Guest Blog: The Third Editor by GP Gottlieb

The Third Editor by GP Gottlieb

I’d started writing my first mystery and was searching for an editor. I researched online and finally submitted the story to two practiced editors plus one named Sonia with minimal editing experience who said she’d done time and knew “the ins and outs” of crime. That sounded promising, but I asked each editor to review my story and agreed to pay their hourly rates for the initial feedback.

My story was about a shapely young woman named Shannon, who has a sultry voice and is a waitress in a Midwestern diner. One night, Shannon is at work wearing a tight black miniskirt with a slinky crimson blouse and cheap dangling earrings. She constantly flings her long blonde hair over her shoulder and has long, cherry red nails. After a day in which she endured dozens of innuendos and come-ons, a muscled and tatted truck driver hits on her while she’s trying to clean the coffeepot.

Shannon is tired and cranky, forgot to serve toast or hashbrowns four times in the past hour, and has already been twice reprimanded by the fussy manager. When the truck driver grabs Shannon’s backside, she snaps, and before anyone can stop her, she stabs him in the arm with one of her stiletto heels. Later, we learn that the truck driver moonlights as a mob enforcer and was in the diner that night to strong arm one of the waitress’s best-tipping regulars. It also turns out that the FBI was trying to nab the truck driver for transporting illegal material over state lines, so ultimately, the waitress comes off as a hero.

The first editor I heard back from found a few grammar mistakes but neglected to ask why the reader needs to know how much Shannon’s earrings cost or why anyone would wear stiletto heels to wait tables at a diner.   

Neither the first nor second potential editor said anything about the cliches and incongruities. How many sultry blondes and muscled truckdrivers really exist, and how many waitresses manage the upkeep of a manicure? 

Only Sonia, the third editor pointed out that a normal waitress would wear rubber gloves rather than ruin her manicure while cleaning a coffee maker. Sonia had life experience that included, she admitted, a stint in rehab for meth addiction, a year in prison, and a few months in jail for attacking a police officer who was trying to cuff her. She didn’t hide her past but said that she didn’t like to dwell on it, and there was shockingly little info about her on Google.

We met at a random, mostly empty bar on Chicago’s west side. Sonia said it would be safer if I didn’t know where she lived. She warned me in her flat Chicago accent that we’d never meet twice in the same spot. Sonia looked like a sweetheart, with a heart-shaped faced and a winning smile, but she was shady. She deflected questions about her past and I already knew that she had a murky internet presence. She also insisted on cash payment and used burner phones, so her phone number kept changing.

But Sonia’s advice was spot on. She said that no matter how hard the waitress tried to stab the burly guy with the heel of her shoe, nothing would happen unless there was a stiletto knife hidden in the heel. Sonia suggested that Shannon either stomp on his foot with all her strength or pull out a 4.25 mm “Liliput” pistol and shoot the guy in the foot. Another option was to bash him in the head with the coffee pot because, Sonia patiently explained, unless the waitress was a trained killer, neither stabbing nor stomping would slow the guy down. 

Sonia assured me that she knew more than most about how to inflict pain, but I was sold when she started raving about the little gun, which turned out to be the exact model she carried around in her purse. And she had other solid suggestions.

 “If that waitress stabbed the truck driver,” she said, knowing whereof she spoke, “she’d be hauled to court, and suddenly she’d be fighting a dull, drawn-out legal battle that nobody wants to read about.”

I was blown away. An editor who doesn’t see beyond what’s on the page is not worth the money, but Sonia was a little scary. She liked the crime aspects of the story, but wanted me to round Shannon out, maybe have her bring slices of pie home to her grandmother or sing folksongs to her baby niece.

“Nobody should be only one thing,” she said the second time we met. “Give everyone some depth.” She told me that she fires clients who don’t make the corrections she suggests and added, “I’m used to people listening to me.”

She was a little intimidating, but Sonia taught me that nothing I write is sacred. At our third meeting, I gave her a new version of the story in which the high tipper who gets stabbed is a Federal agent. 

“Making the story more interesting is good,” she wrote in red, “but adding clichéd characters and a convoluted plotline is not.”  Then she told me a story about how stupid she’d been to transport drugs across state lines. She cautioned against letting my characters come off as idiots.

