Patience, Grasshopper. Publishing a book takes time to do
right. Rushing your product to market does not often end well.
You have spent the last however many months/years writing
your Great American Novel. It's done—hooray! You've looked into traditional
publishing and all the other avenues and have decided that self-publishing is
the direction you'd rather go. Thousands of other writers have made this same
choice, even authors who have found prior success with traditional publishing.
Self-publishing is the wave of the future.
Joining the self-publishing wave carries dangers to books that
come to the venue unprepared. A predicted backlash against rushed, unpolished
prose is building among readers; even Amazon reports dropping ebook sales
numbers and is restricting the pricing authors may use. The chaff is being
blown to the side so that readers can find the good books among the
self-published heap. You want to be one of the good ones.
The edits have to be
done ASAP—I want to post by the end of the month!
Start shopping for an editor well in advance of your hoped
for release-date for your book. Asking for a deadline of next week for an edit
that likely will take three weeks to do is unrealistic even if an editor is
immediately available. While freelance service providers can have unpredictable
booking schedules depending on the season, it is best to assume an editor is
booked three months or more in advance and query accordingly. If your chosen
expert is available earlier—jackpot!
Okay, I've had an
editor evaluate my work and give suggestions for fixes or changes or what-not.
I went through and changed what the editor said to. Now I can post it to the
self-publishing website, right?
Hold your horses, cupcake. Not yet. Even the best editor
cannot be held responsible for errors you may have introduced during your
revisions. Some books will need more than one round of edits to be ready for
Primetime; a developmental edit, revision, copy/line edits, more revision. Then
you need to have a proofreader go over your final copy before it is ready to be
published.
After that step, you must format the manuscript properly for
the venue you will upload to. Many blogs and YouTube video tutorials can be found
free online for assistance with this task, but to avoid the steep learning
curve and hours/days/weeks of frustration you could employ an editor who also
tackles formatting.
I did all that. Can I
go now?
Along with the finished galley copy you will need a polished
blurb to hook sales, keywords, genre categorization, a plan for distribution
and pricing, professional-looking cover art, and a marketing plan. If you are
publishing in print as well you must purchase your own ISBN code or accept the
one offered with your publishing platform, if they do that. Do your homework to
decide which is best for you.
At the publishing house I worked for, taking a book from
newly-contracted manuscript to galley final proof was likely to take up to
eight months. Then the finished product would be put on the schedule for
release, which could add another year or more before the book could be sold to
readers. Self-publishing will shorten the time from galleys to release date,
but the pre-production work will still need time to do properly.
Rushing your book from manuscript to published is a bad
idea. Ultimately your readers will be the judge; bad reviews = lower sales. Take
your time; do it right.
[First published as Kelly Lynne at I">http://www.editing-writing.com/publish-book-now/">I Want to Publish My Book NOW!!!
in May 2016
[First published as Kelly Lynne at I">http://www.editing-writing.com/publish-book-now/">I Want to Publish My Book NOW!!!