I’ve seen a fair amount of gatekeeping and author shaming going on around the writing community lately and it’s made me a bit angry. Much of it has come from editors and has been directed at self-published authors.

 Now I fully understand the value of a good editor. Editors work hard and deserve to get paid just like anyone else who does a job. They provide a valuable service and can make a book shine in ways we never imagined.

 I’m not going to lie, many of them are also really expensive. What they do is time-consuming and takes knowledge and skill so, yeah, they should absolutely charge what they’re worth. But what if you can’t afford an editor? Should you not be allowed to self-publish your book?

 Well, the obvious answer to that is “you should always be allowed to self-publish your book.” Don’t ever let anyone tell you differently. The gatekeeping and author-shaming floating around out there needs to be addressed, because it’s sending out a pretty terrible, elitist message.

 Sadly, much of it comes from the very editors who want you to hire them and this seems like the absolute worst sales pitch imaginable. I’ve seen at least one say a writer should expect to go into debt to hire their services and that it’s 100% worth it. I’ve seen other tell authors not to bother publishing if they don’t hire an editor, and that their work will be “garbage.”

 This is all false. The only worth to take away from these people is now you know to avoid them. They’re gatekeeping solely to sell their services to you. Telling you your hard work is garbage unless you hire them is essentially being a bully.

 And, yes, you totally can and should self-publish even if you haven’t hired an editor. For one, beta readers can sometimes help you with editing in simple ways if you find the right betas. You can also hire a proofreader for a whole lot less than a full-blown editor. Proofreaders will look for grammar and spelling mistakes but usually won’t go in depth into the story and point out inconsistencies or things that didn’t work. But betas will often do this for you.

 Tools like Grammarly or even just a word processor’s spell/grammar check functions help a whole lot. They may not be a replacement for an editor but they are accessible to everyone and work well.

 Some authors are excellent self-editors and can do all the heavy-lifting themselves. I find this to be the rarest of circumstances but these authors do exist.

I, in fact, published my first book—The Call of Chaos—without having hired an editor. My betas were thorough and I combed through it many times. It did still have some typos and errors that a couple of readers noticed, so I made the decision to pull it and find the money for a proofreader before I re-published it.

But only two readers apparently even noticed the problems, let alone cared about them. And, for the record, I’ve seen errors in just about every traditionally published book I’ve read.

 No matter your skill level, it always helps to have a few other sets of eyes on your manuscript, helping you polish it up—betas, friends, an editor, whatever. But you should never take the advice of someone who tells you to go into debt just to hire them. It’s ridiculous. Even the best-edited book has very little chance of making several thousand dollars in profits.

 In the end, your book is YOUR book. If you want to publish it, you should never be prohibited from doing so based on a lack of an editor. In the end, the readers can decide the quality of the book, edited or no.

If you enjoyed this piece, please follow Sean R. Frazier on Twitter @TheCleftonTwain.