Working With Thomas Hill of Launch Pad Press

Back in August I wrote a post about the editor I hired, Thomas Hill of Launchpad Press.

Here is the follow up.  Now, some of you may notice this post is rather... dry.  There's a reason for that.  While it is always acceptable to write the truth and facts, it is not always acceptable to write opinions or draw conclusions.  So, since I have no interest in a business libel case heading my direction, I will stick with the facts.

As Joe Friday would say, "Just the facts, Ma'am."

On July 25th I returned the contract to him.  It stated Thomas Hill of Launchpad Press would be "Copyediting for grammar, punctuation, word usage, style; adjustment and manipulation of text for clarity; conform manuscript to Chicago Manual of Style; style sheet for commonly used terms."  This would be finished by August 24th.

On October 4th, 41 days late, the second half of my manuscript was returned to me.  As Thomas Hill said, the manuscript still wasn't finished, he needed to work more, especially on bits from the beginning, to fix mistakes he had made earlier.

By October 14th, I had finished reading through and working with all of his edits.  I did not think the quality was high enough and had lost confidence in his ability to fix the problems in the earlier sections.  I sent him an email severing our business relationship. I was rash in that email, asking for most of my money back or saying I would blog about this.  I realized that was a mistake and sent him another email on October 16, rescinding my request for my money back.  Thomas did not respond to either of those two emails, or the one that proceeded them, asking about a collection of sentences I thought were grammatically incorrect.

If you click here, you will be taken to twenty pages of bits and pieces of my manuscript.  They are verbatim copies of the Word final version he sent me.  Some of the mistakes are ones he made.  Some are ones I made that he didn't catch.  I don't think it much matters which is which.  And, while I did pick areas with the most mistakes in the smallest spaces, there is not a single three page long span of the entire story without an error in it.

The documents he sent me did allow for change tracking.  Word date and time stamps every change in the document.  There is not a single date or time stamp between August 20th and September 17th in any of the  three documents he sent me.  If he worked on the project between those two dates, he never sent me that work. 

Thomas knows that I am a blogger.  He knows that I am writing about writing and publishing.  He knows it was my intent to write about him.  He's a follower on this blog.  When our business relationship was just beginning I asked if he might want to write a guest post for me.

I will leave my comments field open.  If he so desires, he can respond.  

Say Hello to Mr. Hill

Now, I know traditional publisher/writer types will tell you to never, ever hire your own editor. The publishing company will have it done for you if they like the book. As we've proven in the last column, editing is expensive.

I understand why this advice is given. There are lots of editing scams out there, and even for people who aren't scammers, they might just not know what the book world really wants. (Quick example: Does this editor usually work with technical manuals? He might not really know what to do with a novel in that case.) If you wait for the publisher to provide the editor, then the publisher knows the output will be the sort of thing they can sell.

At the same time, every third person and his mom are now writing books. Which means you've got a whole lot of competition to see who is going to get an Agent, and then the Agent competes against all the books other Agents are shopping around.

I saw the statistic that the average Agent would get close to 10,000 queries a year, and the average Agent would pick up four or five new clients. I don't know if that number is true or not, but I do know that if I've got to deal with that sort of competition, I will make sure my book is as good as it can possibly be, so I'll be hiring an editor.

The other reason for getting professionally edited is this: I'm still not sure if I'll go the agent/traditional publisher route. If I go the self publish route I have to hire someone to edit this thing because I do not want to be another of the self published authors out there who produces a work that doesn't look like it was spell checked, let alone ever had another set of eyes go over it.

So, the lovely Thomas Hill of Launchpad Press will be retained for the job.

Here's how the deal works: I had him edit a sample of my work and send me a price quote. That quote came in at .01 cent a word, and he'd be done in a month. The sample he sent back to me looked good. The turn around time was faster than anyone else who bid. We corresponded by email, and he seems very pleasant and professional. I Googled him and didn't find any complaints or scam reports on him. The terms are professional as well, half at the beginning of the project, half at the half way point. The contract he sent is simple to read but covers everything. No wading through pages of dense legaleese and wondering after you signed if you just gave away the rights to the family farm. Finally the invoice is through Paypal, which is nice because both Paypal and the credit card I'm using to pay for this have buyer protection on them.

So, by Monday Mr. Hill will have Sylvianna in hand, and the editing will begin. I'll continue to post how the editing experience goes.