Editing for Self Publishers with Tammy Salyer
Tonight, we talked all about editing. We had author and editor Tammy Salyer on, and she answered our dozen-odd questions about copy-editing, proofreading, and substantive editing (the latter being something that proved difficult for some of us to pronounce… not saying any names here!). Since Tammy writes military science fiction and is working on an epic fantasy trilogy, she was a great person to have on our particular show, to give us information about genre stuff as well as regular editing issues. Here’s a taste of what we covered:
- What are the differences between proofreading, copy-editing, and substantive editing, and how does an author know what he or she needs?
- How can good editing make the marketing side of things easier?
- Are there any common mistakes that new authors (or old ones!) make?
- What should you do if you can’t afford to hire an editor? Are there are any tips or is there editing software that can help?
- What are red flags that you should look for when hiring an editor?
- What are samples pages and how can they help you find a good editor?
- How slavishly should authors cling to grammatical rules?
For more information or to check out Tammy’s editing services, visit her at Inspired Ink Editing.
If you’re interested in Tammy’s books, you can check them out on Amazon or visit her author page for more details.
“Forte” is pronounced “forté” because it’s actually supposed to be written “forté” but we often drop other languages’ accents when we write things in English. Like fiancé/fiancée, à la carte, etc. 🙂
I wouldn’t drop those fancy doohickeys if I knew how to make them on my laptop keyboard… 😛 My poor editor often has to fix fiancé/fiancée and a few others (see, I got that right, but only by copying and pasting from your comment).
You have a Mac, right? Yeah, I have no idea how to make the accents on a Mac.
Otherwise, you access them through the ALT key and your keypad. Holding down ALT and pressing 130 creates é, and so on. 🙂
Hah, I’m sure it’s something easy. I’ve just been too lazy to look it up. I always have to look up the copyright symbol when I’m doing the title page for an ebook. 😛
I’ve been thinking about editing a lot recently, so it was really helpful to hear from Tammy.
Thanks for having her on. After listening, I’d definitely consider approaching her to edit my first novel.
It’d be interesting to hear what her rules of writing sci-fi were.