Self Publish Panic

Eslin · Jul 12, 2015

Hi guys, I hope I'm not being super annoying and asking something that has been asked a thousand times, if so someone please point me in the right direction and I will try to be more diligent looking for answers in the future.

So here's the thing. Yesterday I self-published my first novel on Amazon Kindle, and was pretty excited (truthfully, I never thought I'd have the cahoonas) then last night I received an email from a guy saying he liked the story but it could do with a round of copy editing. I was totally deflated. Honestly, I have been through this book like a thousand times checking for grammatical mistakes. As an avid reader the one thing that really gets my goat when reading a self-published book is if it's clear the writer hasn't taken their time to edit their work meticulously (I know we are not professional editors so you expect some errors, I'm talking about if the thing is littered with them.) I'm sure there might be a few in mine but not to the extent this man is suggesting. I'm always happy to receive constructive criticism, or if people do not like my work that's fine too, I understand it will not be everyone's cup of tea. However, this is slightly different.

Obviously, being English there will be some discrepancies with the spelling of certain words but I'm sure Americans are smart enough to realise this and not get hung up about whether honoured has an extra u or not, and I really do not want to fork out for something that I might not need.

You can go to Amazon and read the first six chapters of my novel Awakening Sorrows if you want to see an example of my writing, or visit my website where I've posted the prologue and first chapter. I trust you guys to give me an honest opinion.

Sorry about the rant, but has anyone else experienced something similar? :poke:

scrub puller · Jul 12, 2015

Yair . . .

As a reader who does not read your genre I found your formatting and unconventional use of italics quite disconcerting and could well understand why a suggestion has been made about the piece requiring some remedial editing.

I am quite unqualified to comment though as this may well be a feature of this style of story.

Cheers.

Parametric · Jul 12, 2015

Congratulations on self-publishing! The cover looks gorgeous (and ominous). The person who contacted you is obviously looking for business, but I read through the prologue and into the first chapter and unfortunately I do think there are some persistent issues there, particularly the punctuation. You could have a crack at fixing these issues yourself - if you put the opening into our Share Your Work critique forum, you might be able to adjust the rest of the manuscript based on feedback - but my feeling is you might need to bring a good editor on board. If you really just want a proofreader to fix the punctuation, that shouldn't be as expensive as getting deeper feedback. But I would try to see this as an opportunity. At least you found out that it needs a bit more work before you got any negative reviews.

Eslin · Jul 12, 2015

Hi Parametric and yair, thanks for your feedback, unfortunately I haven't been at the cooler long enough to post my work in the share your work forum. Parametric could you give me an example of the punctuation issues I have. I'm sure I'm coming across as very stupid right now but I honestly thought my grammar and punctuation would be the least of my worries. I am going to pull my novel for the moment. This is starting to shatter my confidence because I really thought I had a pretty good grip on the English language oh well back to the drawing board for me it seems.

Parametric · Jul 12, 2015

Eslin said:
Hi Parametric and yair, thanks for your feedback, unfortunately I haven't been at the cooler long enough to post my work in the share your work forum. Parametric could you give me an example of the punctuation issues I have. I'm sure I'm coming across as very stupid right now but I honestly thought my grammar and punctuation would be the least of my worries. I am going to pull my novel for the moment. This is starting to shatter my confidence because I really thought I had a pretty good grip on the English language oh well back to the drawing board for me it seems.

Not stupid at all. I'd love to quote some examples from the opening for you, but I can't grab the text from the Amazon product page. Let me pull out a few quick examples:

The opening sentence is not grammatical to me and most likely needs restructuring into two sentences.
You wouldn't normally capitalise "the" in the phrase "in The Citadel".
"heartsore" is one word.
Dialogue punctuation is consistently problematic. Example:

Yours:

"Eldest Mage," the door opened with nary a squeak and Myanne wakened from her thoughts. "It is time."

Fixed:

"Eldest Mage." The door opened with nary a squeak and Myanne wakened from her thoughts. "It is time."

Italicising the dialogue in the second chapter is (a) unnecessary and (b) inconsistent, since it wasn't italicised before that.
There should be a comma before direct address in the dialogue, "As certain as the waking of souls Eldest Mage."

That kind of stuff. Hope that helped.

