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RSSYour To Do List Before You Publish Your Book
Jan 21
A Writer's Blog Comments Off
Step 1 Write a book
It’s essential to the process of publishing to have written a book.
Writing a book is easy. Writing a book that people want to read is a more complicated process. People are finicky. Their tastes run the gamut of what may be appealing to you as a writer to topics that you are either unqualified to write about or simply not interested in. There are a lot of books on the market. At any time, if you are serious about quantifiable success in writing, you are competing with 2.5 million other published book titles. That’s why step one is to have your book finished.
Step 2 Figure out if it’s good
This is more difficult than step one, believe it or not. How do you do it?
Seek criticism from someone you know
People who know you will tend to be overly optimistic about your book’s chances. This may make you feel swell, but what you need is a reasonably honest assessment of the book’s readability.
Readability and marketability are different things. Readability should equate to the quality of the product regardless of genre, mass appeal, topic or other barriers to sales. A good quality book gives the reader a feeling of value. It effectively conveys your message, whatever that message may be. It should be memorable. So hand over your draft to a friend or (if you’re brave) your mother and ask her to read it. Don’t ask if it’s good. Ask these three questions:
1) Did you feel like you wasted your time while reading it?
2) What was the central theme you got from reading it?
3) What’s your favorite part?
Believe me, if your reader can’t remember their favorite part without re-reading the manuscript, you got a problem worth fixing.
Seek criticism from a professional
This can be harder simply because a professional almost always costs money and almost always has something better to do than vet your manuscript for quality. However, if you have either a professional editor or a professional writer willing to read your work, this is a must. Don’t ask them anything in particular. Just say, “Your feedback and any advice would be greatly appreciated.” Don’t insult their expertise by insisting you know better what kind of advice they should give. And thank them for their time, even if you don’t get anything useful for it.
Submit it to an agent
This is a brave step. This also covers ’submit it to a magazine’ or ’submit it to a publishing house’. The problem with taking this route is that you are more likely not to hear anything, or anything constructive, back at all. And where does that leave you?
Step 3 Learn to edit
Even if self-editing is not your strongest skill, it’s something you should always be working on.
Different genres have different requirements for success. For example, fiction needs a beginning, middle and end. It needs characters, settings, dialogue, action, climax, resolution. These are obligations to the reader. Writing is definitely about aesthetic strengths, and editing is about improving the appeal through technical adjustments.
Figure out what strategy works best for you. Some people need to read the manuscript aloud as they edit. Others need to read slowly, taking each chapter as its own entity. One way to improve your editing is to edit other people’s writing. Take a class on writing that involves self-critique as well as peer-critique. A lot of metropolitan areas have adult education centers where these kinds of classes are reasonably priced and very effective.
Step 4 Learn to copyedit
Nobody, nobody, nobody – not your editor, not your agent, not your mother – is more invested in your work than you.
People sometimes have a brilliant eye for spelling errors, but copyediting your work is still a skill you need to have for yourself. Copyediting is usually the last stage before submission, but you should practice along the way. It is primarily the act of identifying and correcting spelling mistakes, word usage and other grammatical and semantic errors that change the meaning of your sentence/paragraph to something that is unintended.
If “its” and “it’s” meant the same thing, there would be no reason to copyedit. But they don’t and the use of one versus the other changes the meaning you are trying to convey. That is why we look for mistakes.
Here is some advice. Read the book backwards. Read each phrase, then the whole sentence and work your way from the last page to the first page. It is an excellent way to practice copyediting. It is tedious and effective.
I am not saying you should not have someone edit your work. I am saying you should find the mistakes first.
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Writer’s Income is a weekly blog that covers all aspects of writing for publication. Topics include writing, publishing, and marketing with an emphasis on doing all the work yourself.
