I was naïve enough (arrogant enough? ignorant enough?) to think I'd be fine self-editing - after all, I've been writing on-and-off for magazines for decades and already had a few books out, plus I'm an English teacher with a Master's in Education - if anyone should be able to self-edit, it should be me. Ouch. A year ago, when my new editor sent my polished manuscript back that I smugly knew contained no errors, I was very humbled. She's a retired accountant who spent decades poring through accounting documents looking for tiny errors, and her eye for detail made me look a goose - I completely missed repeated words, missing words, some sentences that seemed to lack an ending. It seems I read what I knew should be there, not what was there, and missed well over 100 errors in the 180k words (the book 'Muted') plus she suggested removal of some irrelevant passages that added nothing to the story. Her suggestions hurt my ego. She was right.
I followed all the self-editing tricks, and I was confident that I was an excellent self-editor. I won't publish anything without her going through it, now, though I am improving. The last book (Horses of the Rain - 80k words) was much cleaner, but she still picked up things I'd missed, including something introduced early that was left hanging because I forgot to bring it back in near the end to tie it off.
So, if anyone is reading this who thinks they don't need an editor - I used to be with you. I was a wordsmith. I was a genius with words. I taught grammar. I knew how to edit. I didn't need an editor. Nup - the old rule of 'the more you learn, the more you realise you have yet to learn' definitely applies. I'd like to think I've risen up the author food chain from the krill end to perhaps sardine and I'm only using one editor who does everything, not a range of editors. Maybe if I was more successful, I'd use a variety of editors. Or maybe not. And I just checked Author Central - make that a small sardine - only two books under 100k today, though Muted does have 83 reviews and 76 of them are five star, so it might not be a financial success, but readers like it, and no one has found errors - so I'll stick with my one retired-accountant starting-out editor, who also acts as a developmental editor since I run stories past her before I start writing and she often suggests an addition or twist that adds to the story.