I read a lot of books. And I love reading books written by friends. I love helping people plan their book and I even have a few suggestions for how to launch your book.
But the number one piece of advice I have for indie-authors is this:
build a team and use them.
In the recent preparation of Building a Strong Family I was focused on making sure the manuscript was well-prepared for the reader, (and listener!) This meant recruiting a team of qualified, experienced professionals to help me with that task.
There’s nothing worse than reading a book full of typo’s — spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and clumsy language are all distracting.
When my copy-editor, Raewyn, was editing my text she was gracious in identifying the many errors I made as the author. There were spelling mistakes aplenty. Many times she commented how clumsy my sentence structure was. She would say, “I think I know what you’re trying to say here, but this is a little clumsy!”
Thankfully I have a thick skin along with a clear awareness I am not perfect.
When the text was fully reviewed by my copy-editor and signed off by me, we then engaged a proofreader. Nikki was an expert at reviewing manuscripts and will not touch a text that has not been edited already by a professional. Even then, she picked up errors or presented queries for the team to resolve.
I’m really grateful for my team as they have taken what I prepared in draft form and they’ve helped me shape it into something that I think people will love.
Funny though, even after we had fully reviewed the text…. you guessed it, I found three typos in the final proof. It seems perfection is hard to attain!
