By MELISSA PITTMAN, AP Editorial WriterNew York, NY—When it comes to editing and publishing a book, the editor has a huge amount to worry about.
“The challenge is that the publisher’s goal is to get your book in front of the market as fast as possible, and then to sell your book to people who want to buy it,” says Andrew H. Kline, the director of the Center for Advanced Book Editing at Rutgers University.
“I’ve got a lot of clients who want me to publish their work and then the publisher can make money off of that.”
The editor, of course, has to get the book published, and with the advent of e-book publishing, that is much easier said than done.
While many publishers make money on the first printing, they lose money on sales once the books reach readers.
The average book sold in the United States last year was $10.98, according to Nielsen BookScan.
That is about $11,000 a copy.
But that figure doesn’t include digital sales.
A digital-only book is almost certainly a success.
“You’ve got to make sure your book is well-written and it’s interesting and engaging,” says Karen F. Hines, a book editor and author of “The Best Way to Write Your First Book: 5 Steps to Getting Published and Selling Your Book Online.”
The biggest challenges facing a book’s editor include: 1.
Managing expectations.
“When you’re an editor, it’s hard to know how much your book will sell,” says Hines.
“How many people will read it?
How many will buy it?
What kind of people will buy books?”
In order to figure out how many people are buying books, Hines uses the Kindle Unlimited data and her own research.
She then breaks down her book into categories, such as genres, themes, and genres in the first chapter.
The goal is for readers to read that chapter, which Hines calls “the beginning of the book.”
“I try to get a very broad view of what readers are interested in and what they are not,” Hines says.
For instance, a woman in the middle of a romance novel might want to read about a woman who wants to marry her fiancé.
“In the romance novel, I want to make her aware of the importance of her future husband.
If she doesn’t know who her husband is, then she might want the story to take a turn for the worse.”
She also has to keep in mind that there are some readers who will read a book because it has “good writing and good plot,” Hains says.
The same goes for a young adult author who is writing a love story, or a young female writer who wants a young woman to be the main character.
Hine has to be willing to make compromises for her clients, including cutting a section that would otherwise be an extra chapter or removing a chapter that is too heavy on plot or plot twists.
“If you’re not a big book-editor, you have to be really careful about what you put in front and behind the scenes,” says David A. P. Jones, author of the popular “Movies, Books, and Writing.”
If a book doesn’t have a strong plot, “the best thing you can do is leave out those elements and hope that readers find the other stuff,” he says.
Jones says the biggest challenge of editing and producing a book is managing expectations.
The more people you work with, the more you have a responsibility to ensure that they understand that there’s a big payoff in their purchase.
“All of a sudden, all of the pressure is on you to sell that book and get them as much money as possible,” Jones says.
“That pressure is intense, and the more people that you work through, the better off you are.”
2.
Creating a brand.
Hains has his work cut out for him because many of the people who read a new book want to hear about it.
“They want to know what you did,” Hins says.
“[I want] them to know that I’m a really good editor and a really skilled writer.”
The key to finding success is to establish a brand, says Kline.
“There are certain books that are really good,” he said.
“But you can’t be great at every book.
You have to really know what is working and what isn’t.
So, when I’m interviewing a book author, I always ask them about their past book.
They have to tell me about the writing process, and what was the first book that they had read and what their expectations were.”
When a book sells, it is usually because the publisher is satisfied with the book, Kline says.
But when a book gets published, the publisher has a big incentive to see the book’s success.
If they don’t see that, then
