Professional Editing Prior to Submission? Well, Maybe…

Recently on social media, a literary agent posted a note for prospective authors that boiled down to “Always have your manuscript professionally edited before submitting to agents or publishers.” Coincidentally, a couple of days later I was reading an independent publisher’s submissions guidelines, which stated in part that the house will simply not consider a submission that has not been professionally edited.

On the surface, I understand. The world is full of would-be novelists who, unfortunately, never apprentice themselves to the craft. When they read, they do so passively, rather than paying careful attention to technique. They often skip the possibility of traditional publishing in favor of the immediate gratification of self-publishing, and they often do so without having put their manuscripts through the paces of a rigorous writing process.

Hence why it’s so difficult to dig the self-published gems out of the manure pile of unrevised, unedited, never-proofread first drafts disguised as a finished novel.

I have long argued that self-publishing is fine as long as a) you have in fact taken your work through a process as thorough as that of traditional publishing and b) you are willing to do all the pre- and post-publication work a traditional publisher does for you: marketing, publicity, and so forth.

In terms of today’s subject, intense revision and clear-eyed editing become part of the self-published writer’s responsibility, whereas traditional publishers usually pay an editor, in-house or freelance, to work with the writer. No matter how much work you’ve put into your manuscript, a traditionally published author should expect to toil through several more drafts in order to make the book its best self.

Writ smaller, the same is true of short-form work like essays and short stories. Part of the writer’s task is to make their submission draft as good as it can possibly be, but an equally important part is realizing that the submission draft isn’t final. You might sometimes place a short-form work as is or with only minor editing and proofreading, but you should never assume anyone will take your work without further revisions.

With book-length work, I suppose it’s possible that someone in the long history of literature may have published a manuscript with a traditional house sans additional work, but if so, I haven’t heard of it.

The general point here is that, yes, any manuscript in the publishing pipeline should be honed carefully by both the writer and the assigned editor. The writer’s editing work contributes to the manuscript’s acceptance. The post-acceptance work helps make sure the book you see on shelves and websites is as good as possible.

A self-published writer should either prevail on someone they personally know in the editing business or save their money to pay a pro. This crucial step helps a manuscript stand out from the deluge of first-draft-only work. I have never yet self-published but might well do so in the future, in which case I will take my own advice and work with a freelance pro. I will do it even if it means a delay in the final book’s availability.

But what about this business of having a submission draft professionally edited before sending it to an agent or an independent publisher?

I disagree, at least on principle.

Look, if you can afford to pay a freelancer (or can ask a favor of a personal friend or acquaintance who works in that part of publishing), go for it. The agent was correct in saying that it should help you place your manuscript, as you will have taken a step most people haven’t.

To make it a requirement, though?

It often seems like both agents and publishers are moving toward submission guidelines that will make themselves obsolete. These days, agents and editors tend to demand a prospective author come to the table with a platform and a marketing plan. Now some are arguing that the writer should have paid for professional editing on their own. Many writers may hear all that and wonder, “If I have the time and resources to build a sufficient platform, and know how to market my work without help, and can afford a professional editor, why on earth do I need an agent or a publisher in the first place?”

Moreover, such a demand privileges the economically advantaged. Many prospective authors will simply never be able to afford professional aid. If agents and publishers refuse to read anything that has not already been professionally prepared, then they are, whether on purpose or not, reducing publication to an economic privilege. Do we really want to chance denying the world the next great artist simply because that person’s monetary situation disallowed pre-submission professional editing?

Too often in our society, art is left at the mercy of commerce. Publishing, like Hollywood filmmaking, is notoriously anti-innovation. “Be original,” the industry says, “but not too original.” Write the same kind of books that are currently selling, but make yours different enough that no one will accuse us of assembly-line art.

Many of my own struggles with publishing have originated in this contradictory attitude. I don’t do this on purpose or for some pretentious reason, but the fact is that I tend to write works that don’t neatly fit into one of the preconceived boxes you see in bookstores, which means that a lot of agents and publishers might love my writing but simply don’t know how to sell it. My choice often comes down to either shoehorning my work into one clear genre—crime, horror, etc.—or praying someone on the other end of my submission will commit to the additional work of championing a less traditional, less categorical kind of art.

Now, on top of fitting in with marketing trends while also somehow being original, some entities want writers to engage a fully professional writing process before even approaching agents or publishers. They do so knowing that kind of work not only requires time and contacts but also money the writer might not have.

This is, in my opinion, no way to run a railroad.

All agents and publishers need to acknowledge the realities of writers’ lives in a capitalist, top-down society. Demanding that writers take the entire writing process seriously is fine. Advising those who can afford it to seek professional editing before submission make sense. But you, the agent or publisher, still need the vision to see past a submission draft’s imperfections and a willingness to perform the tasks writers need you to perform.

To do anything else is unrealistic, and it all but guarantees that many of the works the world most needs will never see the light of day. At best, those works will appear as part of the published-first-draft mountain of texts that never sell a copy.

Writers, and art, deserve better.

Got questions? Email me.