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Doing a sample edit for a prospective client is fundamentally a high-wire act.
You don’t want to squash their talent by over correcting. I mean you absolutely want to correct, and show them how good it can be, without treading on sensitive toes, and making them doubt themselves.
And no matter how you wibble and wobble on the wire, somebody’s not going to be happy. Normally, it’s the editor. I’ve had it all, from the author who told me that” all the secretaries in my mother’s business said it was wonderful and you found too many mistakes”, to “how about I just tell you my premise and the names of the characters, and you write it?” No, no and no. And, oh, by the way, an editor and a ghostwriter are NOT the same.
Don’t get me wrong, I love being an editor, words are my business. I am a one-trick pony. I like words. I read, on average-just for me 20 + books a week, my trusty Kindle gets quite a workout. Since last Friday, I’ve read 7. I also write, horror, and have had a novella and 10 short stories published in an online ezine.
And I edit. It hurts me to see books go to the publisher without an edit. It hurts me to see would be ‘editors’ take unsuspecting authors for a ride. It hurts to hear people slaughter English, but apparently, that’s just me. That’s my nutshell.
Check out my Facebook page at Editing by Carol Tietsworth.

Carol wrote: "Doing a sample edit for a prospective client is fundamentally a high-wire act.
You don’t want to squash their talent by over correcting. I mean you absolutely want to correct, and show them how goo..."

I hear you, Carol. The teenage daughter of a good friend, who was entering a competition, asked me to look over her essay. I did, pointing out obvious grammatical errors (and they were numerous). She never wrote or spoke to me again. Nor did she win the competition.

I guess editors take their lives in their hands when they "attack" someone's baby. People reject what you do for a variety of reasons . . . they don't understand what type of "editor" you are (e.g., grammar editor, content editor, and so forth) or are so tangled up in their knickers that pride won't let them see the flaws in their work. For whatever reason, their rejection of your help not only hurts them but anyone who pays money for their work (much less spends time reading it).

That said (hahaha) . . . there have been times when I've threatened to shoot my editor when he got down to the point of changing "happies" to "glads." After several such go-arounds on one manuscript, I changed the sentence thanking him in the Acknowledgements to read: "To my erstwhile editor . . . . " He got the picture. He still does all my work. (The sentence ultimately was changed to read: "To my ever-suffering, earnest editor . . . .")

Thanks for your comments. I did a sample for an aspiring author a couple of weeks ago, she sent me the sample, and truthfully, it wasn't too bad, but it was a total set up. When I got the manuscript, a nice way to say what it was, I freaked, but I'm not a quitter, and I edited it for the negotiated price. She didn't use much punctuation, what she used was wrong, she didn't cap proper names, she used minuet instead of minute, but the biggest problem was that her premise was impossible. I told her that things like that didn't work. She told me then that she had had the sample edited before she sent it to me, and that I was wrong, hearts were just like flashlight batteries, they were interchangeable.

Carol wrote: "Thanks for your comments. I did a sample for an aspiring author a couple of weeks ago, she sent me the sample, and truthfully, it wasn't too bad, but it was a total set up. When I got the manuscrip..."

Not much you can do in those cases. Sooner or later, however, reality will inject itself into her life. It has a way of doing that.

Her story makes no sense, she's of the opinion that readers don't notice if a story don't make sense.

Carol wrote: "Her story makes no sense, she's of the opinion that readers don't notice if a story don't make sense."

I'm tempted to make a comment about today's politics, but...(;>)

I think that may be why a lot of people don't send their books to be edited. ( that and the cost). I know every time we've had things edited, all of the trouble areas were the first things pointed out by readers. ( when we went with our gut and didn't change.)

That sounds a bit grim, Carol.

