One misconception that I've come across lately is the belief that one can hire an inexperienced ghostwriter who charges small fees (or is a moonlighter) with the belief that editing will make up for the poorly-written manuscript at a later date. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If a manuscript is badly written and organized, the chances of attaining a literary agent are nil. In turn, a badly-written book will never find a home with a major publisher without an agent since major publishers stopped accepting unsolicited manuscripts eighteen years ago. In other words, a poorly-written book will never have the opportunity to find the editing that was envisioned at the beginning.
Getting published is tough. There's no shortcut, and settling for a manuscript filled with errors betrays a fundamental ignorance of the publishing industry. There are a lot of protocols that need to be observed in trying to get your manuscript recognized at any level of publishing, and that includes small and independent presses as well. The first step in trying to get your book into print is simple: make sure it's a good one, one that is well-written and stands out from the others.
It's true that developmental editing or ghostwriting can help get a book into shape, but that has to be one of the initial steps in the process. But expecting a major league editor at a large New York City publishing house to clean up a bad book? It's not going to happen.
~William Hammett
Contact: wmhammett@aol.com
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