15 Essential Questions To Ask Before Hiring a Book Editor

Includes bonus content: 25 Answers To Questions They Might Ask You

As with a previous post about meeting a literary agent for the first time, this week I wanted to indirectly share my learnt lessons on the initial hiring of a professional editor. They were contracted to work on a draft manuscript in exchange for ~$2,000.

I Met An Agent The Other Day

To maximise your benefit of my experience without spending a similar sum, I've listed below a series of wide-ranging and detailed screening questions. These should be put to any prospective agents (or sometimes smaller publishers) before submitting your manuscript.

As bonus content, I've also listed some stock answers to questions an editor might raise, either before or during the editing process.

I hope you find these lists of questions and answers equally useful. Please don't hesitate to add your own suggestions for either questions or answers via the comments section.

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15 useful screening questions for prospective book editors:

1. Do you easily confuse the terms ‘literal’ and ‘literary’?

2. Do you consider reading through a manuscript before editing it a huge waste of your valuable time?

3. Is your “developmental/structural edit”:

   1. based on your own prejudged biases;

   2. disguised as adopted cultural sensitivities; or

   3. both?

4. Is repeatedly misspelling the main protagonist’s name included in your standard editing package?

5. Will you choose to completely ignore during the editing process any outlines or synopses of related novels, created specifically at your request, which are intended to reduce plot and character continuity errors?

6. Do you view the introduction of mixed-genre tropes as:

   1. confusing;

   2. a worthy challenge;

   3. a career-sullying abomination which should be immediately expunged from a manuscript without any discussion?

7. Do you strive to ensure the issues critiqued by readers of your novels are introduced into the manuscripts of your writers?

8. Will you deliberately avoid editing or discussing non-heterosexual relationships?

9. Which voice narrated from inside a character’s head do you think should be eliminated from a manuscript because it requires a suspension of disbelief?

   1. A highly disputed, invisible and unproven local deity.

   2. A soon to be contacted alien from the same galaxy.

   3. Their own.

10. Do real-time interactions incur additional cost, even when excluding the patronising tone used in written communications?

11. Do you agree that an unreliable narrator might relate events unreliably?

12. When there are aspects of a manuscript which you find difficult to understand, do you:

    1. delete the paragraph, scene, or even chapter (without any regard for plot or character arcs); or

    2. contact the author for a tedious clarification?

13. Do you use an objective ‘number of deleted words’ metric as a proxy for subjective-based editing quality?

14. If a client specifies a tailor-made editing service, do you:

    1. refuse the work;

    2. refer the client to a competitor;

    3. quote an increased cost and perform the work as specified;

    4. ignore the client's request, delivering instead whatever best fits your baked-in, boilerplated editing process; or

    5. ditto option d), with the added caveat of neglecting to tell the client of your actual intentions before receipt of payment?

15. Is a satisfied client an optional part of your business model?

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25 sample answers for an erroneously hired editor:

1. I know 185k words is too long. It's the reason I hired you.

2. I don't require your 6,000 word critique, I’ve used 7 experienced beta readers.

3. No, as we already agreed, I won't send you full payment in advance.

4. I already have comps.

5. Thank you for assuming I’ve not read widely within the genre for decades.

6. Yes, those are still canon classics.

7. Yes, I know my protagonist is a young woman.

8. Yes, I’m aware I’m not.

9. This is indeed a fictional work.

10. Yes, it does exist/happen in the real world. See <obvious example>.

11. I was expecting you to use your imagination.

12. I know about these topics because I had a life before today.

13. Yes, that character needs to die even if you like them more.

14. I know she's not real.

15. No, she wouldn't do that.

16. That is how it's done.

17. Because I've done it. (See 12.)

18. Yes, being the biological parents assumes a sexual relationship.

19. No, some people do enjoy doing that. (See 10.)

20. I still don't need comps.

21. Or a critique.

22. Because that's what we agreed.

23. That won't be necessary.

24. No, I don't think so.

25. I never thought it wasn’t my book.