Fear and cost are the main two reasons why I haven't paid an editor. I'm pretty much just left with cost as an issue now. I have more self-belief. I am not alone with cost being an issue. Editing though: I've always typed Amy and not amy. I'm not grammatically horrendous when I write, yes, there's always room for improvement. Can't comment on "minuet" and "minute". I got "bazaar" and "bizarre" wrong the other day and despite knowing it was wrong, couldn't figure out why until I was told. Must have been the one that slipped my "that can't be right" Google process.

I have no problem with bazaar and minuet, especially if they are consistent, that just means you really don't know how they are spelled, and there's no problem, but part of my job as an editor is to point out potholes, places where something could be fleshed out a bit, or places where a bit doesn't track, then it's up to the author to take care of. That's all I did, I made sure her manuscript was correct, in all the ways that I could, and in the email that accompanied it, I explained why I corrected some of the words, rearranged a few of the sentences, and also that the premise needed shoring up, and why. She was livid. How dare I question her premise? So I explained again, and told her a way, and where to tweak it, to make it more believable. She came back questioning my motives and something about how my parents were related before they were married, in cruder terms of course, and then told me that readers didn't care if the book made sens. To my everlasting chagrin, I told her that in my experience, readers did care.
For the rest, I am also a published author, so I have some inkling how hard it is to send your baby out to have someone else look at it, and besides the anguish involved, there is the cost. That's why my fees are so low. I have an affinity with the written word, I charge barely enough to get by, but I do this for a living.

Oh wow. Sounds like a handful! I was immensely grateful to have things pointed out before I published. It would have been so much worse to publish and then find out I'd included glaring errors. Especially things that I'd written and are perfectly clear in my head, but didn't come across well to someone other than me reading it. Surely having feedback on things like that is invaluable?

I can't imagine how hard it is to be an editor. I write simple children's picture books, and I wouldn't even publish those without running them by my editor first. I agree with Amy, having feedback on things like that is invaluable and helps ensure that you are providing quality work. I would much rather hear feedback from an editor first before hearing it from reviewers.

Apparently, she went to a family picnic and told them all what a terrible b***h I was, and they having read her stuff out of familiar duty, told her she should be kissing my feet. That's the only reason she paid the end payment. Then she said she wouldn't be using me again. Thank goodness.

But, I love editing, so I'm already a nut.

To be honest, that would be a relief for me. I wouldn't want to go through something else with someone like that. And although none of my family have expressed an interest in anything I've written, I imagine family members are more likely to do the whole pat on the back, yes it's really good thing rather than tell any truths.

If you ever want to try an editor, try me. My Facebook page is Editing by Carol Tietsworth, and my fees are more than reasonable.
The problem I had with her premise was one of her characters needed a heart transplant, and they were going to kill the heroine's ex and take his, even though there was no relationship in common and they hadn't tested for compatibility. She told me hearts were always a match and interchangeable.

I beg your pardon? No. No, hearts are most definitely not interchangeable. That's more out there than one of my story lines. And I write weird!

I've bookmarked your post re costs. I'm a way off needing editing at the moment. Just published another on Friday. (And committed to a short story for something for October. Better get writing.)

I explained that to her, not as eloquently as you just did, but she wasn't having any.

Alex wrote: "I guess she doesn't understand medicine or human physiology. The only time it worked like that is in James Cameron's Dark Angel TV series and that involved genetically engineered super-soldiers who..."

Ooooooh loved that show. Forgot they were compatible with each other. That's going back a bit!

So she would have needed to be in Sci-Fi land having everyone genetically modified before she could run with that idea. It doesn't fly in the real world. (Probably why I write Sci Fi.)

I watched it for Michael Weatherly! Actually, I just liked the show.

I googled EMPs for Modified, although I'm not sure I needed the information. At least I bothered.

Carol wrote: "She told me hearts were always a match and interchangeable."

I'm guessing she's not a doctor :)

No, but she's a dentist. Scary stuff, couldn't make this up.

Carol wrote: "No, but she's a dentist. Scary stuff, couldn't make this up."

Yikes!!