Prep Your First Book To Hit the Shelves

[Approximate Reading Time : 4 mins]

After toiling over it for ages, your first manuscript is finally complete. If you’ve made the decision to go down the self-publishing route, you might think the next step is to get your book to the masses. Before you hit the ground running too fast, you need to make sure that your book is market ready.

The Editorial Polish

Statistics from Bowker reported that there were over 1 million books self-published in 2017. That’s a lot of competition in the literary space. Skipping the editorial phase of publication is one problem that dooms a lot of debut authors. An expert set of eyes can catch things that are easy to miss:

• Typos
• Grammatical errors
• Misspellings
• Awkward sentence structure

These are surface mistakes that a keen editor is sure to pick up on. Correcting them gives your book a professional polish that should impress your audience.

The Visual Selling Points

Though the old adage is meant to discourage people from judging books by their covers, it’s a practice that many readers engage in without guilt. People are drawn to material that is visibly appealing. Once the book is in potential readers’ hands, readers may be enticed further with clean formatting on the page.

Don’t assume that a finished manuscript is ready for consumption. Take the extra step with professional editorial services and cover development to put your best foot forward.

Sources:
http://www.bowker.com/news/2018/New-Record-More-than-1-Million-Books-Self-Published-in-2017.html