Andrew Langley is the author of the Nathen Turner supernatural thriller series. He kindly agreed to answer some questions about his journey as an independent author. Below, he talks frankly about marketing, the research and writing processes, and the pros and cons of self-publishing.

Hi, Andrew! Thanks so much for talking to me. So what have you found to be the most effective methods of marketing your books?
Thanks for having me! So, for me, the whole point about marketing a novel is profile-building and connecting with an audience, not about hard selling. 

Someone might write the best book in the history of publishing, but if nobody’s heard about it then nobody will buy it.

The most important thing for me at the beginning was to have a website. That way, if anybody asked me about the books, I could give them the web address and they could find out more, and maybe subscribe to the newsletter. It’s more about relationship-building than trying immediately to close a sale.

Months before the publication date, I send leaflets to as many bookstores as I can find, just to make them aware of the book. One time, I bumped into a bookshop worker when I was doing a radio interview. She asked me the name of my latest novel. When I told her, she said, ‘Oh, yeah, I’ve heard about that!’ So, basically, the leaflets had done their job. 

I also think the publication date is important. If it can be tied into some event relevant to the ideas in your story, then it gives you an angle with which to approach the press. My first two books are mysteries based in the world of the supernatural, so I published them on Halloween.

I’ve found things like book signings and talks – in fact, anywhere you can meet potential readers face-to-face – much more effective than social media, though they can be a little nerve wracking!

I have multiple sclerosis, so when I’m booked for a signing or interview it’s always a bit stressful because I’m wondering what my health will be like on the day. Will I feel fatigued? Am I going to start twitching? What will my pain levels be like? All those issues tend to cloud my mind before the event I’m sure authors without health complications experience nervousness too.

Once I'm there, though, it’s great. I’ve found that the public tend to be genuinely interested in authors – why they write, what the book’s about, etc. – and you get to meet some truly lovely people.

Another thing that worked well for me was making a load of bookmarks with the web address on. I gave out the bookmarks everywhere I could. The theory was that readers would use them in the novels they were currently reading and they’d have a constant reminder about my books.

Have you tested a method of marketing but later shelved it?
I’m not the best on social media. By nature, I’m quite a private person, so baring my soul to the world really doesn’t feel comfortable for me. 

Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads all have their place, and I do think you need to have a presence there to give readers another way of contacting you. But, for me, they don’t really generate sales.

Is there anything you’ve not yet tried but would like to in the future?
For my third novel in the supernatural series I’m moving the publication date away from Halloween.

Although it worked well for the first two in terms of generating press interest, it’s very close to Christmas. The bookstores tend to be focused on seasonal stock and promotions at that time of year. This makes it a real challenge to arrange signings or talks. Thankfully, my local Waterstones has been very accommodating despite the staff workload.

So, for the third book, even though it’ll be ready to publish Halloween 2017, I’ve moved the date to Easter 2018. This also ties in to some other events that are relevant to the story.
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Plus, it’s given me a different idea for a marketing strapline – ‘Relax and read a book for Easter (but keep the lights on!)'. That kind of thing!

Do you have a method or process when writing?
I live off notebooks! Everywhere I go I carry a notebook and jot down ideas. I was a photojournalist for a long time and I got used to this method of working when I was on location.

Sometimes I’ll overhear a funny story in a bar and think it’ll be great to add that to a novel in the future – it all goes in the notebook for recycling later. 

All my background research goes into the notebooks and I handwrite the synopsis and first chapter long before I sit in front of a computer. Then I usually test the story idea with my friends and family. If they’re not immediately interested, I change it until they are.

Once I have the bones of the story, I create a storyboard from beginning to end that covers the key scenes, and I write some dialogue as well to get a sense of how the characters feel in these. Once all this is done, I finally sit in front of the computer. 

As I already have a clear idea of the story and the characters, I try to write a chapter per day. At this stage, I don’t worry about perfect grammar or even a single nuance – I just want to get the story down from start to finish and see whether it works. 

I write every day for as long as it takes until I’ve nailed that chapter. It can mean very long hours. The following day, I read through what I’ve done and then start the next chapter.

Once I’ve got the book finished, I put it away for a few weeks. The second pass is when I fine-tune the grammar, and make sure I’ve added in all the scents, sounds, feelings and nuances that bring the story to life.

At this point I’ll let a few friends or family members read it so I can get their feedback. Then I revise the manuscript again. I might repeat this process many times before I send the file to a professional editor for review.

How much research do you do for your novels, and how do you go about it?
Researching a story takes me many months, even years. I always write about what I know or have experienced in some way or another. So I’ll visit the locations in the story if at all possible, take photographs, talk to the locals and get a feel for the location I’m writing about.

In my photojournalist days, I travelled a lot and kept notes, so in some cases I can rely on those.

My main character’s base in the supernatural series is Whitby, on the east coast. This is a town I’ve been visiting since early childhood and I still go there with my family. I love the place.

The second book is set mainly in the Scottish Highlands. My father was Scottish and, again, it’s a place I know well from both work and leisure.

I do other research by trawling the internet, reading relevant books or interviewing people who know about the subjects I’m writing about. I try really hard to make things as authentic as possible even though I’m writing about things like ghosts and witchcraft in the first three books.
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The fourth book, which I’m working on now, is a historical adventure based on the legacy of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. For the past six months I’ve been back and forth to Scotland, checking out the locations, talking to people, visiting museums and so on. I’m hoping to finish this research by August; then I’ll write the story.

Where do you get the inspiration for your stories?
The idea behind the supernatural series came from a conversation about psychic mediums.

There’d been some news claims about a famous psychic using devious methods to gather information that they’d then used in their shows to wow the public. Whether this story was true or not I don’t know, but it gave me an idea. What if there was a psychic who knew he was a fake but whose heart was in the right place? So he didn’t believe in any afterlife or spiritual world but could fake it because he believed he was doing the right thing – bringing comfort and closure to the bereaved.

Now, what if this person then unwittingly summoned a very real ghost in one of his sessions, and this ghost was intent on wreaking revenge?

The basic idea struck me as funny and something people might enjoy reading about. Hence, Nathen Turner, my psychic medium character, was born.

The idea behind the adventure I’m writing now came after I stumbled across a news story about the Jacobites. I can’t say too much about this one at the moment but I’ll put information about it on the website or my Goodreads blog once I’m further into the process!

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? If so, how did you get through it?
A very weird thing happens when I’m stumbling over my writing – the characters seem to come alive and tell me what they’d do! I know this sounds bizarre but the characters are real people in my head.

Many times, I’ve wondered where to go in a scene but written it anyway. Then I’ve read it back and thought: This person wouldn’t behave like that. So I change it. I think that the more you work with your characters the more this tends to happen.

Sometimes I look back and can’t even remember writing a particular scene – it's like I’ve had a stream of consciousness and become so wrapped up in the story that I’ve put it down without thinking too deeply about it.

