Tips for the Self-Published authorBy Christina Winds

Editing

1. Check for continuity. Your first pass after letting your first draft ‘rest’ for a month or two should be to check continuity. Read the draft through as if learning the story for the first time. After the ‘break’ is when you’re most likely to find continuity errors.

2. Know your weaknesses as a writer. Edit those out next. Ex. If you don’t add in very much description, make an editing pass to specifically look for places that need description. If you usually add in too much description, make a pass where you take some out.

3. Manage your sub-plots. Is it as fleshed out as it should be? Or maybe it’s too fleshed out and distracts from the main plotline?

4. After that, check for other details: foreshadowing, character voices, character growth.

Editing help

1. MS Word Text-to-Speech. Listen to your book. Invaluable for catching errors like missing ‘of’ or ‘a’ qualifiers. Also catches ‘changed your mind’ mistakes (Ex. I changed ‘actually had’ to ‘had actually’ resulting in ‘had actually had’. Grammatically correct – but not what I wanted to say.

2. Grammarly. Invaluable for catching grammatic errors. Not all of its suggestions should be used, but it saves a tremendous amount of time in finding errors that should be corrected. (https://www.grammarly.com/ )

3. Autocrit. Another huge time saver. Autocit checks for a large number of various writing problems like too many adverbs, weak verbs, pacing issues, and more. Again, not all suggestions should be automatically taken, but they should at least be considered. A wonderful help in quickly finding those places where you can tighten up your writing. (https://www.autocrit.com/)

This page available at https://christinawinds.com/To be kept updated with new tips and tricks as they are learned. Visit often!

Formatting

If arranging your own printed books (through printers such as IngramSpark), the book must be formatted in its final form before sending. Consider the following:

1. Font type and font size. Google standard font styles for your genre. Then choose a size that makes it readable. Anything smaller than 11 is usually too small to read. Print out a page in your chosen font and size to be sure it can be easily read.

2. Trim size. Know what size book you want. Mass market paperbacks (i.e. romance novels) are 4x7 inches. Literary fiction is often 5x8. Hardcovers can be 5x8 or 6x9. Other options are available, so find a book of the size you want to duplicate and measure it!

3. Decisions. Do you want text separators (those little graphics or symbols that separate the scenes within a chapter)? Do you want graphics at the start of each chapter? Do you want to use drop caps (the large first letter at the start of chapters) Add those in.

4. Front and back matter. Include title page, copyright page, dedications, acknowledgements, author bio, and ‘Other books by..’ pages.

5. Justify BOTH margins.6. Scrivener has a bit of a tough learning

curve, but can handle all of your formatting needs. (https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview)

Cover artist

1. FORMAT YOUR BOOK before hiring your artist. Or at the least, plan to complete the formatting before your artist will finish. If you are planning on a print book, your artist will need the final page count in order to size the spine graphics correctly. Every formatting option you change will change your page count.

2. Give your artist some suggestions for visual elements in your novel. Scenery, important props, special symbols, character descriptions, etc.

3. Send your artist pictures or links of covers you like.

4. Also send some covers you hate.5. If you’re working on a (potential) series,

consider branding. Is there a visual element that can tie all of your books together at first glance?

6. Know which publisher you plan to use. IngramSpark has slightly different graphics requirements than BookBaby or other printers.

This page available at https://christinawinds.com/To be kept updated with new tips and tricks as they are learned. Visit often!