Why I don't use an editor. Or 'How to make a LOT of money?'

Lots of people get after ebook writers for not hiring an editor to edit their stories, but few people understand why. The reason? Because freelance editors charge a lot of money. For example, I just saw an editor today who was advertising their services. The were only charging $0.009 per word.

0.009 per word sure sounds cheap, doesn't it?

Well let's see, the current project is probably going to come in at about 120,000 words. 120,000 times 0.009 and we get $1080.00! That's right! A thousand dollars for a book that at most I can sell for $4.99 if I'm lucky. Well let's say I am lucky and it sells just fine at $4.99. Out of that 4.99 I get to keep about $3.50. So all I have to do is sell three hundred and eight copies and after that everything is profit!!!!

Now if you're a big seller and you sell over 1000 copies a week of each title you write, well then that might be money well spent. Except for the fact that if you are halfway decent at grammar, why bother? NO ONE CARES ABOUT THE GRAMMAR IN BOOKS ANYMORE!

I have read stories with Grammar on a 5th grade level and typo's everywhere, that were selling hundreds of copies a day and people were raving about them. Some of those books even came from major publishers. And let's be honest here, you want someone to pay you a thousand dollars to read their book and make editing markups on it? Editing, if you know how to do it is pretty damn easy. I really don't think it's a hundred dollar an hour job, (and that's assuming it takes you ten hours to read 120K words). Somehow I sort of doubt the editors at the major publishing houses get that kind of a rate. Then again they can probably suck down a 120K word book in half a day.

Now covers, yes I can see spending a lot of money on a cover, and I'm going to start getting a few covers redone and spend some cash on doing them. Because covers help sell your book, grammar these days however does not, as long as it's reasonably decent, no one cares. And if the story is really good? People will buy it no matter how bad the grammar.

So if you want to make good money? Become an editor and offer to edit books at a dollar a page, or even 50 cents a page. You will have authors beating a path to your door.