- I did the research, outlined the book,
and even hired a ghost writer.
I thought everything was good to go
and publish ready,
but I was mistaken.
Find out what I discovered when editing
and proofreading the manuscript
and also get details on how to find a good book editor
and why editing and proofreading is essential
to producing good high quality books
for your self publishing business.
Make sure you stay tuned.
(upbeat music)
Hey I'm Dale L. Roberts, best selling author
as well as a self publishing advocate
who wants to show you how to publish books that sell.
If you want that too of course subscribe to this channel
and join me on twitch every Monday at 12.
If you have amazon prime you can subscribe to me for free
at twitch.tv/selfpublish
and you get a few freebies in the process.
Just a heads up this is the third part
in the how to self publish a book series
that's put together in cooperation
with the fine folks over at fiverr.
So if you've missed any of the previous videos,
I'll leave a link down inside the description down below
where I covered the research process, the outlining,
and also hiring out the ghost writer.
So you've done the research on your niche,
you've really gone all in,
you produced the content,
what comes next.
Now naturally a lot of people are like,
oh my gosh, my baby's all done,
it's ready to go, let's go ahead and publish it,
please don't do that.
The next best step is going to be absolutely critical,
so that way you can keep readers for the long term
and start to grow a following
because if you just put out a rough draft
or just simply self edit
and hope for the best,
you're going to be in for some real heartache.
Now just really quick, a lot of people say okay,
editing and proofreading, those are the same thing right,
ah not really.
I want you to think about editing
as being that line,
that first line of defense
in which it actually helps clarify your message,
it gets it to where it's more clear,
it covers any type of ambiguities that you have,
they're able to get it to where they flesh out
the best version of you as a writer
as they possibly can.
It's not just simply finding typos
or small grammatical errors,
sometimes it has a lot to do with syntax
or even just the voice in which you're communicating.
There's so many deeper levels of editing
that requires an entirely different video altogether,
but just to kinda say this,
the editor really helps bring out the best version of you.
Now I want you to think of the proofreader kind of like
the last line of defense,
that proofreader is gonna go through
and just put a little bit of a shine
and a bit of a shear in things
and just kind of address any last minute issues,
they're gonna cover those typos
and those smaller grammar errors
and maybe some things that are missing
inside your manuscript.
Why you shouldn't do it yourself
is because you're going to gloss over
a lot of the mistakes that you would make,
you're going to miss some of the bigger picture things
that you don't see
because you're kind of in a bubble as a writer
within that universe that you've created in your manuscript
so you always need to reach outside of yourself
and give it to a unbiased party
who's going to take this apart
and really analyze it
and make it the best work it can be.
But how do you find a good editor.
I always always always recommend go with referrals first
because if you know another author
that's had great experience with an editor
then chances are pretty likely
you might enjoy your experience with them as well.
Also you can look into freelancing websites
and of course I'm going to be talking about the editing
and proofreading I did through fiverr here in just a moment,
there are other freelancing sites as well,
but out of respect to fiverr,
I'm not going to mention them.
It's important though,
if you've got a pretty lengthy manuscript
that you test drive an editor,
that you make sure that it's going to be a good fit.
It's kind of like ah man, putting together a good rock band,
you don't want to just put in any old person in
to any old position,
you wanna make sure that you can all work in synchrony
and that you can really get it to where you produce
great quality music together
and that you're not clashing or at odds at all times.
So I always say, test drive.
Now for the instance of this very short manuscript
that I have here,
I really didn't have to worry about going completely all in
as far as my budget went,
but if it was a longer manuscript
chances are very likely I probably would have tested out
at say 5000, no more than about 10000 words
on a specific editor
just to make sure it was going to be a good fit.
Before you do send it off to your editor
and your editor will thank you for this
by me giving you this information.
Don't just send off a first draft.
They will absolutely despise the ground that you walk on
if you just send a first draft
that's just riddled with errors,
it hasn't been cleaned up at all,
so what I always recommend is
you're going to do a quick edit
and you're going to do it through two different sources
and for me I typically go through something simple like
Microsoft Word's grammar and spelling checker
and I just go through and I just clean up any kind of
small, you know, infractions,
so any kind of typos, any just small grammatical errors,
I just go through really fast
and then I'll take that same manuscript
and I'll go over to something like Grammarly
and I'll just put it right on in there,
I go through the editor again
and I just try to make it as fast as possible,
I try to make split second decisions
so that way it's a quick process, hence quick editing
and then I will take my time
and I'll go through what's called line editing
and that means going through each and every single line,
making sure that all of them work together
and it's very cohesive
and see if you're missing any areas.
