Now...We Shall Edit!Welcome to Authors Unite Book 3: Editing Tips For Writers! I've got some good news for you. The good news is that if you've been following along with all the Enjoyable Tasks in books 1 and 2, you've already done the hardest part of writing your book. You've actually written it. At this point, you should be holding the brand new first draft of your very own book. That's a huge accomplishment. Take a second and give yourself a big pat on the back. Great job.Now, what's next?Everything coming up is going to center around two areas: making your book even more amazing (editing and design), and getting it in front of lots of people (publishing, marketing, and sales strategy). Fair warning: as with the lessons of books 1 and 2, none of these things are difficult, but some of them will be new. Especially since the next steps involve *gasp* other people. Remember that everything here is part of the process. Take a few deep breaths and trust the process. Hopefully that's getting a little easier by now--after all, it's gotten you a great book draft so far. Trust me, even if it feels scary to send your book to someone else, you will benefit so much from doing it. See, this is one of the most important parts of writing a book. If you want the book to do really well, you have to create a good piece of work. Amazon is full of books that had great launches but fell off the charts after their authors stopped promoting them because they just weren't that good. I'm not saying your first draft isn't good. If you followed all the Enjoyable Tasks so far, it's probably pretty solid. What I'm saying is that no matter how good it is, in order to make it really great you need to get another pair of eyes on it. You need to get help from someone who really knows good writing--a professional editor. I was the worst writer ever when I wrote Conference Crushing. I was still pretty rough when I wrote Giving is Receiving. I'm a pretty good writer now, but I'm still not awesome at it. The difference is that I have great editors who help me make my writing great. So in this book we're going to talk about editing. We'll cover how to do some of the editing yourself to save time and money. We'll talk about finding a fantastic editor who "gets" you and will do an awesome job on your book. We'll dig into the different kinds of editing you might need, and how much they might cost.And as a special bonus, we'll also hear from a real editor: my editor for this book series, James Ranson. James is the founder and director of a book creation company called The Master Wordsmith, and my #1 recommended editor for Authors Unite clients and members. James will give us perspective on the whole editing process, share some super valuable self-editing tips, and answer some frequently asked questions about editors and editing. James's insights will be in italics for easy reference.A lot of what James is going to talk about he usually only shares with one-on-one paying clients, so this is a huge opportunity to learn from a master at no extra cost to you. I'm really excited he agreed to join me for this book!To sum up: amazing editing makes your work amazing. Ready to get started? Let's get to it.