Comments on: Have a great idea for a book? Publish it!

By: Andy

Andy — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:24:59 +0000

Michelle, yes, I agree with this (which is frightening because when everybody starts agreeing it often means we’ve stopped thinking.) I would add only that these days even ‘good’ publishers are starting to ask you to pay to have your work edited; and, secondly, that self publishing is becoming more respectable these days, in which case there is no publisher to provide you with an editor. But we’re on the same page. It’s all part of the business decision you are making.

By: mmarius

mmarius — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 11:26:22 +0000

In reply to Andy.

Andy, those are excellent points, but to varying degrees, they are a function of
– how much the author is prepared to spend (upfront)
– how much he/she is looking to charge for the final product, and
– the extent to which it might be possible to recover those costs from the sales.

For an untested writer, he/she might find that a publisher is hesitant to bear the editorial, production and even distribution costs (whatever those might be) until revenue is realised. However, for someone who is investing in his or her future by writing a book, or trying to make writing a career, it might still be worth it to secure some professional editorial and design assistance, even if in the end the ebook will be freely distributed.

By: Andy

Andy — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 15:04:35 +0000

This is less a reply than a sneaky advertisement. As a bookseller and editor and a wouldbe agent, I’ve found that though the things said here are generally true, and there is always somebody to argue pro and con, just getting your book online isn’t the entire solution. You still need ‘distribution’ of some sort, some way to mmake sure that your book gets to the top of the search pile and that people find out about it other than just by stumbling across it when they surf (do people still use that word)?

But here is my real advertisement. Before your book gets on line, there is a huge amount of front end stuff to do? Have you checked it for quality, and readability, and just simply being worth reading? Here is where you need an editor and probably the one unchanging fact about editing is that you should never be your own editor.

By editing i don’t simply mean proofreading for grammar, spelling and punctuation, as extremely important as though three things are. I am talking more about
– are you really saying what you meant to say? And if you are, have you said it in a way that it means only that one thing you wanted to say, i.e., would a reader be asking, does he/she mean this or that?
– Have you said it precisely? ‘Don’t use 7 words where 4 would do’ is still a very good rule.
– Can the not very brightest people read your book? Your readers shouldn’t t have to be as smart as you to read your book. If they were, they probably wouldn’t need your book. And don’t take technical skill for the same thing as intelligence.
– Are you saying lots of things like customers/men/women do whatever? Generalizations almost always need some qualifying, even if it is as simple as ‘the women I have asked all say…’ And there is quite a lot more.

It is also common to think that you will write the book and then get the editor to clean it up. A really good editor can walk you through a lot of the potential mistakes before you even write them.

What about an index? Would it help your readers? Did you think you could find software that would index it, zip zip? They have their limitations, just like spell check.

In general, then, just as you would not launch a product without doing the diligence, don’t write your book without the front end work.