So You’ve Written a Book…

I’m not going to tell you how to write a book because I strongly believe the process is different for each person and you have to find the method or formula that works for you. Personally I started off with an idea and main characters then loosely planed out how I wanted the story to end. Then I just wrote and as the personalities of my characters took shape how I thought they would have reacted in a given situation directed my story.

So now that you know what I did when I was writing let’s move on to what to do after you’ve finished you literary masterpiece (or maybe not a masterpiece and just a fun read).

The next couple of posts will focus on what I did as part of self-publishing and will address editing/copy-editing, cover design, distribution, marketing etc. Although not particularly complicated the most important of this (in my opinion) is the editing/copy-editing process.

But first a couple of rules;

1. Don’t try to proof read and edit your work yourself: No matter how many times you read it you will never see all your mistakes.
2. Do have a professional or at the very least someone with a strong knowledge and understanding of grammar rules read your work: Be prepared to see lots errors (unless you are a super writing grammar god and in that event I bow down to you)
3. Don’t try to proof read and edit your work yourself: I know I said it before but it deserves repeating, learn from my mistakes (at one point I had two chapter 21’s in my book)

Now if your cash strapped and can’t afford a professional use a family member or a friend to review your book but beware that they may not be quite as invested as you are in completing this task (it took my sister months to proof read and at this point I’m not even sure she finished the job…)

Another option is to use sites like Freelancer, Upwork or Elance. These are basically sites that support virtual work and allow businesses to post jobs, solicit proposals and get competitive pricing/biding. They also allow freelancers to set up profiles to market their services. One of the sites I plan to use in the future is www.ProofReadingServices.com. After some extensive investigations it looks really promising and professional as well as cost effective (for a girl on a budget). Also they appear to have an extensive assessment criterion before allowing someone to freelance so you can be assured that the person you get knows what they’re doing.  I will definitely let you know once I try…

The reason why I stress on editing/copy-editing is because it’s a personal pet peeve of mines. I can tolerate with a reasonable amount of patience books with minor grammar errors but when it reaches the point that I have to read a sentence multiple times to understand what the writer is trying to express I’m just going to put the book down.

I pretty sure I’m not alone in this!

Now that I’ve gone through the most important step, we can move on to the second most important and the fun part, designing your cover. 

Coming in the next post, stay tuned…