The opportunities that eReaders have presented to the wannabe author to self publish have, for some, revolutionised their dreams of eventually becoming an author with real books, on real shelves, in real bookstores (while they still exist, anyway). Taking on the task of writing, publishing and marketing your own novel has become an outlet for authors who can’t get a look-in with agents or publishing houses – or perhaps don’t know how to.
Matthew Riley is one of the standard true self-published success stories. His first novel, a cracking good read called Contest, was originally published in a self-funded run of 1000 copies and Riley put in the hard yards and actually convinced local bookstores to stock his book. It was then picked up off the shelf by Pan McMillan editor Cate Paterson, who read the book and signed Riley up, with Contest going on to become a best seller. Matthew Riley is now one of Australia’s best selling authors, and a personal favourite of mine.
What Riley did exceptionally well, though, was deliver a good quality product, by himself, up front. It was such good quality an editor of a major publishing house noticed it. It was clearly edited very well and written in Riley’s fast paced style.
Not everyone, however, has this natural talent, attention to detail, funding or a network of support to assist with this.
I’ve written some novels, and although I am meticulous, reading and re-reading obsessively, when I pick it back up some weeks later all I see are the flaws and typos and I can’t understand how I missed them the first time!
And it’s here where a lot of self-published new authors are falling over. They are publishing on Kindle for a minimum sales price, and as an interested reader and supporter of these novelists I then download them. I actually reviewed a great one a few weeks ago (see SEED here). That being said, it’s often rare for me to encounter a novel where it is not riddled with typos and overly descriptive dialogue (where the novelist relies on the characters to explain in absolute detail everything that has happened, will happen and might happen, in the book). Or worse: pages and pages of back-story that result in me skimming past full pages of writing. One of my fellow bloggers and author Roland Yeoman wrote a blog recently about the five deadly sins of writing, but there is a LOT more advice out there for budding writers on the “do’s and don’ts” of self publishing. The reality is this though – based on my experience as a reader, I would NEVER self publish without relying on my network to read it first, and provide editing advice. I would NEVER self publish without verbal editing - reading my book out loud (to the wall, or to my pug) , and I would never self publish without… wait for it… wait for iiiiiittttttttt…
A spellcheck.
Seriously. Type errors are one thing, easy to do especially if you produce all your writing on a keyboard (I try to hand-write when I can). But incorrect spelling?
Not good enough.
Even if someone IS only paying .99c for your product!
If you’re self publishing, I would assume that you probably want to be picked up by a publishing house (unless you’re wildly successful online) so wouldn’t you want to produce a top-quality product up front? So don’t do it on your own! Work hard to establish a network around you, participate in blog communities, join chat boards of like-minded people, ask your friends. Anything. Just don’t publish a poor quality product if you can help it.
I’m going to try and learn this lesson in advance.