Occasionally, I’ll end up pacing around the garden or heading for a strong caffeine fix if I can’t figure out the best way to get the words on paper.

Having the bones of the story already mapped out in my notebooks is a huge help here. I go back to them and make sure that what I’m writing stays true to the original idea.

Is writing a series an important part of your strategy?
Personally, I think that writing a series is vital for an independent author. The more books you have out there in a series the more visible you become to readers.
Also, people who like one book will usually buy the others in the series. Hence your sales increase without any expensive promotional activity.

When I wrote the first book I already had the basic stories for the other two in my head, as they were part of my main character’s development – he gets more and more involved in the supernatural and the legacy of his past.

I’ve planned out other stories for this character already but I’m taking a break from him to write an adventure story. Again, the characters in this new adventure can build into a series, and I have a rough idea of how I could make that work.

How have you found the experience of self-publishing?
Self-publishing has been a huge learning curve. I was used to a press background where you do a story and it gets in the press or on TV the next day. Fiction publishing is simply not like that.

Writing a novel is a slow process involving many revisions long before it gets anywhere near a professional editor or proofreader.

Even after that, there’s the time it takes to typeset and come up with a cover design you hope will appeal to readers.

And then there’s Nielsen, Ingram Spark, CreateSpace and so on, and learning how their systems work.

So, yes, a huge learning curve. Luckily, there’s a lot of information on the internet to guide you. 

The biggest nail-biter is after you’ve sent the finished novel off for independent review and you’re waiting to see if the reviewers like it. This is a story you’ve poured your heart and soul into for a long time. If your work gets pulled apart it’s a bit like someone criticising your children. I was very worried about that!

I’ve been very fortunate so far – the books have been well received. It’s a huge boost to your ego but there’s always something in the back of your mind that’s waiting for that first bad review.

At the end of the day, it’s impossible to please everybody, but I always hope that if the novel has been through the various editing steps, then most of the flaws have been ironed out before it faces the public.

The biggest benefit is control over your own destiny and the sheer pleasure of writing.

The downside, as ever, is financial. Without a publishing contract behind you, you’re taking all the risks and have to pay for all your promotion. And you don’t know whether it’ll pay off.
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My attitude is simply that I have to make it work somehow. With my health condition, there are very few options left to me workwise, and desperation can be a great motivator!

Do you have any tips for new writers who are considering self-publishing?
For anyone considering self-publishing I’d say give it a go. It’s a fascinating world that has revolutionized the publishing industry.

There are two general approaches I’ve seen other writers take. The first is to study what’s currently in the bestseller market and write something that will appeal to the same readership. As I don’t want to write about kinky sex scenes or zombie apocalypses, I didn’t choose that approach but there’s nothing wrong with it.

The second method is to have an idea that might work within a specific genre that you know about and enjoy reading. This is the approach I took as I felt my writing would be much more genuine and true to myself, and my readers.

Once you’ve decided on an approach, I suggest studying what’s out there. What do the covers look like? Which titles appeal to you? How can you create something new? How will you build a brand identity for your own work?

I spent a very long time on this before I created a look for my novels that was true to myself and fitted my genre.

After that, there’s the interior design. Which styles do you like and how could you make your work indistinguishable from a mainstream publisher’s? I think readers expect a certain quality in their print and ebooks – after all, they’re paying good money for them.

I chose a font and style that I liked and then tested it on family and friends to see what they thought. 

Getting feedback is, I think, vital. An independent publisher will be investing hundreds of hours in their project so it’s important to have the right mindset from the start or all that time will be wasted.

Once you’ve got the finished article, I recommend giving away some signed free copies to people you know socially who run local reading groups, bookstores and organisations.

Really, it’s just about letting people know you’re an author, and if you’ve done a good job with the cover and the typesetting, they’ll definitely take you seriously.

Anything you wish you’d known before you wrote your first book, and that you’d do differently now?
At the beginning, I was obsessed with getting an agent and a publishing contract. I didn’t know at the time how many submissions the agents receive and that the chances of securing representation for the genre I write in are between slim and none.

I also didn’t know that the majority of mainstream published books are not a commercial success and that many sell less than 750 copies even with a heavy-hitting publisher’s backing and advertising. If I’d known that, I think I’d have gone straight into self-publishing without a second thought and not bothered submitting to agents at the beginning.

The other thing I found out is that, because of their workload, only 30–40% of the agents get back to you, and your submission might even be overlooked by mistake.
So it can be disheartening. Sometimes it just means that your book doesn’t fit their current needs. I don’t think it’s worth getting too worked up about. 

Many self-published authors can make a success of their work – it just needs perseverance and more relationship building than hard sell, in my opinion.

Anything else you want to mention, Andrew?
I think the best advice I could give anyone who wants to be an author is simply to write. Stick to a schedule and do a daily stint. Don’t worry about coining the perfect phrase. 

After it’s down on paper, you can alter and correct as much as you like. A first draft is exactly that – the basic story in the raw, if you like. Add in weather, smells, sensations etc. to make your imaginary world believable, to bring it alive.

Background research is key for me, and it’s wonderful to discover new places and experiences. 

Keep a notebook and write down everything that you come across. It might not go in your current work; instead, think of it as a treasure trove for the future.

Most of all, enjoy it! I love writing and creating new stories. I’m a lot less mobile than I used to be. Creating my new adventures on paper has been more than a lifeline – it’s been an adventure in itself, and one I thoroughly enjoy!

You can find out more about Andrew and his novels on his website: www.andrewlangley.co.uk

For instant access to more self-publishing and indie-author resources, visit my Self-publishers page. ​Or join the library to get monthly updates.

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

‘I don’t know anything about audio books. How can I tell if a producer will do a good job on my book?’
That’s a tough question with few solid answers, but I can offer some tips.

1. Take some time to listen to some good, well-produced audio books.
You are usually safe with most stuff from the larger publishing houses and big-name authors. Try to listen to not just the narration but also to how the narration SOUNDS. Then compare that to the auditions you’ve received.

2. How loud is the recording in the pauses between sentences?
There shouldn’t be a lot of background noise, but neither should it sound like the recording drops off a cliff in between sentences.

3. Are there ANY extraneous sounds in the background, like a barking dog or a car driving by?
Those sorts of sounds should NEVER be in the recording and I would consider them an instant red flag.

4. Can you hear a lot of ‘mouth noise’?
Strange clicks, smacking lips, that sort of thing. This is a challenge for almost all narrators, and if you catch a little, it’s not a cause for major concern. But if you find yourself distracted by the sounds, be careful.

See, the thing is that a Producer on ACX really does have to be more than just a narrator. They have to be a narrator, a director, an editor, and an engineer.

There are a lot of skills involved and not everyone is equally good at all the facets of each job. This is why you need to listen to more than just the performance when evaluating auditions.

