Your friend is a writer. You love your friend and you want to support their interests, but you don’t know what their specific plans are. After all, a gift subscription to Writer’s Market only works if they are planning to look for an agent and maybe your friend wants to self-publish. In the same vein, just about any self-publishing service you get them isn’t going to be a big hit if they are going the query letter route.

But what’s something every writer needs regardless of their future publishing plans?

They need editing.

Maybe your friend just needs an eye other than her mother to go over her latest draft before she sends it to her agent. Maybe your other friend just finished his NaNoWriMo novel and wants to clean it up a bit before he lets friends read it.

Editing is the one thing that bonds us altogether as writers as no matter how professional and far along the process you are, you still get stuck in Re-Write Hell just like the rest of us.

Now here is where the actual present part comes in. How can I give my friend professional editing as a gift if I have enough trouble remembering I before E except after C myself?

Well, there are a lot of editing services out there but there really hasn’t been a way to “give” such as service. Until now.

Lulu.com is offering gift certificates for its service. Wait, don’t go! I know you’re ready to say, but I’m not self-publishing, so I am not longer interested in this post. But this isn’t limited to self-publishing so hear me out.

You can buy a gift certificate redeemable for any Lulu service. This includes Editing.

So you can actually, literally, give your friend a gift certificate redeemable for editing for their book. The service can be redeemed for any book, regardless of its final destination. So your friend could use Lulu’s editing and still submit their book to agents and big publishers just like they originally planned. But now, it’s a better, edited book and you helped them to get there.

Help your friend to get their book in top shape for agents and big publishers? Help them turn that disastrous first draft they wrote during NaNoWriMo into something they’d be proud to show around?

I can’t think of a more personal gift!

To see the details, Lulu’s Editing Service is here and the link to purchase Lulu Author Pro Care gift certificates is here.

But, of course, I know my opinion isn’t everyone’s. To my fellow writers, how would you feel about getting editing as a gift? Touched? Offended? Give a holler below.

PS: I have been nagging Lulu to offer gift certificates for services pretty much since I started working there in 2002 so I am really glad they finally decided to do it. To me, obviously, if you know someone is planning to self-publish, it makes a great gift but when they threw editing into the mix, it really made it a gift for any writer, self-published or otherwise. Good idea, I say. Me likey.