Book Update

I got so wrapped up in working on the final draft of my book that I haven’t taken the time to blog for a couple of days – heck, it’s been a week. Of course, I’m not just working on that project as other things need to be taken care of.

I’ve made it back through Day 9 as of this moment; only 14 more to go before I’m finished, plus writing the epilogue. I’m printing out copies with a few photos to pass on to Nan, who is proofreading for me. It’s never good for authors to proofread their own work. You get so caught up in your work that it’s easy to miss simple grammatical errors or spelling. Also, another point of view can alert you to the fact that a section might sound awkward or confusing to a reader. There’s nothing worse than reading a good story, but you can’t enjoy it because of the bad grammar and spelling; and for a lot of people, those glaring errors jump off the page in your face.

The finishing of the final draft doesn’t mean the book is ready to go. There are many, many decisions to make. There’s layout and design, choosing the size of the book, the type of paper to have it printed on, front and back cover designs, copyrights, and that’s on top of deciding to just go with a print on-demand-company or to go with a real publisher. These are not easy decisions and this is not even talking marketing, yet.

Print-on-demand is a popular way to go and it’s relatively easy (just remember none of this is as easy as it sounds). However, with the thousands of books being printed this way, what makes your book stand out? And with anyone being able to print anything, your book is mixed in with a lot of poorly written material. These print-on-demand places do not do any editing on proofreading. They are set up and print only. They could care less whether the writing is any good.

I don’t want a cheap, shoddy piece of work. As good a writer and editor as I may be, I still make mistakes. I still need, and appreciate, someone else looking over my work before it goes out to the public. I want my books to look professional and classy. The writing, though time-consuming, is the easy part. From there it gets difficult and to do a good job is not cheap. If you want quality work, you need to pay for it – from editing to designing to printing. And if you don’t have the expertise, then be willing to pay someone who does.

Ouch! But this is the type of work I want to do. I’m learning. Maybe there will come a time when I can do almost all of it myself (as I thought I could in the beginning), but I’m not there yet.

On to Day 10... and I still haven't come up with a title.