As disappointing as it was to see a thick red line crossing out an entire paragraph, Sonia taught me a lot about writing. “If your stories are boring and trite,” she said, “nobody is going to want to read them.” 

Much as I admired Sonia, appreciated her edits, and enjoyed the stories about her trajectory, I ultimately ended up hiring a different editor. It wasn’t her fault, but Sonia screwed up because she’d never worked as a waitress and didn’t know that restaurant employees are required to tie their hair back in most states. Nobody wants hair in their hashbrowns.

GP Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series (Battered was re-released September 2025 in Paperback, Kindle and Nook). She’s a member of the Blackbird Writers, on the Sisters in Crime Chicagoland Board, and a member of SinC Colorado and SinC Wisconsin. She likes posting on Facebook, reads voraciously, and has interviewed over 260 authors for New Books in Literature, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. Her stories have been published in Pure Slush, Another Chicago Magazine, Grande Dame Literary, and other journals and anthologies. Over 250 of her essays on travel, music, culture, writing, and things that annoy her are available in various publications at Medium.Com.

WHAT DOES A PUBLISHING HOUSE EDITOR DO?

 By Korina Moss

Before I became a published author of the Cheese Shop Mystery series, I had only a vague idea of what a publishing house editor does. I’m sure I still don’t know all their roles, but I do know what my relationship with my editor is regarding my series. Take into account when reading this that not all editors are the same and not all publishing houses are the same. In this post, when I refer to an editor, I’m basing it on what I know about the role of editors in my larger publishing house (Macmillan Publishing). This may be very different than what editors do in smaller independent houses. It’s also different than a freelance editor you might hire to help you with your manuscript before you send it out for querying or self-publishing. I’m also aware that I’m simplifying the roles of a publishing house editor and likely leaving out many other important duties their job entails.

One of the roles of an editor is to read and evaluate manuscripts sent to them by agents. If an editor loves your manuscript and thinks it’s marketable and will fit their house, they will bring it to the acquisitions team to discuss whether to make an offer. In larger houses such as the one I'm with (Macmillan Publishing), it is never the decision of just one person.

Once you sign a contract with the publisher, your editor is the project manager for that book or series. It’s their job to shepherd that book to completion. They are in charge of making a lot of decisions about the book, such as the direction of the marketing team, the cover art, possibly the title, and keeping track of the production schedule. I've heard from my author friends that their editors have given them varying degrees of involvement with these parts of the book process. In my case, my editor has asked my input on the cover art, and we’ve bounced around cheese pun titles. All the book jackets in a series should be cohesive, so the designers are also involved in the titles and cover art decisions. People often judge a book by its cover, so I’m happy to leave it up to the professionals. However, with each book, my editor asks for a short summary from me about things that might be germane to the cover, such as plot points, locations, season, etc., so they can align the cover design with my story.    

Once I hand in my manuscript, my editor will go over it and do what's called a developmental edit. This is different than line editing, which is fixing grammar, word choice, punctuation, etc., which is taken care of by a separate editor, the copy editor. A developmental edit means she makes suggestions for changes to the content, such as the pacing, characterization, inconsistencies, etc. A misnomer is that an editor makes changes to your manuscript or demands the author make changes. In my experience, that has never been the case. What an editor will do is point out where she thinks the trouble spots are, and then leaves you to decide if you agree and make the appropriate changes or not. Because I write a series, she also keeps tabs on past books. For example, in my third book, Curds of Prey, she thought my original ending was too similar to one I'd just done in Gone For Gouda. I hadn’t been happy with the ending either, for other reasons, but I had to get it in by the deadline. Since several weeks had passed since then and knowing my editor thought the ending was lackluster as well, I was able to read the manuscript with fresh eyes and come up with a much better ending. Among all the other things my editor does, she’s made me a better writer. 

Last but certainly not least, an editor champions their authors’ books, presenting them to the publishing team, who determines things like promotion and, if applicable, the lifespan of the series. 

To sum up, a publishing house editor is a manager, a teacher, and your biggest cheerleader. 

For you yet-to-be published or self-published writers, is what an editor does different than what you thought? For traditionally published writers, is this different than your experience with your editor?  

