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May 15, 2007

How Many Edits?

November 09, 2008 08:24 PM EST

views: 44 | rating: 10/10 (2 votes) | comments: 3

Today I finished the third set of requested edits from an editor. She hasn't offered or promised a contract. I really want her company to publish my book, but I'm not sure I'll do any more hours of slashing and cutting without a contract. How about all you novel writers out there? How many times will you make changes in a manuscript in hopes of a sale?

Tags: writing, authors, futuristic romance, romance, novels, published, books, comments, writing romance novels, writers

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Comments: 3

A. F. Stewart Nov 10, 2008, 9:34am EST

Being self-published I haven't dealt with company editors, but if the edits are helping improve the book it's a good thing. You might however want to politely and tactfully inquire about negotiating a contract, if indeed she is interested in publishing the book.

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Tracy Fabre Nov 11, 2008, 10:14pm EST

I'm with a small publisher and actually am one of the volunteer editors. My book happened to be edited by someone who cared quite a lot about quality (Shirley Ann Howard) and I in turn edited her novel. We discussed what we would each do if we were with a big publisher... I think for me, if that happened, it would be important to have in writing that I had creative control: editing for clarity, typos, etc. is fine but *I* want to have the final say about the whole work.

I think three edits is enough. If this woman is basically leading you on a "change everything and THEN we'll talk," then... she needs to tell you now what your chances are.

But then what do I know? :-)

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Jim Swan Nov 12, 2008, 10:49am EST

I don't know how relevant our experience is for you. My co-authors and I went through countless rewrites of our EFL textbook before we finally got it published. It took over ten years from start to finish! But that was about ten years ago, during a terrible period of consolidation, when the textbook publishers were undergoing merger after merger, acquisition after acquisition -- our publisher changed ownership and name FOUR TIMES during that period.

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