Hello everyone!
Today on the GFJ I am going to be talking briefly about some steps you may need to take when working remotely with an editor on your novel. In truth, editing a novel is one of the most important parts of the process but it is not always easy to do or CHEAP (yikes)! Part of the issue is the following...your editor may have a different word processing software than you! I have described below some simple fixes for editing across different word programs to help YOU to avoid some issues I had. Hope it helps!!!
TIPS TO MAKE THE EDITING ON YOUR NOVEL EASIER/Cheaper:
-Finding an editor is HARD and EXPENSIVE - look for people who run book tours online who may offer these services to new authors. I personally like the team who run the GODDESS FISH BOOK PROMOTIONS site and believe they do excellent editing and are easy to deal with.
-Once the edit is done...moment of truth. You are very lucky is you can just download their editing DOC and continue the work from there. More than likely you will need to adjust for some other word version and here is where some (small) issues can become annoying. Compatibility mode in word is a headache and it is not going to work to continue to edit in compatibility mode once you get that doc back. Compatability mode is a word doc that is using (essentially) less of the feature than yours because it was edited in a newer or older WORD program.
-I think a simple fix for this is to simple EDIT > SELECT ALL > COPY > PASTE the entire novel into YOUR version of word. This will A) keep the margin editor notes (hopefully) and B) get that thing the hell out of compatibility mode. Now, not out of the woods yet.
-You may still see large GAPS on pages of your novel, these are impossible to delete and cannot be dealt with in any feasable way. My fix for this is to copy and paste the entire section (or entire chapter) that remains in issue and past it into Apple's TEXT EDIT program. A simpler word processor/basic program like text edit may help to REDUCE/ELIMINATE/DESTROY! that stupid compatibility mode issue you have.
-This should now leave you with a freshly edited novel that is not having that pesky compatibility mode issue! Goodluck adventurers!