KORINA MOSS is the author of the Cheese Shop Mystery series set in the Sonoma Valley, including the Agatha Award winner for Best First Novel, Cheddar Off Dead and the Agatha Award finalist for Best Contemporary Novel, Case of the Bleus. Her books have been featured in USA Today, PARADE Magazine, Woman’s World, AARP, and Fresh Fiction. Book 5 in the series, Fondue or Die, arrives on October 22nd. To learn more or sign up for her free monthly newsletter, visit her website at korinamossauthor.com.  

You can preorder Korina's next book, Fondue or Die, for 25% off online at Barnes & Noble with code PREORDER25 now through July 17th with a free or premium B&N membership. 

Services for Writers - Caveat Emptor

I recently came across two entities that want to sell their services to writers with payment models I found interesting.

the new online bookstore

The first is Bookstore Without Borders (http://www.bookstorewithoutborders.com/). They correctly note that to make a sale one needs product, platform and exposure. An author’s e-book is the product; they propose to provide the platform (an online bookstore) and exposure.

The question I always like to address when it comes to services for writers is whether the value proposition is a good deal for the author. (I assume it’s good for the provider; otherwise, why are they doing it?)

Bookstore Without Borders (BWB from now on) offers an array of services; the only one I’ll address now is their platform for selling e-books. An author can list up to five e-books for the startup price of $395. There’s an introductory offer of $295 if you sign up before October 2013. Listing an extra book costs another $55. Annual renewals run $29.95.

BWB states that it only takes 80 books at $4.99 each to earn back your $395 cost. Their math is fine—as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. The open question is how many extra sales their platform will drive. If all of the 80 sales are ones you would not have gotten except for the exposure they provide, then the math is fine—for a $4.99 book. If, for example, your book is priced at $2.99, it takes 133 new books before you’re in the plus column.

If they would guarantee brand new traffic for your book at least this large, it’s a clear winner. Of course they provide no guarantees. Even the testimonials on their website refer to the wonderful design and are silent about sales and profits.

They do have another selling point, however: they pay 100% royalties.

If you can sell someone your book through BWB instead of Amazon, B&N or wherever, you’ll make more money on that book because the royalty rate is higher. However, if you plan to pay for your start-up fee through this difference in royalties, you’ll need a lot more sales to break even. You were already going to earn something on those sales, so the net to you from joining BWB is the difference between the 100% royalty BWB pays and whatever royalty your current bookseller pays. E-book royalties keep changing, but let’s assume you can make 60% of list price on e-books you currently sell. Since 100% is better than 60%, you’d be interested in this deal if you sold enough books.

With your $4.99 e-book, you’ll need to sell 198 books before you break even. What happened to the 80-book target? That assumed joining BWB would bring new buyers who would never buy your book no matter where it was sold, because without BWB they’d never have made the purchase. We’re not talking about those people anymore. Now we’re talking about folks who would have bought your book somewhere, but because they prefer to pay money to authors rather than to Amazon and the like, these kind and generous souls now buy your book at BWB. The math works like this: For those 198 books at 60% royalty you would have earned $592.81. After paying BWB’s $395, when you sell 198 books through them, you’ll end up with $593.02, a gain of $0.21. After that, it’s all extra profit: you earn two bucks more a book.

Will your book sell 198+ books if you sign up with BWB? I have no clue. However, even if you tell people that’s the best place to buy your e-book, many potential readers will prefer to buy through Amazon or Barnes & Noble or their indie bookstore. I say this because I experienced a parallel situation. I suggested to someone who wanted to buy an e-book of Bad Policy that they could buy it through the publisher and save 35%. I figured that was a good deal for everyone except for Amazon, who would lose the sale since it was for a Kindle. That wasn’t how the reader saw it. The extra time it would take her to set up an account with the publisher, mess around with downloading the book to her computer and then transferring it to her Kindle was not worth the time and money. Despite the extra cost, she preferred to buy the book on Amazon with one-click, and have it automatically appear on her Kindle the next time she turned it on.

So, as a buyer of BWB’s services you also have to consider that even if people find your book because of BWB not all of them will actually buy the book there. If that assumption is correct, you’ll need even more sales to reach breakeven.

Of course, you may price your book at something other than $4.99. Using $2.99, the 198 threshold rises to 331. At a price of $1.99, you’ll need 497. With a more expensive book, the rewards come sooner.