Eslin · Jul 12, 2015

Parametric thank-you so much for your quick response and the examples. I guess spell check isn't infallible because heartsore which I also thought was one word came up as a mistake. As for the italics in the second chapter, I used them because they aren't speaking face to face. This is a fantasy novel and they are actually mind speaking. I've read countless books where the author has done this so I believed it was the correct manner in which to show mind speak. I think where I've been going wrong is using grammar check, again I had a full stop after Eldest Mage and was told it was a fragment and needed revising, so I used a comma which seemed to fix the problem.

Once again thank-you so much for your help I'm off to do another read through and this time I'll trust my own judgement instead of grammar check.

Again you are right I need to look at this positively, and not spend the afternoon with a whiskey bottle! :tongue

There was sure to be some kinks to iron out I guess, and if I can't fix the problems myself, I will have to have it looked at professionally.

Dhewco · Jul 12, 2015

Yeah, grammar check is a lousy way to edit. I'm finding that out too. It especially hates dialogue. People sometimes speak in fragments and that makes grammar check all light up. I have been here long enough to use SYW, but I've been chicken. If you have time, I'd go through the Novel forum and others that might interest you until you get to that 50 limit. It would be worth the time.

I have no income. The only money I get is the little for taking care of my elderly parents. I'll never be able to afford an editor at this rate. I'm trying to get up the courage for SYW, but I haven't yet. When you can do it, I urge you to do so.

Eslin · Jul 12, 2015

Thanks Dhewco, I have some income but I've been quoted over a thousand pounds for an edit which whatever way you look at it is a huge amount of money. I always said that if I was going to do this I'd give it a proper go but it's hard to part with that much cash if my problems are basic grammar. I'm going to give it a go myself first and see how I get on.

Thanks for sharing it helps to know I'm not alone in experiencing these sorts of problems.

Parametric · Jul 12, 2015

Ah, thanks for clarifying that it's telepathy rather than speech. Italics are a valid choice for that. I was giving it about 80% of my attention and missed that part.

I don't think it's necessary to pay £1000+ for this type of editing. I'd look at paying no more than £500 per 100,000 words to fix all grammar, punctuation and spelling as well as other minor issues. You could get it done cheaper if you shopped around. But please do get some free sample edits and compare them to make sure you're getting value for money.

Dennis E. Taylor · Jul 12, 2015

Haven't read the work, but based on the above comments, can I recommend this book? Punctuation by G. Miki Hayden

Cheap, short, clearly written, and business-like and to the point. The benefit I got out of this book was all out of proportion to the price. And no, not affiliated.

Eslin · Jul 12, 2015

Thanks angry guy, I will take a look. My confidence has been a bit rocked and I think I need to understand where I'm going wrong.

Parametric · Jul 12, 2015

Don't take it too much to heart. This is a good opportunity to improve your skillset. The one lesson I'd take from this is that you may not be getting enough outside evaluation of your manuscripts before you hit publish. A self-published author needs a good support network to provide constructive criticism - if not a hired editor, then writing groups, critique workshops, beta readers, etc. So look at improving the overall process as well as correcting this specific problem.

Eslin · Jul 12, 2015

Thanks for the advice Parametric, may be I was a little too eager and naïve to think I could do this alone. But I shall keep at it and I'm sure I'll get there in the end. This place and people like you are a godsend.

Dhewco · Jul 12, 2015

I agree on the beta readers/crit group suggestion. I have both, but they're not working on the one I'm going to self-publish. They did a while back, when I was shopping it, but we've moved on to the ones that I still believe have commercial publication possibilities.

LOTLOF · Jul 13, 2015

I've been there. I am not an editor or English professor, but I know the rules of grammar. Since I didn't expect to make any money from my first novel it didn't make sense to pay for an editor. I went over and edited each chapter as I completed them. I then went back and edited the entire manuscript. I figured there would be a few mistakes here and there, but nothing too egregious. So, of course, about every third review complained about the editing and the need for me to get an editor. Don't feel bad, it happens. If you put in the time and effort, and it still falls short of what you would find in a trade published novel? That's really a part of self publishing. When a single person handles everything it's not reasonable to expect the same results as with a staff of professionals.

Self Publish Panic

Get it off! It burns!