Amazon's Kindle Scout - editing with Amazon's Kindle Scout editors

It took about three weeks to get back my edits from the Kindle Scout team. Admittedly, I was a little nervous opening up the editorial letter, fearing that I would have to make major edits to the structure of the plot. Luckily, that wasn't the case. 

The editorial letter was very thorough. It both complemented the novel and gave thoughtful suggestions about clarifying motivations and story points. I was a little lucky as this is a series and much of what the editors wanted addressed does get solved in the second book. The letter was broken down into sections:

1. Overview - overwhelmingly positive comments.
2. Structure/Plot Flow - no changes here, the novel is a fairly straight ahead linear story.
3. Characterization - great compliments on character evolution and realism .
4. Tone and Style - no changes. 
5. Dialogue - editor said this was one of the strongest elements of the novel.
6. Grammar - typical consistency edits with m dashes v.s ellipses and such.
7. Formatting - no edits there.
8. Character List - editor made a detailed list of every character.

Overall, the track changes in the Word doc that I got back were easily accepted. The editor used the Chicago Style manual and paid close attention to consistency throughout. I basically accepted 99.9% of the edits and kept just a few that I felt were stylistically native to the series. The editor even commented positively in a few places which made me feel great.

I made a few edits of my own to clarify what the editor thought was foggy and submitted the novel yesterday. 

Amazon already updated Goodreads with Two Girls and the publishing date says March:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33792520-two-girls

That seems right. 

IF you asked me what I thought of the whole editorial process with Kindle Scout, I'd say I was absolutely pleased by their level of attention. It makes sense. Amazon paid a $1,500 advance to me as well as paying an editor to go through a 300+ page novel. They don't just want to make their money back, they want to turn a profit. Editing Kindle Press books as well as they can only makes their investments more valuable. It's a win/win for me and Amazon.

The current plan is to see how Two Girls book 1 does and then hopefully submit book 2 to Kindle Scout this summer. Fingers crossed.