Choosing an editor

How do I tell a good editor from a bad one?

Existence is easier to check than quality, and it comes first. SFWA's Writer Beware says an editor should have at least some web presence, whether a website, a bio on the staff page of an editing service, or a page on a professional marketplace.¹ It advises confirming that the editor has credentials and verifying prior editing experience with a reputable publisher.¹ Those checks eliminate the obvious problems and tell an author nothing about fit.

Fit is a separate question and it cannot be settled by reading a website. Two editors with identical qualifications will intervene at different depths in the same paragraph, and an author who wants light intervention and receives heavy intervention has not been badly edited. That author has been mismatched. A sample of the editor's marks on the author's own pages is the check that addresses this, and it is the reason samples come up in so many inquiries.

Do credentials mean anything?

Two North American schemes exist, and they work differently. Editors Canada certifies by examination, with separate credentials for proofreading, copy editing, stylistic editing, and structural editing, plus a Certified Professional Editor credential for anyone who passes all four exams. The exams rotate on a two-year cycle, with stylistic editing and copy editing set for November 21, 2026, and proofreading and structural editing in 2027.²

ACES and the Poynter Institute run three certificates instead: an introductory certificate revised in 2026, an intermediate certificate updated in 2023, and an advanced certificate launched in January 2025. Each is a short series of courses with a timed final assessment that requires 80 percent to pass.³

Neither scheme is a license, and neither is required in order to take paid work. A credential records that a person passed a defined test on a defined date, which is a narrower claim than most authors read into it.

Should the editor have worked in my genre?

Genre knowledge matters unevenly across the levels of editing. Where the judgment concerns shape, pacing, and what readers of a category expect, an editor who has not read widely in that category is working without the comparison. Where the work is consistency, spelling, and correctness, the subject matters less than the discipline. The EFA's guide for new authors suggests asking what other work an editor has done on similar books or projects, and asking for references from previous clients.⁴

Subject matter is a different thing from genre and is sometimes the harder requirement. A novel with a working surgeon in it may need an editor who queries an unfamiliar term instead of correcting it, and that is a habit and not a qualification. We flag terms we cannot verify, and the author decides what to do with them.

Should I ask for a sample edit, and should I pay for it?

A sample answers the fit question that a website cannot. The EFA's guide notes that a brief sample edit or editing test can help in evaluating a service such as copyediting or line editing. It also notes the limit: developmental editing is too large in scope to be captured by a short sample edit.⁴ Writer Beware suggests asking to see a sample critique or assessment, while observing that not all editors will provide one.¹

On payment there is no published standard, and practice differs from one editor to the next. A short sample is a small job, and an editor who declines to do one for nothing is not thereby suspect. The more useful signal is whether the editor will say in advance how long the sample will be and what level it demonstrates.

What do their previous clients say, and can I contact one?

References are worth asking for, and worth reading with an understanding of how they were selected. Every reference an editor supplies is one the editor chose. That does not make the references false, and it does make one general question, whether the editor was good, close to useless.

Specific questions get better answers than general ones. Three are worth putting to a previous client. The first is how a disagreement over a change was settled. The second is whether the delivery date held. The third is what the editor did on finding that the manuscript needed something other than what was ordered.

Answers to those three describe conduct, which is what an author is trying to find out. A client list and a reference answer different questions, and an editor who offers one and refuses the other has said something worth noticing.

The EFA guide places references alongside evidence of comparable work and not in place of it.⁴ Neither on its own settles the question, and an author who has both is choosing on evidence instead of on tone of voice.

Is the editor an editor, or a company subcontracting to someone I will never meet?

This is a fair question and Writer Beware treats it as one. The page warns against services that do not disclose the names of their staff, and against services that will not identify the editor assigned to a manuscript before the author commits.¹ Neither warning is aimed at companies as such. Both are aimed at companies that will not say who is doing the work.

EditFast is a company rather than one person's practice, and the arrangement here is worth stating exactly. Clients do not choose their editor. EditFast makes the assignment, matching the genre and subject of the manuscript to an editor's experience, and one person makes that decision on every job rather than an automatic queue. An author who would prefer to pick an editor from a roster is describing a different arrangement, and services organized that way exist. Every document a client sends us is treated in confidence.

Does it matter where in the world the editor is?

We found no published evidence that location predicts the quality of an edit. What location affects is practical. A large time difference lengthens the round trip on a query, and an author who expects same-day answers during a revision will notice it. Queries left in the file itself are unaffected, because they wait for the author either way.

Payment method and currency are the other real difference, and both belong in the quote and not in a conversation afterward. EditFast is based in Toronto, prices in US dollars, and has been editing for clients worldwide since 1998. Underneath the question about location there is usually a different question, about which spelling and punctuation conventions the book will end up following.

Will an editor in one country impose the spelling of that country on my book?

Not where the convention has been settled at the start, which is where it belongs. Editors Canada includes localizing content and converting measurements within copy editing, and includes the development of style sheets in the same definition.⁵ A style sheet is a written record of the decisions a book has made, and the spelling convention is normally the first decision recorded on it.

The question an editor asks before starting is which convention the book follows, and the answer usually comes from the market rather than from the author's passport. A novel published for American readers normally follows American spelling, whoever edits it. Where an author has not decided, an editor can set out what each choice commits the book to, and the choice stays with the author.

Can any editor promise the book will be published?

No editor can promise that, and Writer Beware is unambiguous about the promises that signal trouble. It states that no reputable editor will tell an author that a book has huge commercial potential or that it is likely to become a best seller.¹ On the promise to turn a good book into a best seller, the same page observes that there are no formulas for doing it.¹ The page also names a specific conflict of interest: a recommendation from a publisher or agent of their own paid editing services.¹

An edit changes a manuscript. What an acquiring editor or an agent does next depends on the market, the list they are building, and their own reading. EditFast makes no claim about what happens to a book after it leaves us, because no editor is in a position to make one.

What happens if the editor disappears?

The remedy is contractual, and most of the protection is in how the payments are arranged. Writer Beware warns that paying the full fee upfront leaves an author with nothing still to withhold if the work is unsatisfactory or the editor fails to complete it as agreed.¹ Payments tied to delivered stages leave part of the fee unpaid until there is something to look at.

The other protection is a written scope that names the person doing the work, the level of edit, the schedule, and what happens if the schedule slips. An author whose agreement is an email saying yes has very little to point at later. We are editors and not attorneys, and an author committing a substantial sum should have the terms read by someone qualified to read them.