This is the fourth post in the “How To Break Into Publishing” Series. If you’re coming in late, Part One: What Even is Publishing? (Different types of publishing) is available here!
How thick is your skin? Armor plated? Kevlar? Even if you were made of solid steel, you’re not ready for this next post, so buckle in.
There is at least one person on this planet right now who thinks that your book sucks. They think your title is wrong. They think your characters are unlikable. They hate your cover. They don’t even like your own actual (or pen) name.
And no matter what, you can’t please them.
Bad news is they will do everything in their power to let you know that they hate your book, from leaving nasty reviews (sometimes before the book is even written), to composing long Tweet storms at their army of followers, to tagging you in vicious Instagram posts. Good news is, they aren’t your audience. Nothing they do or say is going to have a single ounce of effect on you or your writing, but haters gonna hate. Brace yourself, because you will get a one-star review on Amazon because the back cover was dog-eared in the warehouse. It happens. All. The. Frigging. Time.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, you can breathe a big sigh of relief because every other person in the world is going to love every single word you write.
Psych!
(Does anyone say that anymore? What about the pineapple? Have you found the pineapple yet?)
There is, in general, two kinds of feedback. The kind that matters and the kind that doesn’t. The hard part is trying to figure out where feedback falls on that spectrum.
And no matter what, leave your ego at the door. Your publisher’s editor is going to be 100x more critical of your book than your worst CP, and they will be 1,000x nicer than any reviewer on Goodreads. Cross my heart.
Caveat: My goal for this blog series is to educate, not discourage. Getting a book published seems so very simple at first glance. It’s really, really not! But when you (like me) would rather be writing than pretty much doing any other thing, it’s worth it. As always, this is based on my limited experience and limited understanding. Your mileage may vary!
Critique Partners (CPs)
Your critique partners are your trusted inner circle of writer friends. If your bestie who is a wizard in maths and can’t read the title of a book without falling asleep wants to help – GREAT! Ask them to be a Beta Reader (more on that later) – not a critique partner.
In a perfect world, critique partners are a give and take that at least start out on equal footing. I give you a story for honest feedback and you give me a story for honest feedback. We agree on a set of rules – Do you want me to suggest alternatives or just highlight when something doesn’t work for me? Would you die if I left your MS (Manuscript) around for my grandma to accidentally pick up and read? When is this due back to you?
Everyone loves positive feedback but it doesn’t help you fix what’s wrong with your MS. And there is something wrong with it. Trust me on this. No one is perfect. I bet you can find a dozen things wrong with this blog post alone. CPs aren’t (in theory at least – there are bad actors everywhere) there to tear you down. They *are* there to help you tear out the bad parts of your story and make it stronger. That’s where the thick skin comes in. You have to be able to objectively judge – Does this help? Is this advice worth taking?
Let’s share some examples.
I read a book on writing from one of the Greats that advised taking every single adverb out of my story. I know now that it’s bad advice – adverbs used sparingly (see what I did there?) can greatly (again) improve a story. Anyway, I went through and painstakingly (goramit I, I really love my adverbs, don’t I?) took out every adverb in a 100,000+ word MS. (Confused about wordcounts in writing? Check out this article! Words Count) I gave it to a CP who painstakingly added over a thousand adverbs. Was I upset because I’d spent so much time and energy removing adverbs just to see them pop back up again? YES! Were they right in saying that my prose was about as tasty as cardboard without them? ALSO YES.
Ideally, you have several CPs, but when that happens, inevitably, there is going to be conflicting advice. Person A will tell you that this scene is their favorite while CP B tells you it doesn’t advance the plot, and you should strike it. CP A says there are too many dogs in your novel. CP B says there aren’t enough dogs in your novel. When you find a clear cut case like this, use your own judgement, but I usually leave the original as-is, seeing as I’ve apparently found a balance. Now comes the case where you LOVE a particular sentence. CP A tells you the sentence makes no sense. CP B tells you the sentence makes them queasy. They’re both wrong, obviously. You’re a genius. They just don’t get your vision. Wait a second. Take a step back. Two people that can’t agree on anything just both gave you the same advice. Maybe they’re onto something. That sentence needs to go.
Sharing with a CP can be scary. The point of having CPs is to improve your book, but there are more benefits, too. You get used to receiving criticism that you have to consider, which prepares you for working with an editor later. This criticism can also give you a teeny tiny taste of what you can eventually see in reviews. Believe me – if you can’t handle a trusted writing partner commenting on your story, you aren’t nearly ready for the dumpster fire that is Goodreads.
