The Importance of Editing: Part 2 in a Guide to Self Publishing

Now that I got the cover section out of the way, down to the harder part of self publishing. Editing is never fun and it is never easy. To be completely honest with you, I am having to re-release Celine because what I thought were completely edited chapters fell very short. It’s embarrassing to have those kind of problems with your first book and I want to help others so that they don’t have that problem. So, are you ready?

Good! Let’s get started.

Don’t get me wrong, you should always go over your own writing. You never know if you’ll want to change something or what have you, but it is always important to have multiple sets of eyes going back behind you to make sure that your work works. I will advise, however, that you should not ever have someone edit your work that will not be completely honest with you about it. So you can’t get butt hurt when you get your first draft back covered in yellow highlighter or red pen (depending on if you have virtual or print copies that people are editing.) I can’t begin to tell you how many self published books I pick up that have problems. I won’t get too far into that but let me just say this: Don’t make excuses. If your book has a lot of errors in it, own up to it. Don’t hide behind some weak facade in hopes that people will go easy on because that will just make it worse.  Set the expectation with yourself that you will always maintain a professional mindset when it comes to releasing your finalized novel. Yes, implementing edits takes a lot of time and then you will have to hand the book to your editor(s) again, but the more work you put in to the final product, the prouder you will be at the end of the day.

I’ll go over beta readers and how to handle bad reviews in the next part but for now, since this is a pretty straight forward piece of advice, I will leave it here. Please feel free to comment with any of your own advice or ideas! Everything is greatly appreciated. Thank you!