Better Blog in Brief Than Not Blog All

Right, we have a new resolution. I do tend to go on in my blog posts and I know full well that I don’t blog half often enough, so there’s the answer, I think. Briefer blogs, more often. Let’s see if it works!

Huge sales for customers’ books

First of all, mega congratulations to our customer DJ Harrison who has achieved impressive ebook sales with his debut novel, Due Diligence, and the follow-up, Proceeds of Crime, both of which we edited here at Fiction Feedback. They’re published by Open Circle, a company to which Fiction Feedback lends a little hand with editorial-cum-enthusiasm. Storyline? Jenny Parker, a Manchester accountant, finds both the city and the career more menacing than she could ever have dreamt, and also discovers she has rather unusual resources which help her to cope. Due Diligence reached no. 8 in the Amazon ebook thriller charts and sold over a thousand downloads in the first week of May alone. Way to go, Dave. Check out the books here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_13?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=due+diligence+d+j+harrison&sprefix=Due+Diligence%2Cdigital-text%2C272 and read about Dave here: http://djharrison99.blogspot.com/

We also offer congratulations to another long-term customer, Austin Hernon. His impressive fictional biography of Robert Curthose, William the Conqueror’s eldest son, called The Wayward Prince, has finally crossed our editorial desk for the last time after many a careful draft and is now on its way to being produced as an ebook. More details to follow shortly.

Finally, another customer, Richard Dee, has published his exciting sci-fi ebook, Freefall, to Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Freefall-ebook/dp/B00CMTBZ5G/  We were pleased to provide critiques of his first 15,000 words and are intrigued to see how he gets on.

Best of luck to all Fiction Feedback authors.

Ebook production from Fiction Feedback - limited to quality manuscripts

A busy, busy few weeks for Fiction Feedback. As well as helping our friends over at Open Circle, (www.opencirclebooks.com), most especially by editing the second book they’ve published, Proceeds of Crime by DJ Harrison, we’re also seeing our first customer novel through to ebook production. Book cover design has gone extremely well, and the final proof-read is now in hand.

Currently, we’re only providing our ebook service to Fiction Feedback customers – writers who’ve received critiques and particularly copy-editing from us. We recognise this might disappoint some would-be customers. After all, Fiction Feedback is about encouraging writers to write and to help get quality work out there for readers to read.

Yet the key word here is quality. So much writing that is self-published today has patently not been professionally edited and while very occasionally that might not present a problem, we believe that it often has the effect of lowering expectations from readers of what to expect from a self-published novel. And this has a knock-on effect for every novel which is self-published. It tarnishes everyone’s efforts and turns readers off, which is so very unfair.

We don’t want to be associated with any work which makes it harder for good self-published authors to get their work taken seriously. So we’ll look at a manuscript that’s submitted for ebook production and check that it only needs proof-reading (and if that’s already been professionally done, then great). But if it needs editing rather than proofing, or if perhaps it’s not even ready for that, then we will decline to produce the work as an ebook and it’s up to the author what steps they take next.

Inevitably this will mean our ebook production arm won’t be as commercially successful as it might be. But if commercial success were our only aim, then Fiction Feedback’s critiquing prices would be much higher, and the personal service we provide to any customer who wants it would be compromised.

We prefer to offer a service that encourages good writers and helps make good writing available to read. We need to make an income from this, yes; our reviewers and editors all have to eat and deserve to be paid for their time and expertise. But Fiction Feedback is about more than that, and we hope would-be customers will both understand and appreciate this policy regarding ebook production. Quality is all.

The cost of editing

It’s been a roller-coaster day at Fiction Feedback. First of all, a customer who had liked our critique service and asked us for a quote for editing, came back to say she’d found a recommended editor who agreed to do the work for half our quoted price and in less than half the time. Naturally, all we can do is wish the author well and hope it works out. I’m deeply envious of that editor, not from a commercial aspect but from a personal one – I’d really enjoyed what we’d read so far of this author’s work and, together with the editor who would have worked on this one, I was very keen to read more. I look forward to downloading the finished novel in the not-too-distant.

It got me to thinking, though. Our standard charge for copy-editing is £8 per 1,000 words. If the work is quite ‘clean’, that is, not needing more than a couple of tweaks a paragraph, then I reckon I can get through maybe 2,000 words an hour. So my hourly rate of pay is £16. Oh, no it’s not, because I go back for a second pass, and then a quick third. So we’re at £8/hour. If the manuscript needs a lot of attention, and I’m amending punctuation, spelling and grammar on every line, not to mention querying meaning and pointing out repetition, plot contradictions and discrepancies of all kinds, then it could take an hour to edit 500 words. So my pay goes down to £4 an hour – £2 if you take into account that second pass, and in heavily edited work that third pass wouldn’t be so brief, so I’m reaching the stage where I’m working for free.

Now, I’m not asking to be paid as much as a solicitor, or an accountant, or even a copywriter. However, I think my work is worth more than the national minimum wage. And frankly, even a very clean script wouldn’t tempt me to charge only £4 per 1,000 words, much as I love the task, and in many cases, love the novel too and desperately want to help it succeed.

In this particular instance I could well understand why our customer chose to go with someone so much cheaper; her manuscript was exceptionally long and so £8 per 1,000 words added up ferociously. But I don’t think this is a case where we can offer a volume discount, or at any rate, not much of one. As my calculation above shows, we’re not paid that much in the first place. And our full, expert attention is required right to the very last word. All we can offer is the ability to pay in instalments, and a considered, professional service. People can choose to pay for this or not.

One author who did choose to pay for our editing services recently, and has in fact returned to us for critiques and editing over four novels and two years, obviously found our service to her liking. So much so, there came about the big high of today. The doorbell rang, and there was a shivering delivery man getting somewhat snowed upon with a large box from Majestic Wine, sent by this delightful author. She thought I deserved it, she said, when I emailed to thank her.

Equanimity restored, I’ve got back to the enormous editing task I’ve been working on for nine months now. I dread to think how much the customer has paid altogether for edits then more edits to revised drafts. I dread to think even more how many hours I’ve worked on this rather splendid fictional biography. Still, let’s not think of that. The end is in sight, and our hero will meet it with properly punctuated gusto. Job satisfaction? I’m rich in that.