A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO SELF PUBLISHING A SPIRITUAL OR INSPIRATIONAL KIDS' BOOK
STEP FIVE: EDIT AND PROOFREAD
I cannot stress enough how important it is to have your work both edited and proofread. Don’t try to do this yourself - you are too close to your work and cannot be objective enough. There are plenty of people who can assist you with this essential task.
First prize goes to getting a professional editor to look at your work. Contact your local association for editors and proofreaders and get a couple of quotes – you’ll probably find that it’s not quite as expensive as you originally thought, especially with a children’s book that is not that long. This kind of professional feedback can help you to iron out any inconsistencies in your writing, improve your grammar and sentence construction, improve the flow of your story and much much more.
If you cannot afford a professional editor, find a friend with an English Degree or who is an English teacher or writer or journalist or similar and ask them to help you out. Or someone from your writing group – you could do an exchange and check each other’s work! I’m a true believer in having an exchange of energies between people, so make sure that if a friend spends hours working on your manuscript that you find some way to repay them energetically – take them out for dinner, babysit their kids one day, or offer your own time in some way to show your gratitude.
Get your editing done BEFORE you complete the illustrations, as if you make any drastic changes to the text this could affect the content of the illustrations and the layout.
Once your illustrations and layout are complete, you will need to do another round of proofreading. Do this yourself, AND have someone else look over your work for grammatical errors, spelling mistakes and other typos.
Once you send your book in to print and get your proof back, you will need to do yet another round of proofreading before you approve the book for it’s print run. At this stage it is vitally important that you check it, you get a professional (or your English teacher friend) to check it, AND you get someone who is totally unfamiliar with the work to check it one last time. It helps to have someone new look at it at this stage, as once you are familiar with a story, it is easy to overlook small mistakes.
If your book were going through the traditional publishing channels, it would be subjected to all these stages of editing and proofreading. This is often what sets these books apart from those that are self-published. You need to ensure that your book meets these stringent standards in order for it to stand up and compete in this very competitive market place. A spelling mistake here and there, while they may not be picked up consciously, will subconsciously affect the way that people view your book, and regardless of how good your content is, will create a poor impression.
Be thorough, be pedantic, be professional!
First prize goes to getting a professional editor to look at your work. Contact your local association for editors and proofreaders and get a couple of quotes – you’ll probably find that it’s not quite as expensive as you originally thought, especially with a children’s book that is not that long. This kind of professional feedback can help you to iron out any inconsistencies in your writing, improve your grammar and sentence construction, improve the flow of your story and much much more.
If you cannot afford a professional editor, find a friend with an English Degree or who is an English teacher or writer or journalist or similar and ask them to help you out. Or someone from your writing group – you could do an exchange and check each other’s work! I’m a true believer in having an exchange of energies between people, so make sure that if a friend spends hours working on your manuscript that you find some way to repay them energetically – take them out for dinner, babysit their kids one day, or offer your own time in some way to show your gratitude.
Get your editing done BEFORE you complete the illustrations, as if you make any drastic changes to the text this could affect the content of the illustrations and the layout.
Once your illustrations and layout are complete, you will need to do another round of proofreading. Do this yourself, AND have someone else look over your work for grammatical errors, spelling mistakes and other typos.
Once you send your book in to print and get your proof back, you will need to do yet another round of proofreading before you approve the book for it’s print run. At this stage it is vitally important that you check it, you get a professional (or your English teacher friend) to check it, AND you get someone who is totally unfamiliar with the work to check it one last time. It helps to have someone new look at it at this stage, as once you are familiar with a story, it is easy to overlook small mistakes.
If your book were going through the traditional publishing channels, it would be subjected to all these stages of editing and proofreading. This is often what sets these books apart from those that are self-published. You need to ensure that your book meets these stringent standards in order for it to stand up and compete in this very competitive market place. A spelling mistake here and there, while they may not be picked up consciously, will subconsciously affect the way that people view your book, and regardless of how good your content is, will create a poor impression.
Be thorough, be pedantic, be professional!