Beta Readers
Beta readers are anyone who reads your middle drafts. You’ve drafted a story. You’ve gone over it a few times. Maybe you’ve workshopped it with your CPs. Now it’s time to engage your Betas. These aren’t people that are looking for typos, they’re more like early reviewers.
These can be friends, family members, or really anyone (usually non-technical) you can trust to give you honest feedback. It’s awful nice of your great aunt Gert to tell you that your story is perfect and ignore the glaring plot hole in Chapter Nine that never gets resolved, but that doesn’t help you!
Your beta readers can be your CPs, and most of my advice for CPs also applies here. Listen to their feedback. Don’t take it personally. If they say that something confuses them, the answer isn’t “THEN YOU WERE NOT READING CLOSE ENOUGH!” The answer is to figure out why they were confused and try to find a solution. It’s your job to write clearly, not to read over everyone’s shoulder and explain what they just read. You don’t have to incorporate all their suggestions but you should consider where they are coming from and weigh each suggestion carefully.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of getting annoyed by a suggestion and then dismissing every other comment they make. For example, you write: “Let’s go grab a bite,” he suggested. They suggest you change that to: “I am feeling peckish. Would you like to join me for a meal?” Seriously? Yeah, no. My character doesn’t talk like that! I’ve got my hackles up a bit. On the next line, they comment “Did you mean effect instead of affect?” Gah! What a jerk! They don’t know anything! Except, you really did mean effect there. Good catch – and you might have missed it if you were still hung up on their last suggestion.
Related: This will come in handy your entire career – Learn how to stet. “Stet” in publishing means “I said what I mean, and I mean what I said. Leave it alone.” Get in the habit of reviewing every single comment on its own merits. Sometimes it’s valuable and you’ll want to incorporate it. Other times it is not, and you’ll want to stet it. You can’t ignore all the advice – I swear your writing is never perfect! – but also, you can’t take all the advice. Especially when one person wants you to add more explosions and another person wants you to remove all the explosions in the entire MS.
A lot of what CPs and Betas do overlaps. They can even be the same group. But beyond all of the helping you tighten your prose and learn how to take criticism, they serve another important function. You have to hand your book to a stranger and let them read it. For some people, that’s easy but many (dare I say most?) writers are introverts. On one hand, we want our books on every shelf in every house in the world. On the other hand, we would shrivel up and die if anyone actually read it. You’re going to have to get over that, and beta readers are a good place to start.
When I first started writing, I wouldn’t even tell anyone I was a writer. I slowly learned to let people read my stuff. Honestly, it was crap and I am eternally grateful to my original CP/betas Dare, La, Ris, and Liz for putting up with me. At first, I was so paranoid that if I was writing in public, I would hide my notepad if someone walked too close. I knew I was ready for the next step when I could walk up to a stranger, thrust a stapled stack of paper at them and ask their opinion.
Ghost Readers
And before we move on, let’s mention a very sensitive subject. Ghost readers. We all have that one friend that begs to read what we’re writing, and then never says another word about it after we give them a copy. They promise feedback that never comes. Did they hate it so much that they could never face us again? Did they lose their eyeballs in a horrific accident and are too embarrassed to tell us? Maybe. But more likely, they got busy with life and forgot to read it. Or they read it and enjoyed it but forgot to follow up. Or it just wasn’t their cup of tea and they don’t know how to say that without sounding like a jerk. If someone offers to read for you and then ghosts you, wait a few weeks and follow up once. If they still don’t reply, move on.
Editors
Here’s a chance to clear up another misconception. People not in the book business (and I repeat, publishing *IS* a business) see the word editor and they think “person who checks for spelling and grammar.”
An editor is so much more than this.
First off, there are many types of editors. If you are self-publishing, you can (should) hire an independent editor. You can choose a developmental editor, a copy editor, or a proof reader. In traditional publishing, your editor is the person who bought the book. This is your new partner. Your book baby’s co-parent.
Sidenote: There is a power disparity in all things and publishing is no exception. Often there is an imbalance between the writer being the “talent” and the editor being the “boss.” A good editor-author relationship should be about collaboration. The author shouldn’t be afraid of the editor. The editor shouldn’t be afraid of the author. Again – and I can not stress this often enough – this is a business relationship. You and your editor may never sit down for drinks at a swanky NYC restaurant like we see in the movies. You might become fast friends, or you might stay purely professional. Either way, at the end of the day, you are business partners.
