• How long is my manuscript? ​Calculate your total word count (in MS Word, choose Select All under the Edit menu and then select Word Count under the Tools menu). That's the number most editors use. Page count is a nebulous quantity unless the industry standard of 250 words/page is used. And no, squeezing all your words into half as many pages using single-line spacing, a small font size, and narrow margins, or using an arbitrary number like 350 words/page to calculate the number of pages, will not actually change the length of your text (i.e., the word count is unchanged regardless of how many formatting tricks are incorporated). That's one reason why literary agents are so specific about how manuscript queries are submitted to them—they don't have the time to calculate word counts for every single submission.  

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• I found someone on [insert name of random online sweatshop here—Fiverr is a good example here, partly because they spelled "Fiver" wrong and partly because their rates are atrociously low] who will edit my manuscript for about 1/10 what you charge. Will you adjust your rate to match theirs? No. And along those same lines, quote amounts and quality are often positively correlated. 

 

• I know my book needs editing, and I don't know the first thing about laying out a book. But I really want to get my work out there so that the world will see it. Why are you writing (it should be because you have something to communicate, NOT simply so that you can say you published a book)? And what are you hoping to achieve by subjecting readers to your unfinished and unorganized ideas?