Once in a while, I get hired to edit the second or third book in a series that I’m not familiar with. This happens for lots of reasons. Sometimes the author doesn’t get the first book in the series edited at all and then discovers, post-publication, that they should have, and so they decide to make the investment with subsequent books.
Sometimes an author does hire an editor for the first book in a series, but that relationship doesn’t last. Maybe the editor and the author weren’t a good match for each other (because there is a bit of chemistry involved—you want your editor to “get” you), and the author has decided to go a different way. Or maybe the editor the author hired for the first book was great but is no longer in the business, and so the author has to find someone new.
Whatever the reason, it happens once in a while that I get hired to edit a subsequent book in a series without having read the first installment(s). Is that a problem? Yes and no. Here’s what I mean.
