Proofreading is important

In honor of National Proofreading Day, I’d like to offer a little advice: Hire at least one professional proofreader or editor to go over your book before you publish. Even better, hire more than one. No matter how many times you edit your work, typos and mistakes will get by you.

In general, my process is to obsessively edit my own work to get it as clean as I can. Then, if he’s game, I’ll have my husband edit (I’ve been fortunate to marry an amazing communicator who provides me with insightful advice that improves my work). Then I hire an editor to proof it before it goes to design. After it is laid out and ready for publishing, I hire another editor to proof it one more time (after obsessively editing it some more myself). You’d be surprised how many things crop up in design!

I’ve found typos and mistakes in Big Name Publisher distributed books – and they have full-time editors working on staff. So why shouldn’t you spend a little bit of money to make sure your indie book is as sparkly clean as you can get it? Depending on the size of your manuscript, you can find good editors who can provide you will good service for less than $1k.

And that is worth the investment – because, believe me, you will get bad reviews for typos. And good reviews sell books – bad reviews, well, don’t.