I've virtually finished my first ruff draft of a sci-fi Novel. How can I trust an editor with it? Do I have my novel copy written first before passing it to an editor?? Someone has advised me I should copy write it after so I'm a bit confused as to my next step...
I would add theft of an ms by a professional is rare. There are some unscrupulous characters taking free content offered by authors and selling it for a price on Amazon. Because they aren't damaging any sales you are making it's hard to stop them.
It's really important you get over this suspicion, though. A good professional editor is worth his/her weight in gold and if you find one, putting a copyright c on everything and generally acting as if you are about to get ripped off probably isn't the way to start a good working relationship.
OK this is the most awesome way you can possibly do this...
Put your MS in a package and send it to yourself recorded delivery. DONT open it when you receive it back. you then have proof that you have the original, dated, time stamped and with your name on it. If anybody challenges that you have it. If you dont want a paper copy, pop it on a disk or other and you have a watertight copyrighted manuscript. they do it in the music industry all the time and its the cheapest way to do it.
I heard that after writing a song John Lennon would post himself a copy like Andrew and David say. I tend to do that except via email to cut out the cost. Most word processing software also keeps a log of when the document was first created and when it was saved, so again if you set up a folder on something like Dropbox (in case your computer has an unplanned meeting with the contents of your favourtie mug) and have a folder for saving copies of all your work you will have further proof of when it was created.
But I would say that it is very unlikely a professional editor would steal someone's work. Now another writer... well let's not go there.