If you are earning a royalty rate greater than 60%, you’ll need more books to break even; lower than 60% and you’ll need fewer books. As the saying goes, your mileage may vary.

In addition, there is an annual renewal fee – not a major cost ($29.95), but it will require another 15 books each year under the first scenario ($4.99/ book and standard 60% royalty) before you are ahead of the game.

BWB wins as soon as your payment clears. You only win if you can drive lots of sales through this particular bookstore.

Please note, I'm not saying or implying that this is a bad deal -- it's a different deal. For some authors it could be terrific; for others, it’s a waste of money. To fully understand how the proposition works for you, you’ll need to make these types of comparisons. I computed everything using a simple Excel spreadsheet. If you’d like a copy for yourself, send me an email and I’ll get it to you.

EDITOR FOR HIRE

All writers need editors of one sort or another. There are many varieties and it is important to make sure you know what you are getting before making a commitment. Most publishers provide editing as part of their services; others do not. If you are self-published, you need to make sure to get competent assistance.

Some editors specialize in storyline issues, what are frequently referred to as developmental edits; others are copyeditors looking for grammar and spelling errors. Some do it all as was the case for a new provider that I recently ran across. They offered to do a complete edit (developmental, line/copy edit and proofread) for a flat fee of $200 plus $5 per page over 300.

The pricing structure struck me as very odd. The first 300 pages cost $0.67 per page and any pages over that cost $5.00? How does that make sense? For line/copy edit and proofing a page is a page is a page. Reading extra pages in a developmental edit actually is less expensive on a per page basis because that type of edit considers overall story issues, which do not increase linearly. A charge of $0.50 an extra page doesn’t seem out-of-line with the first 300-page pricing. Is this a typo or math error or what? Maybe the editor doesn’t want to work on anything but shortish books and this is a way of discouraging authors of longer works from applying.

Something else bothered me. Unless the story is close to perfect, it does not make sense to do a developmental edit at the same time one proofs. If major sections of the novel must be rewritten or even pitched and replaced, why would one carefully ensure that the deleted material met the Chicago Manual of Style?

I am using this particular Editor website as an example of why thinking carefully about the numbers is necessary before you sign on the bottom line. If this math stuff is all Greek to you, get someone who likes this kind of analysis to help you out.

With any provider, it’s also important to check references. I don’t know much Latin, but caveat emptor never goes out of style.

~ Jim

Confessions of a Virgin Editor

I learned of Sarah E. Glenn and Gwen Mayo's story and invited them to guest blog on Writers Who Kill, the Salad Bowl Saturday version. As writers and now publishers, they have a different perspective than those who only do one thing or the other.

Without further ado, here is Sarah E. Glenn.

~ Jim
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In 2012, I lived out an author's version of a country song. My father's health condition went terminal, and my spouse and I relocated to help care for him. We gave up our house, our jobs, and our healthcare, but we also gave up our writing friends, Bouchercon, Magna cum Murder, and anything passing for quiet time.

In a country song, the dog dies. In the writer's version, your publisher folds. We loved the Pill Hill folks, but, like us, life circumstances dictated that they focus on something more important than the written word. I hope that in time Pill Hill will reopen.

So: 2013 begins, we've begun writing again, but we have no publisher to turn to. Gwen has a sequel suitable for a mainstream press, but I tend to write weird stuff. Sometimes it's just odd stuff, other times I combine it with non-mainstream heroes. We both like writing short stories, but openings for our special flavor of fiction are scarce. Pill Hill had all sorts of great anthology ideas: one of my favorites was “The ePocalypse - Emails at the End”. Teams of authors wrote stories that were purely interactions between people facing the end of the world. Gwen and I wrote a story about two detectives who have one final case they're trying to solve.

With a favorite venue closed, we decided to publish our own anthologies and invite others to contribute to them. We've had some good responses from our friends at Sisters in Crime - several members have submitted stories.

Our maiden effort is STRANGELY FUNNY: a collection of stories that combines the paranormal with the funny. We received several good stories built around the popular creatures of the night - vampires and zombies, but we also got a great story about a group of animated toys that pull a heist. We received one about a talking lizard-chicken in Native American myth. I also read so many stories about cannibalism that I'm considering doing an anthology of them. Who would have thought cannibalism could be funny, outside of "To Serve Man"?

