Usually the biggest amount of money I shell out for a book is to get it edited.  This is kind of the one area where you cannot skimp on.  If you go live with your book, and it has poor grammar, haphazard punctuation, and fifth grade spelling, then it doesn't matter how gripping the plot is or how rich the characters are; your reader will be turned off.  You cannot edit your own work.  I know some people swear they can.  They spend long hours poring over their work, checking every sentence and stand vigilant against split infinitives.  I'm sure with enough elbow grease this works.  For many of us, though, we're too engrossed in our own work.  When I read what I wrote, I don't see the works and sentences as they are, I see them as I want them.  For me, my book is a mental movie that plays out before me.  I am simply transcribing the events as they happened in my fantasy world.  The words are representative of those images, so it's easy not to see easy spelling mistakes or grammar.  Usually the word processor will smooth things over, and a quick scan will remove all of the "there/their/they're" mistakes that one can make when typing fast.  However, even with all of that editing, you still can miss a whole lot.

When I first came out with "So You Want to Play Go? Level 1" I was really proud of myself.  I did the cover myself, and spent some hours putting in the word to edit my work.  I started getting good reviews, but I got some bad reviews from other readers who were not used to my conversational style and felt slighted as readers for all of my capitalization/punctuation mistakes.  I thought I had the kinks worked out.  Then I got a slap in the face.  My readers loved the content of the book, but they felt I hadn't edited the work and that it was sub par.  I felt this had affected my sales, and having a review like that was like the mark of Cain.  I began fretting over all of the sales I had possibly lost at appearing amateurish.  Sure, I didn't get my book edited, but having it professionally done was out of my price range. I was a student with a part time job and paying my own rent.  There was no way I could sink that much money into editing. 

I dusted myself off, and eventually found a way out.  I had to relearn punctuation and grammar.  I learned in grammar school like everyone else, but the age of email, texting, and an overall de-emphasis on quality writing can leave one with a lack of good punctuation and grammar.  I had to relearn the rules for commas, for capitalization, and some other rules I didn't know existed.  Since I could not go to a professional service that would charge anywhere from $30-50 easily, I relied on friends.  One of my friends is an English major and she was kind enough to charge me way below the market rate to edit my books.  She did a bang up job.  Through the editing process, I learned a lot about proper format and punctuation.  What this did for me was to prevent these mistakes in the future.  Future manuscripts came out much better. 

If you are having problems getting an editor, or if the price is restrictive, then having a friend edit your work is a great idea.  If that is not an option, you can go to your local library or university.  There are plenty of students willing to do the work for far less than the professional rate and are every bit as capable.  Sure, a lot of editors advertise that they know what publishers want.  They know the ins and outs of what that editor looking at your manuscript with their dark black, thick framed glasses wants.  To be honest, if you read with any frequency, which I assume most writers have, then you already have a sense of what's out there.  If you need to keep up with what's hot in contemporary publishing, then look no further than the internet.  A lot of what editors claim they can, besides be glorified spell/grammar checkers, is something that you can replicate, or even better, go your own way.  There are free online grammar and style checkers as well, that can do a lot of the heavy lifting.

As far as style...well, we can save that for another post.  It would go well into the night regardless!