world. The editor plays an essential part in improving the standard of the content written by the author. Though nowadays, there is a trend of self publishing books online, the work of an editor can never be substituted and so if you are a writer, you can gain enormously by approaching an editor to edit your work.
Fiction editors examine your book word by word and sentence by sentence. They proof read the content and correct spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors. Moreover, they also check your content for any inconsistencies that you might have overlooked by deleting or correcting the illogical statements. They polish your draft and make your writing crispy clear and concise for an easy reading. The lack of craft, incongruent flow of sentences etc are also looked into, by these editors.
However, writing a book is a highly personal experience and no writer would like an editor to change the tone and specifications which are intimate to the author. Though seasoned editors take care to keep the individualism and personality of the writer intact even after editing, it is considered a good practice for the author to meet the editor, ask valid questions, express the apprehensions and discuss all the relevant matter. By doing this, you can be sure of what the editor is intending to do with your manuscript and get a glimpse of how your writing would be after the editing process.
However, recently there have been voices of dissent emanating from literary circles regarding the importance of a fiction editor in the age of digital publishing. The writers can now directly deliver their work straight to the readers without going through a publishing house. This makes the writer more important than the publishing house or the editor. However, the e-books that the writers publish still have the flaws of a book written on paper. So, the former too benefit from some amount of expert editing. Thus instead of self publishing your writing on the internet, you can take the help of an e-book publisher. The e-book editor will help you improvise your content before publishing it.
Have you hired a literary editor to edit your manuscript and did the editor rebuild your writing into a more evolved form? Not yet! Then hire one and get the desired success.