The whole 'selecting editors and cover designers' thing is so tricky because - especially for folks starting out - you don't necessarily have the knowledge of what different parts of it are, or how to evaluate it effectively.
I think that's what happens for a lot of people: they don't know the difference between different kinds of edits. They don't know how to navigate the line between stylistic choices and 'yeah, this is just getting unreadable'. And they don't know how to determine if an editor is doing a good job in all the relevant ways. And then you add in financial constraints, the trick of finding an editor, scheduling, etc.
(In general, what I've seen is that people who have an ongoing relationship with their editors tend to name them, people who hired someone off Fiver or Reedsy often don't.)
My editor is one of my best friends, and they do everything from developmental editing to line and copy edits for me. (I also run my books through a small number of early readers, who will also help catch typos that slip by. There are always typos. They breed.) My editor isn't currently doing it for anyone else, though has in the past in a small publisher context.
The same thing's true for cover design, which is a lot more than just 'make some nice images go together' (and here, I will absolutely rec Augusta Scarlett.) My covers have a distinctive unified style, but she has a substantial range. She's also great at the 'look at what's going on in the subgenre in question and figure out something that looks like it fits there in terms of genre signifiers' part of the question.
I am just about to launch my first audio book - in that case, she approached me, was really informative about the process (huge learning curve on my end!) I just paid her for the final files yesterday, and later this week will be getting them out to people who backed the Kickstarter, and then up for sale elsewhere. (I'm going to do a post about the process on my DW in the near future: my DW is locked by default but I'm glad to add people.) That's Maria Nicola Johnson, who also managed a range of accents for me.
One of the biggest things I look for is 'is this person familiar with how this bit of the industry works', and 'is their communication really good'.
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Date: 2025-01-13 02:16 pm (UTC)I think that's what happens for a lot of people: they don't know the difference between different kinds of edits. They don't know how to navigate the line between stylistic choices and 'yeah, this is just getting unreadable'. And they don't know how to determine if an editor is doing a good job in all the relevant ways. And then you add in financial constraints, the trick of finding an editor, scheduling, etc.
(In general, what I've seen is that people who have an ongoing relationship with their editors tend to name them, people who hired someone off Fiver or Reedsy often don't.)
My editor is one of my best friends, and they do everything from developmental editing to line and copy edits for me. (I also run my books through a small number of early readers, who will also help catch typos that slip by. There are always typos. They breed.) My editor isn't currently doing it for anyone else, though has in the past in a small publisher context.
The same thing's true for cover design, which is a lot more than just 'make some nice images go together' (and here, I will absolutely rec Augusta Scarlett.) My covers have a distinctive unified style, but she has a substantial range. She's also great at the 'look at what's going on in the subgenre in question and figure out something that looks like it fits there in terms of genre signifiers' part of the question.
I am just about to launch my first audio book - in that case, she approached me, was really informative about the process (huge learning curve on my end!) I just paid her for the final files yesterday, and later this week will be getting them out to people who backed the Kickstarter, and then up for sale elsewhere. (I'm going to do a post about the process on my DW in the near future: my DW is locked by default but I'm glad to add people.) That's Maria Nicola Johnson, who also managed a range of accents for me.
One of the biggest things I look for is 'is this person familiar with how this bit of the industry works', and 'is their communication really good'.