There are two main expenses for self-publishing—covers (about which, more later) and editing. Of the two, beginning writers are more likely to spend on the former than the latter. They’re making a big mistake.

I come to this conclusion from a somewhat unique perspective—I was a freelance copy editor myself for several years. At one time I had large chunks of the Chicago Manual of Style memorized (note to fellow copy editors—it goes away with time). I even taught courses in copy editing.

And there’s no way I would edit my own stuff.

On the simplest mechanical level, you tend to read through your own errors, even your own typos. You know what’s supposed to be there, and your brain will supply it even when it’s missing. But a good editor will do a lot more than just catch your mistakes. A good editor will tell you where you’re going wrong in your story and your characters. Editors come to the book cold, without any information about your struggles to get it finished (unlike, say, critique partners). Also, they’re not being paid to be your friend. The editor is there to provide you with a flat assessment of the weak spots in your work, along with some hints about how to fix them.

And that’s what you want.

My editor was brutally frank about the highs and lows of Running On Empty. I won’t kid you—some of it hurt. But all of it was necessary, and I was able to produce a much better work thanks to her appraisal.

I remember years ago being part of a critique group that was led by a well-known author. The members of the group ranged from rank beginners to seasoned, multi-published writers. A couple of the rank beginners had never been critiqued before and they both had very public meltdowns in response to criticism. Eventually they both withdrew from the group after a loud denunciation of all of us for our lack of sympathy and understanding regarding the two wonderful works of fiction we’d been tasked with reading. Do I have to tell you that neither of those writers ever made it into print (at least so far as I know)?

Criticism hurts. And criticism is necessary because it hurts, since the pain is frequently based on your realization that your work wasn’t as perfect as you thought it was.

Editing does cost a lot. Many editors charge by the word, and most of us write books in the fifty-thousand to ninety-thousand-word range. But the investment pays off. When readers complain about indie books as “unreadable”, my guess is they’re referring to works that weren’t edited. There may be unlikeable things about an edited book, but they’ll usually be things the author knowingly chose to do.

For better or worse.