Where were we? Oh yes. Editors. In a traditional pub situation, when you are talking about an editor, you are talking about your Developmental Editor. They are concerned with plot structure and future book arcs. They delve into character motivation and consistency. Would your Main Character (MC) really say something that harsh? That line could be offensive. This pace is off in this section. Wait, why is John in the room in Chapter Three if he was killed off in Chapter One? A developmental editor might change a word or tell you to re-write the entire thing.
Copy editors (CEs) are the ones that are supposed to catch things like day of the week consistency and correct regional spelling. These people are straight-up super heroes. I’ve had copy editors catch glaring errors that everyone – after multiple passes by myself, CPs, beta readers, and my dev editor – all missed. And I’m happy to share with you my two most favorite (and most embarrassing!) mistakes caught by a CE.
Mistake One: I’m going to blame this one on multiple revisions, but I ended up with the line “faster than a 1965 ½ Mustang.” My eagle-eyed CE made a note that Mustang made a 1964 ½ and a 1965, but there was never a 1965 ½. Which is correct. And also embarrassing, as I drive a 1965 Mustang. That’s my actual car. I know better. I don’t know if my CE was a gear-head or a fastidious researcher, but they were 100% right.
Mistake Two: I described a character as being “dressed like a pirate, right down to the pirate perched on his shoulder.” I don’t know how many times I’d read that line. Dozens. Dozens of dozens more like it. I knew what I meant and it made perfect sense to me. None of my CPs or even my dev edit thought there was anything wrong with that sentence. But my CE calmly commented, “do you perhaps mean there is a PARROT perched on their shoulder?” (If you missed it the first time, go back and read the original sentence. I’ll wait right here until you stop cracking up.)
CEs are supposed to catch spelling, grammar, typos, and factual errors, but they aren’t supposed to re-write your book, or even entire sentences. Much of the time, you can accept their suggestions because really they are the professional technical expert here. But, if they change something you don’t agree with, you can STET the change (when you comment “Stet” you are keeping the original). Just make sure that you’re correct and not just “but that way feels right to me.” My best example is that as a recovering ex-Texan, my accent sometimes bleeds into my writing, as is the case with forwards, backwards, and towards. A character walks TOWARD something. Not TOWARDS. “Towards” feels right to me, but it’s not. Other times, a CE might suggest that you use the word “Soda” when you meant “Pop,” and you can stet that.
Hint: I find it helpful to leave comments in my MS when I turn in my dev edits that flags a phrase as intentionally wrong. I’ve made such comments as: “Yes, eleventy thousand isn’t technically a ‘word’ but it’s what I want to use here” and “I know that ‘I ain’t got none’ is poor grammar but that is how this character speaks.”
Finally, we come to Proofreaders. When you think your book is complete, fully edited, and error free, along comes the proofreader that points out that your MC’s name was Betty in the first twenty chapters and Beatrice in the last twenty chapters.
Friggin’ heroes, I tell you.
The good news is that you’ve written a good book. Your CEs helped make it better. Your beta readers pointed out some flaws and you fixed them. Your dev editor improved it immensely and made it shine. Your CE fixed some truly embarrassing errors. Your proofreader polished it to perfection Your book isn’t just good anymore. It’s perfect. Absolute perfection.
Seriously, you fell for that?
Your book isn’t perfect. I GUARANTEE that you can pick up any book on any bookshelf in the world and find at least one grammatical, spelling, or logic error in the first chapter, if not on the first page or even in the back cover copy. Typos exist. Most readers don’t even notice them, but that troll on Goodreads will.
The sooner you accept that you WILL MAKE MISTAKES the better off you will be when you find them. Because they are there. And they are obvious. And they are embarrassing. Such is publishing.
Thank you for continuing to read this series! The next blog, Part Five: Misery Loves Company (So find yourself some!) will be released next week.
How To Break Into Publishing:
- Part One: What Even is Publishing? (Different types of publishing)
- Part Two: You Are What You Read (Catching up with genre trends)
- Part Three: Wait, I Have to Actually Write This? (Spoiler: You do)
- Part Four: Let’s Get Critical (Critique Partners, Beta Readers, Ghost Readers, and Editors)
- Part Five: Misery Loves Company (So find yourself some!)
- Part Six: Get Down To Business (Getting an agent and a publishing contract)
- Part Seven: Party Hard, You’ve Made It! (The cold hard checkbook)