What I've learned so far: why editors are such stick-in-the-muds about format guidelines. I can spot a typo or a homophone and fix it. If an author has given up on the Oxford comma, I can (and will) fix that. If someone goes old school and puts two spaces at the end of a sentence, I can do a global find and replace. Quotation marks are more problematic. Single or double varies according to the country one is from. A global find and replace is a bad idea when a story has a lot of conversations and contractions. What frustrates me the most, however, are those items invisible unless you use the magic setting on Word - hard returns and altered indents. I've definitely made some additions to the writers' guidelines on our site.

I've also learned that there are a lot of good writers out there. Choosing the stories for STRANGELY FUNNY became very difficult, especially when I had a dozen good stories left on my “short” list, but only enough space for four. I'm a writer. I know how rejection feels. I didn't want to say “no,” but I did. The ones that closed the deal: 'monsters' with all-too-human flaws, tales of otherworldly “misfits” dealing with real world situations, and paranormals with unusual handicaps, like a vampire with broken teeth. I like things a little “different,” even by the standards of fantasy and horror.

Right now, I'm hoping people will enjoy our first offering. Come back in a year, and I'll have more to share.

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Sarah E. Glenn is the editor for Mystery and Horror, LLC. She has a degree in journalism, but didn’t really learn grammar until she studied Greek and Latin. STRANGELY FUNNY, her maiden voyage as an anthology editor, is a collection of humorous paranormal tales. Contributors include Joette Rozanski, WWK’s Gloria Alden, and Catriona McPherson.

STRANGELY FUNNY is scheduled for August 1, 2013 release.

You can preorder at their website http://www.mysteryandhorrorllc.com/products.html

Catch Sarah at her blog http://saraheglenn.blogspot.com or

their website http://www.mysteryandhorrorllc.com

Three Thoughts from an Editor

Today on Salad Bowl Saturday we welcome Kendel Flaum (Kendel Lynn) who I had the pleasure of meeting at Malice Domestic this year. There she appeared in both her role as Managing Editor (and proud mother of the Hen House) of Henery Press (which published among other books Susan M. Boyer's Agatha Winning LOWCOUNTRY BOIL), and as the author of BOARD STIFF. 

Since we have more authors as guest bloggers than we do editors, I asked her if she would put on her editor hat today.

~ Jim

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I’m writing today from the editorial desk, offering three quick bits of advice. Whether in the early stages of your publishing career or submitting to agents or editors, these little gems will keep you on top of your game.

Keep Writing

Writers hear this one repeated so often, it almost becomes null. But don’t let it breeze past you. Even before you sell your manuscript, even before you get an agent. Even when your manuscript is polished and sparkly and on its way, start the next book, whether a new standalone or the next in the series. Not only does it keep you focused on your writerly job and not the email box checking for replies, but it’s completely practical.

Editors/Agents want more than one title, they want a career. At some point, you’re going to be asked what you’re working on now and when will it be done. If you sign a multiple-book deal, you’ll have solid deadlines built in, and you’ll no longer have the luxury of unlimited time to write, revise, rework, beta test, revise, polish, and perfect. You probably spent years getting your first ready for publication. Don’t expect a six month rush job will net the same results.

  

Maintain Your Circle

Continuing the thought, don’t skip the editorial steps. Just because you sold your book, doesn’t mean you can cut some of the valuable processes that got you that book deal. Ask the largest of the NYT bestsellers, and they’ll tell you they still use their best betas, trusted freelance editors, and closest author friends to read, advise, and critique.

If you want adoration, give it to your mom (she’ll love it!). If you want the truth, give it to a writer you trust. And tell them you want the whole truth, the you’ve-got-a-glob-of-spinach-in-your-teeth truth, the you-can’t-pull-off-that-dress truth. It stings, it’s embarrassing, it’s hard to hear. But hear it, use it, work it. Make that manuscript as strong as your last. Better yet, make it stronger. Nothing kills your career like having a sophomore slump followed by a third book bust. Writers who rush to meet deadlines, cut important steps, may quickly find their career lasted three books.

