There& #39;s no such thing as a perfect manuscript.
(sorry, long-winded editing talk that& #39;s only interesting to me, feel free to ignore me! https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😅" title="Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß" aria-label="Emoji: Lächelndes Gesicht mit offenem Mund und Angstschweiß">)

But really, there isn& #39;t. I see a lot of "I hired an editor and still found errors" or "they should have hired an editor" comments; (cont)

But good, reliable editors never guarantee a perfect manuscript. That& #39;d be a blatant lie and career-icidal.

With a big publisher, you& #39;d have four, five, sometimes more editors and proofreaders running through your work, and still there& #39;s a small expected rate of errors.

Editing is expensive.
So if you& #39;re an indie and hire just one person to do developmental editing, line editing, and proofreading on your four hundred page manuscript all by themselves, it& #39;s totally understandable!
...but definitely not gonna be perfect!
...and that& #39;s okay!

With a good editorial relationship, what it will be is SIGNIFICANTLY AND VISIBLY better than it was. That& #39;s it, that& #39;s the goal.

Ideal result, you go "Whoa. That& #39;s SO much better! I sound great! And learned so much! Oof, what a weight off my shoulders."

As for "they should have hired an editor" comments, (note, I am NOT talking about reviewers saying they were tripped up, I am referring *exclusively* to us writers snarking about each other), when I see someone make those, I immediately open up their sample.

... nuff said.