Note that no one is perfect and you can get a good audio book from someone who has at least a base level of competency in some the various skills while excelling in a few others.

Again, it’s up to you to determine if a producer is capable enough to do a good job with your book.

Also, when evaluating any producer, be sure you look them up to see what other books they’ve done. Do they have a bunch of books already out there?

• Listening to the samples of those books, how do they sound?
• What sorts of books are they?
• Are they about the length that your book is likely to be or longer, showing that they will be likely to complete your project?
• Have they done books in a similar genre to your book?

Note that some producers publish under a pseudonym, so if you can’t find anything on your own, ask. If they’re really brand new and have absolutely no history to go by, don’t be afraid to ask about what sort of training they have that can give you confidence that they’ll do the job.

In short, do your homework on your potential producer, or you’ll only have yourself to blame if things don’t work out!

Audio-book production: A primer for indie authors from an audio-book producer
This 26-page primer includes over 5,000 words of guidance from Ray, a professional voice artist, on the following:

• Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX)
• Terminology and definitions
• Pricing options: Pay for Production, Royalty Share, and Hybrid
• Production time
• Choosing a voice artist
• Red flags
• Sampling the first 15 minutes
• Doing it yourself
• Equipment and environment
• Pre-production manuscript editing
• Distribution rights
• Briefing a narrator

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Online writing courses
Just a quickie ... a member of Louise's Writing Library asked me if I'd put together a list of online writing courses. It's a work in progress and I'll be adding new resources as I become aware of them.

If you think I've missed something, drop me a line at louise@louiseharnbyproofreader.com.

You can access the current list via the Self-publishers page on my site, where all the library resources live.

Just look for Online Tutoring for Self-Publishers: Writing Courses and click on the image to download the free PDF.

Until next time ...

For instant access to more self-publishing and indie-author resources, visit my Self-publishers page. ​Or join the library to get monthly updates.

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

I'm so, so grateful to Ray Greenley for taking the time to write a comprehensive primer on audio-book creation for me! It's absolutely brilliant.

Ray's a professional voice artist (he's the narrator behind, among other audio books, Philip K Dick's The Unreconstructed M and Other Stories) but he's a fab writer as well.

I love listening to audio books, but creating them? That’s quite another matter. And yet I wanted to know more, and I figured some of you would too.

And because it’s one of those aspects of self-publishing that’s just too expensive to get wrong, I felt that my writing a guide to the process simply wouldn’t do.

I wanted to offer you something that would give you in-depth, honest and usable insights. That way, if you do decide to create an audio book, you can do it right.

​I hoped a professional narrator could furnish you with those insights, and Ray hasn’t disappointed.

​The following article is an excerpt from the full 26-page primer. At the bottom of the post there's information on how to access Audio-book production: A primer for indie authors from an audio-book producer.
​
Enjoy! (And thank you, Ray!)

An introduction from the voice artist, Ray Greenley
Hello, dear author! Congratulations on your latest book!

Have you considered having an audio book of your work produced? If not, you should! More and more consumers are buying audio books for a variety of reasons, and audio-book sales are booming compared to digital print sales (see Resources: Kozlowski).

As an author, you absolutely want to be a part of that growing market. But audio books are an entirely different beast from print books. Getting into a new market is always intimidating. Where do you even start?

I’m here to help. I’m an audio-book narrator who has worked with indie authors to produce audio-book editions of their work.

In Audio-book production I give you a high-level look at what you need to know to get your book produced as an audio book. In this post, we're focusing on platforms and prices.

There’s work to be done, but it’s probably not as difficult as you might think. Read on!

‘So how can I get my book produced as an audio book?’
It wasn’t all that long ago that virtually all audio-book production was handled by a few big publishers, and getting your book produced was probably a similar feat to getting a big print publisher to publish and distribute your book.

That’s all changed. Getting your book produced as an audio book is easier now than it’s ever been.

Probably the biggest factor in that change is a site called ACX. That stands for Audiobook Creation Exchange. It’s run by Audible.com (the world’s largest distributor of audio books, and owned by Amazon.com).

It’s essentially a meeting place where rights holders (that’s you!) can list their books in order to find producers (like me!) who are interested in producing the book as an audio book.

Producers (that’s the term used by ACX; consider it synonymous with narrator for the sake of this discussion) can see the listed book and submit an audio audition for it. 
The rights holder listens to the auditions and can offer a contract to the producer they think will do the best job. 

Once the producer accepts the contract, they produce the book and submit it through ACX. The rights holder can then listen to the book, and if they approve it, it gets prepared for release. ACX manages the contract, the payment of royalties, and distribution to the associated platforms (Audible.com, Amazon.com, and iTunes.com).

‘That doesn’t sound so bad, but cut to the chase: How much will all this cost me?’
Cost is, of course, always a factor. With ACX, there are multiple options that allow virtually anyone to have their book made into an audio book. But as with many things in life, you often get what you pay for.

First a quick note that there is no fee from ACX for registering on their site or for listing your book. They get their money on the back end once the book goes up for sale, so they just want to encourage as many books to be produced as possible.

ACX allows rights holders to offer producers two types of contracts: Pay for Production and Royalty Share. Note that regardless of the type of contract, the rights holder always gets full ownership of the audio produced.

A Pay for Production contract means that you’re paying the producer a flat fee for their work. Once you’ve paid the fee, the audio book is published and you’ll receive royalties from sales of the audio book.

So what’s a typical fee? Well, first off, the fee is based on the length of the completed audio book. When you offer a contract, you agree to pay a certain amount Per Finished Hour (PFH) of the audio book. So if the audio book ends up being 10 hours long, you’ll pay the agreed-upon amount times 10.
​
What sort of PFH rate can you expect to pay? Well, it depends on the type of talent you’re looking to attract. If you want a top-rate, full-time professional narrator, you can expect to pay around $300 PFH, or even more.

​‘Wait, what!? That means for my 10-hour book …’
… you’d pay around $3,000, yes. Sounds like a lot, right? Well, it is a lot, and I touch on why that number is what it is in the full ebook.

But for now, let’s get back to the discussion on cost. Because you don’t have to offer that much for a Pay for Production contract. You can offer less, and are likely to get producers willing to record your book for less.

Just keep in mind that as you go lower in what you’re offering, so the caliber of producers you attract to your project will change. I’d say that once you get below $200 PFH you’re pushing out of the zone where most quality producers feel like they can get a reasonable return on their time, but that may not always be the case.

A quick note: There absolutely can be an aspect of negotiation with regards to the contracts you offer. ACX doesn’t care what the final number is. That’s entirely something to be worked out between you and the producer.

‘I really don’t want to put up that kind of money. Is there another option?’
Yes, there is! 

It’s the Royalty Share contract that I mentioned above. 

In this contract, you don’t pay the producer anything up front, but instead split the royalties on sales of the book with that person.

‘Hang on – I can get my book produced as an audio book without having to actually pay anything?’
Yes, that’s pretty much it! Sounds great, right?