  

Social Media

Please start now. Right now. Website, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, LinkedIn, Blogging. Whichever two or three best social media outlets suit you, go for it. Now. Did I say that already? Because I’m serious. Build your website – a professional-looking online “resume” of your writer life. It needs personality, projects, and contact. It doesn’t have to be fancy (news flash: very few author websites are), a simple WordPress (free) site works fine. Get yourself out there.

Build your Twitter and Facebook base early, before you sell your book. Way before. By the time you’re racing toward your release date, you’ll be swamped with editorial and promotional duties, plus writing the next book (for those who did not follow my sage advice three paragraphs ago), and you simply won’t have the time to gain followers, much less engage with them.

It’s fabulous to be out there tweeting your release all day, but if you’ve only got 127 followers, you might as well plop yourself on the front porch and tell whoever walks by. Plus, you can’t just shout at strangers (online or in the street) to buy your book, you need to interact with them, talk, reply, like things, so when they do see your name pop up with a book release, they are excited for you and want to buy it.

Thanks for reading, and thanks to Writers Who Kill for having me. I hope you find these bits helpful, and timely, and I hope to see you around the Hen House some day!

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ABOUT KENDEL FLAUM

Kendel is a Southern California native who now parks her flip-flops in Dallas, Texas. She read her first Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators at the age of seven and has loved mysteries ever since. Writing as Kendel Lynn, her debut novel, BOARD STIFF, won several literary competitions, including the Zola Award for Mystery/Suspense. Along with writing and reading, she spends her time as the managing editor of Henery Press where she acquires, edits, and figures out ways to avoid the gym but still eat cupcakes for dinner.

Henery Web: www.henerypress.com

Personal Web: www.kendellynn.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/kendel_lynn

Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/kendellynn

Pitchapalooza or the Art of the Book Pitch

Monday night I served on the panel of judges for Pitchapalooza here in Kansas City. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it turned out to be great fun—and very useful to the people who attended from all the feedback I heard.

What is Pitchapalooza? It was billed as “American Idol for Books, only without the Simon Cowell.” Rainy Day Books, Kansas City’s top independent bookstore, brought in The Book Doctors, AKA Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry, a married couple who wrote the book, The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published: How to Write It, Sell It, and Market It...Successfully! (Workman Publishing). To promote their book, the Book Doctors have been traveling the country offering Pitchapalooza.

People attend and buy their book. From the total number of book buyers, twenty-five people are randomly selected. These twenty-five writers have one minute—and only one minute!—to pitch their book to a panel that consists of the Book Doctors and two local writers or editors or bookstore owners. At the end of the minute, two members of the panel give feedback to try to help make the pitch more effective. At the very end, we would select the top pitcher, and the Book Doctors would make a connection for that writer with the editor and agent that they thought right for her or him. Last year’s Kansas City winner received a three-book contract from a major publisher, so the stakes were high.

For all the comparisons to American Idol, there was little similarity. We were not only kinder than those judges, but we gave feedback that was genuinely designed to help the writer making the pitch with little thought to how cleverly it was phrased or how snarky we could get. I was there to deal with those pitching novels while the other local member of the panel was a nonfiction editor at a local nonfiction publishing house. I was warned that most pitches were nonfiction, so I anticipated only having to give feedback once or twice.

Wrong! All but two of the pitches were for novels. So I was up just about every time. What they don’t tell you is how challenging this format is for the judges, as well as the writers who only get one minute. That’s all the time the judges had also to listen and understand, and we couldn’t have them repeat it. We didn’t have much time to give feedback, either, so we had to zero in right away on the major strengths and weaknesses. It was dizzyingly fast!

Still, it was fun to hear the different ideas for novels and characters, as well as to try to help them improve. I was pleased at the overall high level of the pitches. There are a lot of good writers out there. One of our twenty-five passed on his chance to pitch because he said he was learning so much from listening to everyone else’s and the comments. I was also surprised at how entertaining it was. Some of these pitches were very original.

In the end, we chose a lucky winner, and the rest of the writers who pitched got valuable assistance with their pitches while those in the audience were entertained and educated in the art of the pitch themselves. I came away with my brain spinning and convinced that Pitchapalooza is a great opportunity for writers. If you’re in a city where the Book Doctors bring Pitchapalooza, I’d recommend attending, even if only for the entertainment.