Reading, you might do very well as a book editor. A book editor’s job is to check a book for grammatical, punctuation, spelling and structural errors. Authors are artists and often just don’t have the eye necessary to make sure their work has the right grammatical foundations.
You’ll also be checking for actual factual continuity in the story. For example, if the author states that a character has long hair in the beginning of the book, that character should still have long hair by the end of the book. You’ll also need to check for timeline consistency, meaning everything makes sense if you put it on a chronological timeline.
Manuscript Editors and Acquisition Editors
There are two main types of book editors: Manuscript editors and acquisition editors.
A manuscript editor is contracted by the author. You’ll be paid primarily for your work, though a percentage of your pay might be based on the author actually getting the publishing contract. Your job is to look over their manuscript before it’s sent to potential publishing houses, or to look over their manuscript after it’s been approved by editors but before it goes to print.
On the other hand, you have acquisition editors. Acquisition editors work with publishing houses to find manuscripts that have potential. You’ll have manuscripts passed to you that you need to read through and then give your opinion to the publishing house. You may also be contracted to edit the book again before it goes to print.
Getting Started as a Book Editor
Start your search for clients by joining as many writing groups and organizations as you can find. Go to seminars and conferences where writers are likely to meet. Join local writing meetups, as well as attend national events. Use websites like Craigslist or Meetup to find local groups.
Network, network, network. Follow up wither everyone you meet and establish a reputation for yourself in the writing industry.
It’ll be much easier in the beginning to land contracts with writers directly than to try to work withpublishing houses. As you build more of a reputation and more manuscripts under your belt, your career will build to the point where you’ll start to get job offers from publishing houses as well.
In the beginning of your career, you may also want to think about taking on a few freelance editing gigs outside of book writing. Using freelancer websites like oDesk or eLance, find people who want to hire editors for any number of things and bid on those jobs.
Doing other copy editing work might not be as fun in the beginning, but it’s a great way to start bringing in cashflow while getting valuable work experience.