‘It sounds too good to be true. What’s the catch?’
The catch is that the top producers are VERY selective about the Royalty Share contracts they’re willing to accept.

It takes lot of time and effort to produce an audio book, and producers who are trying to pay their bills and feed their families with money from their work won’t take a second look at your book unless it has a record of strong sales.

Even if your book isn’t breaking any sales records, you can still list it and are likely to get some auditions. Just be realistic about the kind of producers who are going to be sending those auditions. They may be low on experience, talent, or both.

That’s not to say it’s a hopeless case. We all have to start somewhere.

Once upon a time, I was that producer who was low on experience and sending out my first auditions. The author who picked me to narrate my first audio book was an indie author who had just written his first book.

While I’ve learned quite a bit since that first book, and there are definitely things I would do differently now, I’m still proud of my work on it and the critical reception has been overall quite positive.

But it’ll be entirely up to you to make that determination. Just as ACX allows rights holders to sign up and post their book for free, they also allow anyone to sign up as a producer and send in an audition for free. And I do mean ANYONE. Do NOT assume that just because someone is a Producer on ACX that they actually know what they’re doing.

In the full edition of the ebook, I offer guidance on how to assess whether the narrator/producer is doing a good job.

​For now, thanks for reading!

Resources

• ACX Rights Holder’s Checklist
• Royalty Share Contracts and Marketing
• So You Want to be an Audio Book Narrator
• 5 Tips for Successful Audio Books
• Michael Kozlowski, Editor in Chief, Good e-Reader

Contact Ray Greenley
Website | Facebook | Twitter

​
​Audio-book production: A primer for indie authors from an audio-book producer
This 26-page primer includes over 5,000 words of guidance from Ray, a professional voice artist, on the following:

• Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX)
• Terminology and definitions
• Pricing options: Pay for Production, Royalty Share, and Hybrid
• Production time
• Choosing a voice artist
• Red flags
• Sampling the first 15 minutes
• Doing it yourself
• Equipment and environment
• Pre-production manuscript editing
• Distribution rights
• Briefing a narrator

It's available free to members of Louise's Writing Library. To get your copy, simply join the library.

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.
​
For more self-publishing resources, visit my Self-publishers page. Or join the library to get monthly updates.

Managing the process of book cover design
So you’ve written, edited and prepared your book’s interior for your preferred distribution channels.
 
Now you need the cover. And, as I know all too well, being able to write in no way qualifies one for being able to design.  
 
When we’re self-publishing, there are some parts of the process that are, for most of us, best bought in. When it comes to book jackets and digital covers, that means talking to a designer.
 
Whether you decide to do it yourself or hire a designer will depend on your budget. Either way there are some design basics that are well worth bearing in mind to help you make your book wow itself.
 
Great words compel your readers to finish your book ... A great cover compels them to start it.
​
Chris Hamilton-Emery, design director of The Cover Factory and co-founder of the gorgeous independent publisher Salt (based here in mostly sunny Norfolk!) has been kind enough to share his expertise (and his fantastic sense of humour!).
 
The advice below will help both the self-publisher and those looking for publishing contracts. Chris's core mantra? Avoid being dull.

​Design by committee
For authors with a publishing contract, it’s not uncommon for a team to be involved in briefing a designer – they may not be acting as a team, but there’s often one involved.
 
... A sales manager who has her eye on that cover that’s on display in Book Bonanza’s shop window.
 
... The marketing manager who keeps up with the new trends and the language around covers: ‘It needs some spacy calmness for the furniture to show up the title text.’
 
... Perhaps the bookseller: ‘Put a snake on it in a herby sort of border.’
 
... The managing director: “We don’t do serifs or colour at Gubbins & Potsdamer.”
 
... And then there’s the production manager, the print buyer, the design manager. Everyone has something to add to the sauce, not least an expectation of stellar sales.
 
Then someone rings the author. “He says blue reminds him of his dead mother, and the goat is the wrong breed.”
 
Which all goes to say that cover design has its contexts.
 
The person that truly matters is, of course, the reader – yet a cover has many important audiences before we reach that goal. That’s because it’s the chief means by which people make their investments in the book in the supply chain long before the bound paper book block (or its digital sister) touches the shelves.
 
A cover signals commitment from the publisher (even if that publisher is you, the author); it signals desire among booksellers; it signals prospects among the supply chain, and its critics and reviewers. Many will be spending their money before anyone has read a word.
 
For those with publishing contracts, it’s entirely possible that the author will have no contractual say in the matter, though few publishers would be brave enough to go to press with a cover that an author despised.

To boldly go?
Many covers are compromises and copies, and covers, like many parts of our modern lives, are influenced by fashion.

A cover that breaks ranks and stands out has as much chance of failure as success and so many covers play it safe. Being bold can also mean being ignored. As one friend put it, ‘The cutting edge is also the bleeding edge.’

Some markets have their own design universes, like crime, or romance – and it will take a brave soul to depart from the conventions of the genre.

Yet we all aspire to good cover design, and we all recognize that in the fiercely competitive environment of today’s global book trade, a cover can really help make a book work, by which we mean, distinguish itself.

Whomever compiles the brief has no easy task; they will be serving the multiple masters listed above and trying to find a way forward to inspire a designer to deliver a pot of gold in the shape of a small rectangle.

The brief
Do provide a synopsis, but not necessarily the entire book 
List three powerful visual moments. List one or two key visual themes. If the book had a palette, of which colours would it be comprised? How would you like readers to react to it?

Do not ask for your entire book to be illustrated on the cover
‘There must be a gold sky with twenty-six ravens, and a golf house, a small bus, traffic cones and a trifle, but no jelly. And on the trestle tables, bunting. And a seal. There are two main characters, one tall, the other taller, each has a mole. They are wearing jacquard ties. They must be shown in front of the thirty-seven villagers, all attempting to get into a train. The train is going to Doncaster.’ Hmm.

Detail is the great enemy of good design. 

Yet so, too, is needless abstraction. ‘Can it be wavy green with splashy washy bits? Except blue.’ 

Inspiring a great design can frequently be found in seeking out the monolithic and iconic message a successful cover often presents, ‘If she had eyes, they would be stones.’ Leave plenty of room for the designer to imagine, to take risks, and above all to surprise you with their own art. 

Never ask a designer to work up your own ideas. If you have ideas, especially strong ones, express them as visual journeys. Don’t offer destinations.

Ask questions
Perhaps the best way to ask questions is to show things that you believe work for you – other covers that appeal, especially ones relevant to the text. 

Create a visual space for the designer to work in, and add your brief to provide context and challenges. 

Good questions expose the problem, good questions get to the central, even the reductive, theme of the book. ‘If there was ever a home like this, it would be a songless house on a wet hill with a red rat at its heart.’ 

So, again, ask for three visuals, perhaps some early sketches, to see where things are leading. Or be bold and say, I am prepared to be surprised. 

