The last thing you want when you self-publish is for your book to look like you self-published it. Here are some do-and-don’t (make that do-or-die) self-publishing tips to make your book look and sound as professional as possible:
- Your first draft is just that—a first draft that will need to be rewritten, honed, edited and polished at least once each and probably several times. And that’s before you hand it off to an editor.
- Hire a professional editor to review the language and flow. It’s easy to spot the writers who didn’t.
- After the line editor, hire a copy editor to fact-check your work, and go over spelling and grammar. If you don’t need the fact checking, you can settle for a professional proofreader who will handle the latter two. Hint: Your friends and family don’t count, and you’re definitely too close to the work to be able to see any mistakes.
- Hire a professional book designer for both the cover and the interior pages. I don’t want to burst your bubble, but readers just won’t be that into your book if you skip this step.
- If you absolutely insist on handling the design yourself, remember that blank pages in a book are designed to be just that. Blank. No page numbers and no running headers.
- Choose your fonts wisely, since fonts convey different messages. A serif font, for example, often looks more serious than a Sans Serif font because of its wide use in newspapers, magazines and books.
- Don’t go crazy on the number of fonts you use. Two is good. Three is pushing it. Anything more than that and your amateur design is all someone will notice.
Please follow and like us:
Thank you for this post. I have several writer friends who self-publish and have noticed several violations of this list in their finished works — specifically, the font fiascoes. Also, thank you for giving a shout out to hire a professional editor. We appreciate it!