One of my favorite ways to do line editing
is actually through Microsoft's read aloud feature
and actually I'll show it on the screen here,
you can click on that
and it'll read it to you
and just sit back and allow the reader to give it to you
instead of you reading it yourself.
You gotta sit there and listen to what it says
so that way you can correct anything that sounds off.
Now it's time to hire an editor.
So just as a review I went through
and I did a ghost writing gig
because I'm strapped for time right now
and I'm not able to put together
any kind of work for this series
keep in mind I'm going to unveil this work
in a future video so make sure you're staying tuned
and you're subscribed to this channel.
So naturally I went back to fiverr
and all you gotta do is head over to dalelinks.com/fiverr
remember fiverr has two r's at the end.
You're gonna select editing
and narrow down your search according to your budget
and your type of needs.
For me I typically try to look for a seller
that has had some experience.
You know, there's nothing wrong with trying out
some new sellers,
but to me I just don't have too much time
to be testing people out.
I would rather spend a little bit more money
and work with a level two seller
or a top rated seller
and when you go over into their particular gig
I'll look at the number of reviews that they have
and the average star rating
and see how many orders are inside the cue
so that way you can make sure this is gonna work out.
I highly recommend always reach out to editors
and proofreaders before you send them work.
It doesn't hurt just to kind of make sure
that it's going to work out.
Sadly I got so excited in doing this video series
I just went and processed the order
and thankfully the editor actually worked with me.
Cindy was just fantastic, she was so forgiving
and very flexible
and I was able to send the manuscript
and get it back within a couple of days.
Now she came highly recommended
from the folks over at fiverr
among a couple of other choices.
I just narrowed it down to her
and I'm glad that I did because she took this manuscript
that I really kind of was like really happy about it,
there was just some innocuous issues that I had initially
with the ghost writing gig,
sent it back, she fixed them,
it came back and Cindy the editor
was able to just break it down
point by point
and saw just some holes there
and I was like oh my gosh,
thankfully she sent a manuscript with the notes that she had
and some of the changes weren't applied,
then she sent another manuscript
with all the changes applied
and additional notes
of some areas that might need some fine tuning.
So I just went through,
I was able to kind of adjust some of those things
and I approved the gig,
she did fantastic work,
it was time to move on to a proofreader
because I went through edited myself,
now I would recommend that if you're the type of person
who's strapped for time,
you can always just hire an additional gig
from an editor to make sure you refine it
or even go back to the original ghost writer
and see if they can fine tune those things for you.
This depends largely on the time
and your expenses that you have.
I had some time
and I was willing to go ahead
put a little bit of effort into this
because this is an interesting project
and something that I actually highly identify with
and I'm sure you folks would identify with it as well.
So next was hiring a proofreader.
It was the same process as hiring an editor,
I just went over to dalelinks.com/fiverr
and I selected the proofreading gigs,
narrowed it down to the budget
and the type of seller that I wanted
and again this proofreader came highly recommended
from the folks over at fiverr
so I went ahead and gave her a chance
and it took her about a couple of days
and it came back and I thought for sure
it was going to be iron clad, rock solid,
everything was good to go
and she was able to pick out some additional issues
so big thank you to Amanda, I appreciate it.
And much like what Cindy did with the editing,
Amanda did the same thing in which she had some notes
and the suggestions
and then she had a final draft
with the actual corrections made
and the notes and it was kinda nice
because I was able to just go in to the notes,
fix a few issues and clean it up quite better
and then I went through the full editing, quick editing part
in Grammarly and such
and I was able to get it all really fine tuned.
So what comes next.
Naturally we've already gone through the research,
the writing, the editing and proofreading,
we need to get over into the formatting
and book cover design.
I've got you covered in the next part in this video series.
Soon to come in this very next video down here
you're gonna wanna make sure that you take a look at it.
Till later, I will see you in the very next video.