Consider the compulsion factor
It’s also important to know the mechanics of a cover – once it’s passed through its committees and is en route to the bookstore, its role really comes into its own. 

Among the tens of thousands of books being put in front of readers, in stores or online, the cover’s job is simply to attract the browser, that momentous millisecond of compulsion that makes someone pick the book up, read the blurb and break open the spine. Or scroll down a page and click Look Inside.

Think of it. You spot something, your eye stops its movement, you lean forward and pick up the book, you turn it over and read an endorsement, your eye flickers, you read down. Ah, it’s about the last water mill in a land of drought ... You open the book and a journey begins (one that starts at the till).

Think back. The cover merely had to stop you moving on and its work was almost done – such a simple and perplexing thing. Would something more complicated have worked better? Something less fussy? Something less drab?

The essentials ...
Not everyone can afford a £3,000 cover budget; nor are they willing to have a six-month internal circulation list for everyone to argue over within a publishing house.

You may be going it alone; you may be self-publishing.

The problems are still the same – your cover must be distinctive, distinguishable, memorable, singular and arresting. 

• Stock art can provide a basis, but rarely a solution, to your needs. 
• Typography should be clear and maintain some personality. 
• Avoid a title top, a box for an illustration and your name at the bottom.
• Avoid the reverse, too. 
• Above all, go into a bookstore and look at covers. Lots of them. What’s going on in the world of covers? What are the expectations? Know your market and address it. Understand who the readers are. 

Free fonts can help in devising sketches. Test your ideas out with professionals. Don’t test them out with friends. 

Look at your cover in the context of your competitors.

And give it time. If you’ve spent years writing your book, at least give a few months to considering the cover. 

Be aware of your own prejudices. Be aware of your own tastes. 

Pay attention to space and position, to colour and clarity. 

And if your book is to be printed, above all, remember the spine, for this is what most readers will see. 

Don’t mistake a poverty of design as the representation of authenticity. Don’t over elaborate, either. Look at your cover from twelve feet away; can you recognize it, read it?

Working with the designer ...
Let’s roll back through these notes towards a design. If we’re using a designer, we want to enthuse and inspire, we want to ignite not instruct. We want to understand the context in relation to other covers.

We want to be aware of those who will put our book in front of readers. 

We want the readers to pick it up or click on it.

Whether we use a designer or produce something ourselves, we are all chasing something singular, clear and memorable. We are avoiding complexity. We are signifying the book more than illustrating its contents. 

Above all we are branding it. 

Remember that brands symbolise and represent complicated relationships and stories by simple means.

Simple doesn’t mean dull. In fact, perhaps the best mantra is, don't be dull. The world needs its little moments of glamour.

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

This week's post is a cracker. Self-published author Jeff Carson has kindly agreed to discuss his writing journey.

Jeff's a mystery and thriller writer from Colorado. Writing is his full-time job and he makes a living from his self-published series.

That's a dream for millions of independent authors; below, Jeff shares 11 tips on how he turned that dream into a reality.

If you're at the start of your self-publishing adventure, this is definitely for you!

My name is Jeff Carson and I’m the author of a series starring David Wolf, a cop living in the fictional town of Rocky Points in the Colorado Rockies. Right now, I’ve written ten books in the series.

When I first started out writing, I remember being tormented at night by questions swimming in my head (and by mosquitos … at the time, we were in Italy for a year, and they were thick that summer, I tell you). Questions like: Can I really do this? Can I make a living at it? Is this just a waste of my time? What if everyone hates the books?
 
By finding a few people online who’d made a success of becoming a self-published author, I was able to get a lot of my questions answered and some inspiration that propelled me towards making a living as a fiction writer.
 
I despise playing the guru, and I’m cringing a little as I write this, but I have accomplished the goals I laid out five years ago. So I have to say that I feel l’ve succeeded in the self-publishing realm.
 
There are others, many others, who would scoff at my level of accomplishment, but this blog post isn’t for them. This is for those who are in the position I once was, in that sweat-soaked Italian bed.
 
Here are 11 things that have helped me succeed as a self-published author. 

1. I want to make a living doing this
That’s been the over-arching goal from the beginning. I wanted my paycheck to come from writing. I wanted to make money twenty-four hours per day from people reading my books.
 
I’ve met many people who approach writing as a therapeutic tool for their lives. That’s fine. But 100% of people who write get the therapeutic benefit. One only makes money from it if it’s a goal.

You don't wake up with a horse one day by random accident. There’s a lot of intention and action that goes into suddenly having a hay-eating animal roaming around in the back yard. Same thing goes with earning a living from writing. 

2. I wrote a book series
I learned that if you want to make money from writing fiction, the odds of success go up dramatically by writing a series. Since my goal was to make money with this gig, naturally I wrote a series. 

Harlan Coben is the exception, not the norm. 

On this note, I learned the hard way to not leave books ending on a cliff-hanger. I'd done this with book one and received a lot of negative reviews. I’ve since fixed the novel so that all story goals are resolved and it ends completely. 

In my series, my characters grow and their lives change from each book to the next, but I try to make each book a stand-alone. 

This helps with marketing, too, since anyone can pick up one of the David Wolf novels at any point in the series and feel grounded and up to speed. 

3. I over-estimated, or realistically estimated, the level of work it would take to achieve my goal (of making a living writing) 
I knew that one book in a series, the first book I’d ever written and published in my entire life, would make no money. Pessimistic? It’s not.
 
First, I was learning how to write a story. Second, I wasn’t expecting to gain a wide audience with a single book taking up a single slot in the vast Amazon universe.
 
I knew book one was the hook – the mouth of a funnel – that would lead to the rest of the books in the series. In fact, I knew I was probably going to offer the first book for free.
 
I needed multiple books in multiple categories grabbing people’s attention, all of them leading readers to the other books sitting in other categories. The series would act as a big net.

I figured that after three books I’d be making some ‘extra money’. I hoped that after five I’d be making enough money to quit all other work and concentrate on writing only. Then I doubled that number.

Therefore, I created a goal of writing ten books; then I’d judge the venture one way or another.

In reality, after five books I was able to write full-time and make a full-time living wage. Now that I’m on book eleven, my goals, expectations, and earnings have elevated. 

At the beginning, I felt that if I set my work expectations too low, I’d become discouraged, and fast. Because if after, say, four books I was still irrelevant and making nothing, then my hopes would be dashed.
 
Some people would call a ten-book ‘realistic expectation’ pessimistic, but in my mind it’s the reason I kept going when, after three books, I’d known months that wouldn’t have paid for a week’s worth of groceries. 

4. I concentrate on what I want every day
I’ve filled two college-ruled notebooks with lists of my goals. Every day (or most days) I open up a notebook, list the writing goals/life goals with specific deadlines, such as when I’ll finish the first draft and when I’ll publish, and then I get to work. 

