If you read writing blogs or forums, you’ll inevitably run across someone asking, “Do I really need to hire an editor for my book?” and the flood of people responding, “Of course you do! You’re not a serious author if you don’t!” The idea that you need an editor to produce quality work is pervasive in writing circles. Many suggest that you might even need multiple editors to help you through the gargantuan task of producing something readers won’t spit upon.

Being the diligent aspiring author that you are, wanting to give your dreams the best chance possible, you happily start researching editors.

And you stare at the screen. They want how much? Editors cost thousands of dollars????

As much as you wish this was just a bad dream, editors really do cost that much. I mean, you are asking them to do a lot—reading through a novel-length manuscript takes time, and anybody who says they can do it in three days is scamming you.

But what if you aren’t sure if you really want to spend that money? That’s a completely reasonable reaction backed up by pretty sobering numbers. The average book in the U.S. only sells 300 copies over the course of its lifetime. And remember: that’s an average skewed by the mega-popular books that sell millions. Most books, especially self-published books, only sell a handful. The chances of earning back your editing expenses on a debut novel are quite small.

With that in mind, here are three important questions to consider when trying to decide if your manuscript needs an editor.

1. What are your goals?

Are you writing for fun? Are you writing to self-publish? Or are you writing to query and hopefully land a book deal with a major publisher?

Don’t just assume that because you are planning on self-publishing that you need an editor, or that a traditional publisher will happily clean up a disaster of a manuscript for you. Many self-published authors decide to forego an editor due to the exorbitant cost and difficulty in finding a reputable one, at least in the early stages of our careers. And if you are querying agents, you want to put your best foot forward. They don’t want to try to sell a disaster anymore than publishers want to buy one.

Which brings me to the next question…

2. How clean is your manuscript?

Are you confident that there are no spelling or grammar errors? Have you gotten someone who doesn’t care about you or your feelings to take a look at your manuscript?

3. Can you do it yourself?

Do you know how to edit a novel? Hopefully, in high school you learned the basics of editing your own papers before you turned them in; but editing a book is a bit different and requires different skills.

It’s more than just making sure you spelled everything right and didn’t write ”they’re” when you meant “their.” It involves checking for plot holes, character consistencies, scenes that stall the narrative or don’t make sense, missed opportunities, and smoother sentence constructions.

If you’re willing to do this yourself, you’ll add quite a workload but also potentially accelerate your own writing education.

If not, you may need to hire some combination of developmental editors, editors, copywriters, and proofreaders.

4. How much money do you have set aside?

Editors charge by the word according to the level of editing you require. Developmental editors are going to cost the most per word while proofreaders will charge the least. If you have a long, epic fantasy like my second novel, Shackles of a Mountain Lord, which clocked in at about 222,000 words, you’re looking at spending many thousands of dollars to edit your book, and you’d better also find one that likes epic fantasy. Otherwise, they’ll be recommending you cut out half the story to fit into their preconceived ideas of book length.

If, on the other hand, you have a trim 20,000 novella, it will cost significantly less. The cost of editing is a bit more palatable if your book isn’t large enough to eat the editor.

5. The Final Question: What is your risk tolerance?

Suppose you decide you just don’t have the money to hire an editor right now. You decide you’re going to do it all yourself, even if that means you have to buy a better spellchecker/grammar-checker and teach yourself the finer points of English grammar.

Or suppose you decide to hire an editor to deal with all that for you, in the hopes that their professional eye, motivated by your pile of dollars, will catch every stray error.

Don’t go assuming you’re out of the woods with either option. Both of these scenarios still carry the risk that something will slip through. The risk might be lower if you hire a professional editor, but it’s not zero. People find typos in traditionally published books all the time, even though they have been gone over with a fine-toothed comb. Or depending on the editor you hire, you may only get someone who runs your manuscript through a spellchecker and AI. In that case, depending on your own editing skills, you might be better off doing it all yourself.

But if you do your research on editors, vett them, and don’t skimp on the price, the risk of having book-destroying errors is lower.

Still Unsure?

If you are still on the fence about whether or not to hire an editor because you’ve heard so many people say you NEED to hire an editor, take a look at this video.

Deciding whether or not to hire an editor should be YOUR decision, and no one else’s. No one online can tell you whether or not it’s a good idea FOR YOU.

Conclusion

Whether to hire an editor for your manuscript is a complicated one these days due to the high costs and low return on investment. We all want the best book possible. But how to get to that point within our own personal constraints requires you to do some honest, blunt analysis of your book, your skills, and your pocketbook.

Whatever you decide, enjoy the process and be teachable, then move on to the next story.

Good luck!