Self-Publishing Step-by-Step (4) – Proofreading

… is it worth it?

Absolutely, completely, and in every way.

I know it’s tempting to skip it. I get it. If you’re self-publishing, you’ve already paid an editor (at least, I hope you have), and you’ve paid, or are facing, dozens of other costs. You’ve read and re-read your manuscript about forty-seven times and you know you’ve been careful. You’re sure it’s clean. You’ll read it over, one last time, and catch all the leftover mistakes.

Don’t kid yourself. You’re human. You will never catch all your own mistakes – the ones that have been there during the last forty-six reads, and have become so ingrained you don’t even see them, and the ones that just crept in during your very last revision, where you’re sure you did everything right, but you were tired, and you were keen to get the changes done.

Why should you care?

My kids and I are currently reading a book in a very successful series, from a well-known Canadian children’s publisher. It’s a great story. Unlike some of our read-aloud books, reading it isn’t a chore – the character development is good, the setting is interesting, and it’s well plotted. But it’s riddled with tiny errors a good proofread would have caught.

Here are just a few examples within a few pages of each other (and this is representative of the entire book):

- P.187 – “eighty kilometres” (written out)

- P. 190 – “80 kilometres” (number in digits)

- P. 190 – “the same threat that Elliott always used again Webb” (should be “against”)

- P. 196 - top of the page a character referred to as “Jan” – halfway down the same page as “Jana”. Elsewhere in the book she’s “Jana”

You might think these are no big deal. I still understand the story. I still know “Jan” is “Jana”. But I had to stop, and think, and ask myself “Do they mean ‘Jana’?” Especially reading aloud, little details like “again” instead of “against” can break up the rhythm of reading.

These mistakes pull the reader out of the story.

They also – and maybe this is just me, because of the work I’m doing on my own book – make me feel like corners were cut. Like there’s some sloppiness. Like the author put tonnes of hard work into weaving a great story, and then some of the details are letting it down.

If you decide to self-publish, it’s even more important not to be sloppy like this because people like to accuse self-publishing authors of putting out books that aren’t ready – that aren’t polished.

Prove them wrong. Hire a proofreader. It will be worth it.

On Thursday I printed off the “final” version of my manuscript and gave one copy to my proofreader, and kept one for myself.

I read it, meticulously, over the long weekend. So did she.

I entered all my changes on Monday. There were quite a few. I figured the money I was paying to the proofreader was really just going to be for peace of mind.

Nuh-uh.

She found a number of things I skimmed right over. Stupid, little, embarrassing mistakes.

I figure when all the calculations are done, I paid her about seven dollars per mistake she found. That is SO worth it.

If someone showed me some of the truly ridiculous errors I would have left in my book without that proofread, and then asked “Would you pay seven dollars to remove these?” my answer would have been “Oh, yeah!” No doubt.

Except that still wouldn’t take away the first impression of all those people who would have read the book and seen them. They would have thought my book was sloppy. Their reading experience might have been interrupted. Seven dollars after the fact doesn’t fix that.

So, please have your work proofread, and if you don’t have a good proofreader in mind, ask me! I’ll hook you up with mine …