I learned this technique by reading this Brian Tracy book on goal-setting: Goals! How to Get Everything You Want – ​Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible.

That book definitely changed my life. I'd never even had goals before reading that book. 

Now I always set goals. Deadlines always get pushed back, which would be depressing if I let myself to think about it. But the system doesn’t allow for that. Each day is a new sheet, and a new list of goals with either the same deadlines or adjusted deadlines. Looking back on previous lists of goals is not permitted. 

5. I read the bad reviews
This is a biggie. I’ve heard some authors say, ‘I just ignore the bad reviews.’ I adopted that stance for quite a while, actually. But there’s always something to learn from a bad review. 

In fact, I think it’s dangerous and irresponsible if you ignore the one- and two-star shellacking some people take pride in giving out between hangover-induced trips to the bathroom, the sons of bitches. 

Some people get specific – ‘Nice try. A Sig Sauer P226 doesn’t have a safety! Amateur writer at best. I will not be reading another piece of filth by this author.’

So, fine. You skim past the amateur comment and go fix the book so that the special agent DOESN’T flick off the safety as she steps out of her SUV. I think my books are orders of magnitude better because of the bad reviews. 

I figure that if somebody came up to me on the street, pointed, laughed, and criticized my outfit, I’d shake my head and move on, not in the least worried about that person a few steps later. But if her criticism is, ‘Your fly’s down … oh, yeah, and your pants are on backwards. Idiot,’ well, then, I want to know that. 

6. Screw it. I don’t need social media
Early on, I adopted the stance that I needed to write my way into relevance as a writer, not tweet, post, or whatever my way into it. 

Once I adopted this mindset, a weight lifted off my back. I hated it for some reason. I couldn’t get a grasp on social media, so I just let go of it. 

My investigation leading up to my decision showed a correlation between how much an author published books and how successful they were, between how many positive reviews a book had and how successful it was. I could check an author’s success by looking at the rankings of their books on Amazon and other market places.

There was no correlation, however, between how present people were on social media and their book rankings. 

In fact, more often than not, I saw that people who were successful had all but abandoned their social media accounts. In contrast, there were people all over Twitter and Facebook, with hundreds of thousands of friends/followers, and books lost in obscurity. 

Clearly there are exceptions, and some people have great success with social media, but my reasoning was: you write your way into being a writer. 

I rarely post on Facebook, and when I do, it’s usually a link to my new books – classic poor social media behavior. Screw it. I don’t care. 

7. I am accessible
​I respond to every communication sent to me. I think this is huge as a writer, or as a person in general. Nothing irks me more than somebody simply not responding to something.
 
The most surprising thing about writing, and that I sometimes get all teary-eyed about, is the amount of love people will send your way after they’ve read your novel. People will click on the email address (which I put in the back of the book) and contact me, telling me how much they like my book. For me to not say thanks is plain psycho.
 
Plus, it’s just good business. People who like you are more likely to share the news about your work.

8. I have a newsletter email list
This is one of those things I heard people preaching – you have to have an email list of readers – but never did anything about. It took me four freaking books to finally put my email list in place. But I finally did, and that’s when I was finally able to write full time.
 
It only took two days to write and publish a short story, which I give away on my blog as a thank-you if somebody signs up for the new-release newsletter.
 
Now, when I have a new release, I launch the book to thousands of people, versus dropping it into a field of crickets.

9. I write in sprints first, edit later
This is one of those huge game-changers for me. I was getting upset sitting in front of the computer every day but only coming out with one or two thousand words.
 
Now, I write in sprints, which means I write in thirty-minute blocks, take a five-minute break, and then do it again. Using the backspace button is not allowed (a rule I break all the time … my OCD won’t allow David Wolf’s name to be Wols for more than a few seconds).
 
It took me six or so books to employ the sprint tactic, and now I’ll never write any other way.

10. I have a self-editing PLAN
After tapping out a real crappy draft of a terrible book, then going back through a few times, editing, ironing out inconsistencies, tightening up descriptions of dead bodies, etc., I have in the past simply read and re-read the book, then tweaked until I felt it was ‘as good as I can get it’.
 
I’m ashamed to say, it’s only been recently that I’ve implemented a self-editing plan.
 
The plan is something like …

1. Search and remove all/rewrite all instances of ‘there were’.
2. Search and remove all/rewrite all instances of ‘there was’.
3. Search and remove all/rewrite all instances of ‘was’.
4. Search and remove all/rewrite all instances of ‘just’.
5. Search and remove all/rewrite all instances of ‘really’.
6. Search and remove all/rewrite all instances of helping verbs.
7. Etc.
8. Etc.

Since I’ve begun to remove all extraneous wording with a set plan, I feel my finished products have improved drastically. There’s a lot of literature out there on how to approach this. [Note from Louise: bookmark my Self-publishers page; I have a post due shortly on how to highlight unnecessary words using a free, easy-to-use macro.]

11. I hire an editor who does it for a living, for a rate that allows her to do it for a living
After seven books, going through three editors, and becoming frustrated with the service I was getting, I realized that I needed to hire an editor who was an editor and only an editor, and who charged a rate that clearly allowed her to feel properly compensated.
 
The alternative is hiring somebody who does the work on the side for cheap. They’re pressed for time. They’re secretly (I imagine, because I would be) pissed off about being underpaid for a job that deserves more money.
 
The equation adds up to a poor editing job on the finished product … suspicious stretches of pages – five, ten at a time – without a single mark on them.
 
The saying goes, ‘You get what you pay for,’ and it can get tricky when paying for editing services. For years, I tried to get away with paying less. And I definitely got less.

... In today’s publishing environment, I know that, for me, every bit of advice helps. I hope at least one of the tips above helps you on your journey to becoming a successful self-published writer.

​Where to find Jeff and his books

• Jeff Carson: contact
• Jeff Carson: newsletter sign-up
• Foreign Deceit (David Wolf #1) 
• The Silversmith (David Wolf #2)
• Alive and Killing (David Wolf #3)
• Deadly Conditions (David Wolf #4)
• Cold Lake (David Wolf #5)
• Smoked Out (David Wolf #6)
• To the Bone (David Wolf #7)
• Dire (David Wolf #8)
• ​Signature (David Wolf #9)
• Dark Mountain (David Wolf #10)

For instant access to more self-publishing and indie-author resources, visit my Self-publishers page. ​Or join the library to get monthly updates.

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

How do mainstream publishers produce books?
A lot of my self-publishing clients tell me they don’t understand what happens in the mainstream publishing industry’s editorial process. So when I advise them that – if they have the budget – they should do their best to mimic it, they’re in the dark.

Today’s post aims to switch on the lights by offering you an overview of the editorial production chain. It should give you a sense of why books take so long to get to market and what some of the costs are (to the publisher and even to the author!).

Every press’s editorial production chain is slightly different but the broad principles apply.

