Everything you need to know about comic editors

What they do, why they're important and how to find one...

Okay, real talk; It doesn’t matter if you’re creating a self-published indie comic book or putting something out through a publisher, you absolutely need someone to review your work before it hits the public eye.

I’m talking of course about hiring a comic editor.

In this guide I’ll explain:

• What a comic editor actually is

• How to find a comic editor

• What comic editors typically do

• How comic editors can elevate the quality of your comic

• When to start working with an editor

But first, I need to address a common elephant in the room. If you’re an indie creator, your first thought may be, ‘but I don’t have the budget to hire an editor’ - which is completely valid and understandable.

The good news is that there are free alternatives out there, and I’ll get into those in this guide. However, I will always advise other creators that hiring an editor is the best route. In fact, you should consider editor reviews to be a mandatory, immovable part of your creation process - but we’ll get into all of this in a moment.

Here’s the one big truth you need to understand:

For real, I’ve worked as a professional writer across many industries for over 15 years, crafting my own creative projects, creating digital content for some of the world’s biggest brands and working with government departments.

The biggest truth about editing is this; you could read your own writing a thousand times over for mistakes, inconsistencies or whatever. But I guarantee you will have missed a typo or grammar issue somewhere.

Why? Because you’ve simply become too close to your own work. You may spend months on a comic script, and by that time you’ve become so familiar with it that your eyes inevitably glaze over a little, to the point you become blinded to your own mistakes.

I’ve seen this happen in my own work often over those past 15 years, and I’ve also seen it when peer-reviewing and editing my colleagues’ writing too. Time and time again I’ve seen fellow writers act surprised when I (politely and constructively) review their work and send them a version back with marked-up errors.

They could have sworn they’d caught everything, and that is why having someone else check your work is so important. The same absolutely applies to your comic project.

Before we get started:

Just a little reminder that this is one of my weekly premium comic guides - and you’re about to hit a paywall (sorry!)

But the good news is, you can get these guides sent to your inbox each week by becoming a premium subscriber for just £3.50 a month (or £20 for the year if you prefer). You can unsubscribe at any time, and your support helps me keep making new comics and books.

If that’s not of any interest, you can get my free monthly newsletter to keep up to date with all my writing projects, free guides and more fun stuff.

Okay, let’s dive in by first examining who comic editors are, and how they can help you…