While it’s true that any author will tell you to hire an editor, there are ways to lower how much you’ll pay for the said editor. What you don’t want to do is hire someone just because they are cheap because you’ll likely end up getting what you pay for. Instead, you may want to consider using an editing tool to lower the amount of work your paid editor will need to do.
Most manuscript editors charge by the hour or project. There are different types of editing they can do—the more in-depth editing they need to do, the costlier it will be for you. There’s going to be a big difference in how you pay for line editing, for example, over simple proofreading. You can expect to pay several hundred dollars to get your manuscript edited so anything you can do to lower the amount of time they will need to spend on your manuscript will save you in the long run.
Recommended: Top Free Tools for Writing your Book
There are many editing programs available. They each have a different focus, depending on what you need most.
ProWriting Aid
This tool analyzes all of your content for writing style, synonyms, usage, word repetition, sentence length variety and more. It focuses on making your book easier to read and to clean up any grammar issues it locates. It scans your work for overused words and recommends ones you could use instead, for example, making your writing more enjoyable to read. You can analyze a 3,000-word section of your text for free to see how you like it. There is a premium service of course, but it is extremely affordable for any budget.
AutoCrit
This editing tool is specifically for fiction writers. Along with scanning for grammar and readability issues, it also analyzes pacing, dialogue, word choice and writing style. But it goes beyond that by comparing your manuscript to current best-selling fictions within your genre.
Grammarly
This program is primarily for proofreading your work. It’s way more effective than MS Word at catching all types of grammar and usage issues in your writing. One way it’s much better is that it catches contextual spelling errors, like mistakes between peek, peak and pique. It also can be used to scan for possible plagiarism, so if you do research for your book, you can verify that you aren’t using phrases that are too close to another person’s work. Grammarly offers free and premium services and a variety of apps.