A note on scheduling … and marketing
In the mainstream publishing industry, books are commissioned and scheduled for publication often up to a year and a half in advance, sometimes longer!

That time frame isn’t down to the publisher being busy with other stuff; rather, it’s about giving the relevant team members the necessary time to take the book through a rigorous editing process and carry out a staged prepublication marketing campaign.

TOP TIP: When self-publishing, instead of promoting your book at the eleventh hour, plan and implement your marketing campaign well ahead of launch. That way, you can create a fan base and generate excitement about your novel before it goes to market, even pulling in some pre-order sales.

​3. ​Design #1
When the key members have agreed that the correction stage is complete, the raw-text files are handed over to a typesetter (if the book is to be printed). This is where the first proofs are created.

The typesetter formats the book so that the layout conforms to the agreed house style and is designed so that maximum use of the page space is made. Printing is very expensive so minimizing wasted white space is a key factor in the process. The typesetter needs to balance costs against aesthetics.

4. Proofreading
The production manager sends the first proofs (perhaps a chunk of paper but increasingly a PDF) to the author and the proofreader (usually a freelancer).

Both will check them carefully. The proofreader may be asked to proofread blind or against the original raw-text files worked on by the copyeditor (the latter is much slower). The proofreader’s job is not to make extensive changes, but rather to draw attention to any final spelling, punctuation, grammar, consistency or logic problems missed at earlier rounds of editing or introduced during the typesetting stage.

Every change the proofreader makes or suggests needs to be handled carefully in case it has a knock-on effect on the design, the page count and, consequently, the printing costs.
​
It’s demanding work that requires experience and judgement about when to change and when to leave well enough alone. Some publishers even pass some of these costs back to the author – eek!

5. Final revision: Design #2
Now the proofreader’s corrected file and the author’s version go back to the production manager, who has to collate all the final amendments and instruct the typesetter to make the necessary corrections.

The typesetter creates a revised file and returns it to the production manager for sign-off. 

6. File creation and distribution (print, digital or both)
The final countdown! The production manager works with the typesetter and printer to create the final print book that will be delivered to the relevant distribution channels.

​In the case of e-books, the production manager will commission a digital formatter to create e-Pub files that are compatible with the market’s major e-readers and other digital devices. 

The elusive publishing deal and the editorial process
As you can see, there are a lot of stages and a lot of people involved. And that’s why it takes so long and why it’s so expensive to publish.

It also explains, in part, why writers can find it so hard to get a mainstream publishing deal; if the book bombs, there’s no return on all that investment. 

For publishers, novels that need a lot of work, or that don’t fit neatly into an obvious and currently popular genre, are difficult to sell (the high-street bookshops don’t know where to place them to grab readers’ attention).

Should you mimic the mainstream publishing industry's editorial process?
Mimicry will bring you quality – there’s no doubt about that. It’ll also require a major investment in time and money.

We all have to make difficult choices about what we do to make the things we create the best they can be. But there are limitations. I’m passionate about the independent author’s right to write, and I know that your pockets aren’t bottomless.

I hope this has shed some light on the mainstream publishing process! Until next time …

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Gagen recommends discussing the issue before the project starts. It may be that a writer will prefer you to just go ahead and make a substantive edit to the text. Others may want a nudge. Others will prefer a more detailed explanation in the comments.

And given that we’re trying to help our authors avoid reader disengagement, it would be a shame if, through hitting the wrong tone, we ended up disengaging our clients.

Adrienne Montgomerie offers further food for thought: ‘When you’re worn out, incredulous, and exasperated, it can show in your queries.’

Eek! To think that, despite our best efforts at advocacy, we might have made our author feel we’re no longer on their side, is unthinkable, and yet it can happen. She offers a handy list of different phrases you might consider when querying to keep your author engaged and your tone on track (‘10 Ways to Word a Sensitive Query’).

I hope you’ve found these tips useful. Here’s your PDF mini-booklet if you fancy downloading the post to your device. Just click on the image to get your copy.

​Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

If you’re new to writing and self-publishing, I have a tip for you – one that will save you a major headache as you work through the initial writing and later redrafting stages of your novel ...

Create your own style sheet! 

Honestly, you won't regret it. Building a style sheet is like holding hands ... but with yourself.

It'll help you keep track of what’s going on in your novel – who’s who, what’s where, and when X, Y and Z happens.

At the same time, you'll be able to record your preferences for the micro elements of your book ... things like spelling, punctuation, the rules about the way your fictional world works, and how you treat the various elements of the text (from paragraphs and headings to narrative, speech and thoughts).

Want a template to help you get going? No problem – there’s one at the end of this article. It’s in Word so you can add, delete or tweak to your heart’s content. Ready-to-go downloadable handholding!

To help you out, I've added some of my own recommendations (based on industry-recognized conventions) and offered choice where appropriate.

What’s included in a style sheet?
You can include anything you want but a solid, usable style sheet that'll really help you keep an eye on what's going on will include at least the following:

• character names, histories and traits
• how you’re going to handle point of view
• hyphenation and capitalization
• key geographical locations
• building names and layouts
• language choice
• punctuation style
• spelling preference
• tense choice
• timeline information
• treatment of dialogue and thoughts
• world-building rules

Some writers like to have everything in one place; others prefer to have several documents, each of which records different types of decisions, and toggle from one to another. It’s your choice – whatever helps you work most productively. So, for example, you might create different sheets for the following:

• the main character names and features, and the organizational, family or time-frame groupings they belong to
• a record of key events in the timeline (particularly useful if your novel covers multiple discrete time frames)
• geography: environments and buildings (especially important measurements, such as distances, heights, number of storeys, that if nonsensical could impair clarity)
• spelling and formatting preferences

Additional uses
A style sheet really comes into its own if you're writing a series. Not only will you have a reminder of the places, people and events in the previous book(s), you'll also be able to prevent accidental inconsistency or repetition.

I've proofread series for both indie writers and mainstream publishers. The authors hadn't kept a written record of what had gone before, and different copyeditors had been used for each book.

• In one case, this led to a character's surname changing slightly (but noticeably) in Book 2
• In another , the author had used the same surname for two separate key characters in different books in the series

Copyeditors and proofreaders can spot these problems when they occur within a single book, but if they weren't hired for the previous novel(s), they'll be ignorant of inconsistency or repetition across the series. Your style sheet will enable them to flag up potential errors.

In other words, a style sheet won’t just help you. It’ll help those who assist you, too. And the more we know about what you want, the better the service we can provide for you.

Rules versus preferences
Your decision is final at the end of the day. And while I and my colleagues can give you advice based on industry-recognized style manuals such as The Chicago Manual of Style or Oxford’s New Hart’s Rules, those resources are not the law (though they are excellent!).

Rather, they’re reference points that help writers and editors bring clarity, consistency and readability to text; they’re usually based on preference and convention, not rules (despite the title of the Oxford guide mentioned above!).

