It seems that everyone is publishing their own book these days. It is a golden opportunity for authors to make money and become the master of their own material. Something just taking space on your laptop can help introduce people to your work. You don't need to be validated by an agent or a publisher, you can write your own ticket. Sure, that sounds wonderful...perhaps...too wonderful. There is a reason we need agents.
If you're already a published novelist, publishing your own eBook is fairly risk free. And many great authors are doing it right now with great success. They already know what it takes to get a book ready for the public. But those of us looking to jump into the fray and not unravel, had better be careful. So far most of the books and excerpts I've read from those who are self publishing their first novel...well...not good. In almost every case the writing was either poor, or the story was confusing and incomprehensible at times. It was almost shocking how bad some of the writing was. It was not even "blog worthy" writing.
If you are going to self publish, make sure the writing is not filled with mistakes that Microsoft Word would strike. You need a great story of course, but more important than that, you need to eliminate basic mistakes. Here are a few of the big things I've noticed in the few works I've read.
Passive Voice
Go through your work and weed out all the passive voice. Once in a while sure, but you cannot have every sentence filled with passive voice. If you have it more than ten times in the entire novel, it's probably too much. Passive voice does not drive the story and can lead to choppy writing.
Watch your POV
If the reader cannot follow your point of view, it's a problem. Don't get me wrong, I love to head-hop. I get bored writing from the POV of the same character all the time, so I will often head-hop right in scene. But you have to be aware you are doing it, and you have to give the reader the tools to follow along. You have to distinguish that you are now writing from another character's head. If you can't do it well (and it can be tricky) don't do it at all, stick to one POV per scene.
When in doubt, take it out
You have to be brutal, you have to chop words and scenes. You have to ask yourself, "does this advance the story?" and if the answer is "no" you need to dump it. There is nothing worse than a story filled with useless details that neither develop character nor push the story along. These are things an agent, publisher or professional editor would catch. But I've noticed that self publishers leave a lot of it in. Probably because they like it, and hey, I understand. But you since you are acting as writer, agent, editor, and publisher, you need to put on those other hats and be brutally honest with your work. Don't keep things you like, just because you like them. If the story does not need it, cut it out.
Edit - Edit - Edit
You have to edit your work really strictly. Turn on every rule in MS_Word and listen to them. They are not the be-all-end-all and there are times you have to override. But the reality is that you are not going to catch everything yourself, it's hard to catch everything among 60,000 or 80,000 words. But the extended rules in most word processing software will get you more than 80% of the way there. I was shocked to see such basic grammar mistakes in the self published eBooks I read. Poor spelling and incomplete sentences, no commas where one should etc... Those things will turn off the reader quickly. A good story and developed characters are essential yes, but amateur mistakes will kill all of that. It's too easy to delete an eBook. There is no recycling involved.
The story has to make sense. The stakes have to make sense, even if you stretch reality. Some of the things I've read seem to be tossed together just to try and sell something on Amazon. If you are serious about being a writer, don't treat your work like something you are putting up on Facebook or You Tube. Treat it like something that you would want to see on a book shelf in printed form. Just because it's an eBook does not mean people will forgive mistakes.
That takes time, a lot of time and effort. Writing is hard work, it's not meant to be easy. We writers are at a disadvantage compared to other creative endeavors. As a musician, I know what it takes to make good music, and that's hard work too. The difference is that you can throw up a "rough" version of a song on You Tube and have people fall in love with it. They call it "raw" or "earthy" and they forgive small mistakes because the energy of a live performance can carry through. But you cannot put a "rough" version of your manuscript for sale on Amazon or Smashwords, and hope people are going to fall in love with it because it's "raw"... they are going to delete it from their Kindle and never tell anyone about it.
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