Question about hiring an editor before query

[Ermo]

Is it recommended to hire a professional editor to look at your MS before send out queries to agents?

If yes, where would you find one? I do know about the website Preditors and Editors.

Finally, what's the cost and time commitment?

[Dankrubis]

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2009/10 ... -your.html

[shadow]

I would recommend a local person or a beta. Cost starts at around $600 - $1000 and up.

[Holly]

Is it recommended to hire a professional editor to look at your MS before send out queries to agents?

If yes, where would you find one? I do know about the website Preditors and Editors.

Finally, what's the cost and time commitment?

You can find local professional copyeditors at college literary magazines and regular newspapers. Sometimes they are interested in freelance work. Just send a simple email with your contact info. And you can negotiate the fee. Ask them what they charge per hour, or tell them what you can afford for the whole project. If you make an agreement, put it in writing: the fee, terms of payment (deposit up front, the rest due on receipt), the due date, and what you want them to do (check the grammar, etc.).

A big warning: if you go this route, give them a paper copy of your novel and tell them to make the edits by hand. That way you can read through the edits and ignore the changes you don't want to make. You can give them the novel on a CD or flash drive, and yes, you can probably see the changes on your computer (go to the review section on the toolbar), but the editor might not in sync with you, and their edits are easier to see on paper than on a computer screen. I would not let any copyeditor change my original manuscript.

Someone above gave a link to comments Nathan made about asking for credentials. That's essential. There are a lot of other outstanding comments in that discussion.

[Ryan]

I had a local editor do a "Book Review" and it really helped. It's like an in-depth book report where she highlighted weak points, strong points, things that were unclear, etc. So I got an overall review plus a chapter by chapter analysis. Either way it's good to have someone who knows books and who doesn't know you to give it a once through for content and clarity. The woman who helped me is Ali with indigoediting.com.

Good luck

Ryan