Hiring an editor is VERY important. I didn't hire an editor for my book because
I couldn't afford it. I didn't know if anyone would even buy the book, so I
certainly didn't want to pay an editor to correct something that maybe no one
will even read. Once my book was printed the reviews on Amazon really beat me
up about not having an editor. But I couldn't argue with them. After getting
the hardcopy edition in my hands I immediately found tons of grammatical
errors. Why couldn't I see the glaringly obvious errors when I was writing the
book??? I read each chapter at least ten times and I even had friends look over
parts of it. Yet, the errors were there and they were painfully obvious. The
truth of the matter is that it is incredibly difficult to edit your own work.
Especially after reading it so many times that your eyes just glaze over
everytime you look at it. I learned my lesson: hire an editor. I don't know
what an editor costs, but one guy told me that if a page is well-written
without too many mistakes then he will charge $4/page. If the author needs a
lot of help with grammar and doesn't have good writing skills then the cost
will be a lot more.
The funny part of this story is that my Mom got so upset everytime she read an
Amazon review criticizing my grammer that she took the copy I gave her and read
every page looking for errors. Somehow she found every one without going crazy
(and she can barely figure out how to turn a computer on) and made corrections
on the page. When my first printing sold out (woohoo!) I used her corrections
to fix all the errors for the second printing. Another funny story is that I
added a paragraph in the book thanking her for her hard work. After the book
was printed I noticed that I had an error there too! The one paragraph she
didn't read ahead of time is the one with an error. It's a surprise I can even
write at all! :-) You can bet that I'm hiring an editor for my next book.
