The seemingly simple task of finding an editor to help put the finishing touches of my manuscript has been completed. My requirements were simple. I did not want to work with an editor that wanted to be involved in all assets of publication (book design and format, marketing, et cetera). S/he must be familiar with working on books for the general public, preferably the genre of travel adventure – basically not someone used to textbooks, professional and medical journals, or other such publications. This narrowed down somewhat the hundred and hundreds of listings in Writer’s Market, but still left me tons of options. The most crucial requirement would be that his/her responses to my inquiry be free from typographical errors. Surprisingly, this proved more difficult than anticipated, as editor after editor did not seem to be able to write a simple email free from mistakes. How could I trust him/her with my manuscript if s/he could not write an error-free paragraph. Finally, I found someone that appeared to be a match: he could type emails without making mistakes; he enjoyed working on travel adventure books; he responded timely to my emails; and I thought he did a great job on a sample edit of the first few pages of my manuscript. Now I can move on to other matters.

8 October 2015