By Kathy Ide
Editors, have you ever given writing or self-editing tips to your clients or potential clients? The following article by Kathy Ide is a resource you can share to help writers clean up their manuscripts before sending them to editors!
In Part 1 of this post, you learned the first three of Kathy Ide’s 5 Reasons to Proofread Everything You Write. Keep reading for the rest!
(Continued from Part 1)
4. Mechanical errors can affect the sales of your book.
Readers who find a lot of mistakes in your book will not be as likely to recommend it to their friends. And who knows? You may have a high school English teacher reading your book, and she just might recommend it to her students . . . unless there are a lot of mistakes in it.
5. Mechanical errors can give you a poor reputation.
If you self-publish or work with a small, independent publisher that can’t afford to hire professional proofreaders, your book may go out to the public with several typos, inconsistencies, inaccuracies, or PUGS errors. Readers who catch those mistakes may view you as an amateur. Even if your book is being put out by a big publishing house, you should proofread your galleys very carefully. That’s your last chance to catch any errors before a book with your name on the cover goes out to readers.
These reasons and more are explained in my book Proofreading Secrets of Best-Selling Authors. It includes tips from multi-published authors on how to catch typos, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies. It also contains industry-standard guidelines on the PUGS issues that most writers struggle with.
Once you’ve got your manuscript, galleys, or promotional material as polished as you think they can be, you may wish to consider hiring a professional proofreader. I’m not talking about your neighbor who’s a high school English teacher, but someone who knows and understands the publishing industry’s requirements. You can find professional freelance proofreaders at writers’ conferences or by filling out the form for Authors Seeking Editors at the Christian Editor Connection (www.ChristianEditor.com).
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Kathy Ide, author of Proofreading Secrets of Best-Selling Authors and editor/compiler of the Fiction Lover’s Devotional series, is a full-time freelance editor/writing mentor, working with new writers, established authors, and book publishers. She speaks at writers’ conferences across the country and is the director for the SoCal Christian Writers’ Conference. Kathy is the founder and director of the Christian Editor Connection, a service that links authors and editors, and The Christian PEN: Proofreaders and Editors Network, which provides training, encouragement, networking, and community for Christian freelance editors. For more about Kathy, visit www.KathyIde.com.
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