If you're not sure which particular element of style will suit your book best, talk to an editor.

• Developmental editors will be able to advise you on what works well in terms of big-picture decisions.
• Copyeditors and proofreaders will be able to guide you on the micro elements of style.

The thing to keep in mind is this: inconsistent styling will distract the reader and move them away from what they should be engaged with – your story.

​If you have any questions about issues of style, drop me a line in the comments. Even if I don’t know the answer off the top of my head, I’ll know where to find it and advise you accordingly.

Here’s your style-sheet template as promised. Simply click on the image below to download it. I hope you find it useful. Until next time ...

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Polishing your text and building fans
Readers who've enjoyed your book are more likely to leave positive reviews and come back for more.

Readers who've been frustrated with aspects of your book are more likely to leave negative reviews and reject further opportunities to engage.

One way of thinking about these groups of readers is in terms of zones. The happy readers are in the green zone, the grumpy ones in the red.

Thinking in terms of these zones can help writers to decide which editorial services to commission, when and why.

Readers have different expectations and levels of knowledge. If there are problems with the text, some won't realize. Or they will realize but won’t care. Others will care very much and be frustrated by the lack of polish.

​It's about putting your readers front of mind because they're your fans, the people who'll rave about you and tell everyone to buy your book. Fans hang out in the green zone.

​Let’s assume for simplicity that the readership is split evenly between those who don’t know or care that there are problems in the book and those who do know and care. Who’d want to alienate 50% of their readership?

If you’re self-publishing, you’ll want to stay out of the red zone. That means getting your book in the best shape you can before you publish.

Mimicking the mainstream publishing industry
What you need to do to stay out of the red zone will depend on whether you’re a mature, developing or emerging writer and the degree to which you've mastered your self-editing skills.

• It may be that you’re a superb world-builder but that structure and pace are your sticking points. In that case, you’ll need help from a substantive editor.
• Or you might have honed these aspects but your description tends towards repetition and wordiness. In that case, a line editor will help you make the text leaner and clearer.
• Then there are the micro elements of spelling, punctuation and grammar correction and consistency. If these are non-standard, a copyeditor will be able to knock the text into shape.
• Finally, you might decide you want a pre-publication proofread – a final quality-control check prior to publishing.

​
These are the stages, broadly speaking, that the mainstream publishing industry takes its books through to keep its authors in the green zone. In reality, the production process varies from press to press, but it gives you an idea of the traditional approach.

It’s not just publishing-house processes that vary. The terminology that independent editors use to define their levels of service provision differs widely too.

​For example, my pre-publication proofreading service is called Proofreading Standard. My copyediting service falls under the rubric of Proofreading Plus (and I include line editing when required). It’s therefore advisable to discuss what you want and what the editor can offer before the editing starts.
​
The table below gives you a broad idea of  the different stages (S1, S2 etc.) of professional editing and what they include. As you can see, I’ve allowed for a fair degree of overlap.
​

Artistry versus wizardry
Gandalf isn’t an editor or a proofreader; he’s a wizard! If he did my job, he’d be able to carry out all of the editorial stages above and find every single niggle, error and inconsistency in just one pass.

That’s because he has magical powers – unlike publishers and independent editors!

In the real world, though, you’ll have a budget, and some of you will have to make difficult decisions about which services to commission and which to omit (or how you're going to save up for everything your book needs).

It’s not for me to tell you here where to invest your budget – universally applicable advice is impossible given the number of factors to consider. What I can tell you is that I've never been able to undertake a final proofread for a book that hasn’t been copyedited first.

Proofreading is the stage where 90% of the sentence- and word-level problems (and 100% of the big-picture work) should have been fixed – it’s a final level of quality control. Furthermore, I've never finished a copyedit and told the author, 'That's it. It's perfect!'

In a nutshell, good to go is unlikely to be where you’re at if you hire an editorial professional for just one pass. Good enough will have to suffice.

I'm not being grouchy, just honest about what's possible. I'm a genuine advocate of the independent author's right to write and publish. I think it's brilliant that anyone can put their storytelling out there. My young daughter was publishing her own stories on WattPad before she was celebrating a birthday with double digits! How marvellous is that?

As long as you understand what's achievable, that's fine with me!
​
Guidance on making the tough decisions

• Writers’ workshops and groups afford the self-publisher a safe and supportive space within which to work and learn from fellow writers and instructors. Groups like these are not just useful in terms of developing skills related to either the macro elements of writing (book-level issues) or the micro elements (sentence- and word-level problems); you’ll also be able to connect with others who are taking the same path as you, and join them in seeking advice on how to structure the journey of writing, drafting, putting aside, rereading and redrafting.
• Online self-publishing forums and blogs offer a wealth of guidance on commissioning third-party assistance – the whats, hows and whys. See my Guidelines for New Authors for links to some of these.
• You might invest in a critique or manuscript evaluation before you commission any third-party editing. This is a niche service provided by specialist editors and writing coaches. A critique can help you to understand where your strengths and weaknesses lie so that you can make an informed decision about how best to invest the rest of your book budget.
• Once you’ve decided which services you want to commission, get quotations from several editors or proofreaders . Find the professional who’s a good fit for you, even if it means waiting for them. It may be that your preferred person is booked up for a few months. It can feel frustrating to have to wait, but bear this in mind – if they’re in demand, perhaps they’re worth your patience.
• Consider saving up so that you can mimic the mainstream publishing industry and commission multiple rounds of editing. Think of it as an investment rather than a cost ... and of all those raving fans!
• See the resources below, some of which will help you with self-editing and reducing costs. All of these are free and instantly accessible – no strings, no email signups. Just stuff to help you out!

That's it for this week. I hope you've found the advice here useful. Enjoy the green zone!

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

A potted guide to the different levels of editing ...
If you’re a beginner writer and you’re planning to self-publish, you’ll be thinking about getting your book fit for market. Some of you might not realize that there are different levels of editing. And even if you do, you might be fuzzy about what distinguishes each service or what it’s usually called.

No shame in that, believe me – even among professional publishers and independent editors the terminology differs. Consensus be damned! The irony that this lack of clarity and consistency exists in a profession that prides itself on, well, clarity and consistency isn’t lost on me or my colleagues!

​In an effort to untangle the issue, I’m offering you a potted guide to the different levels of editing – what each one deals with, what you might expect it to be called, and the questions to ask when you’re sourcing editorial help.

At the bottom of the article is a PDF that you can download to your preferred device and refer to whenever you want.

The basics
Think of the editorial process like a play with several acts: writing, drafting, sourcing feedback from beta readers, self-editing, developmental editing or manuscript evaluation, line editing, copyediting, proofreading, publishing. The elements in bold are what we’re focusing on today.

In a nutshell
Basically, there are two levels of work going on – the macro and the micro.

• MACRO – this is where developmental editing (also sometimes called content editing, substantive editing or structural editing) and manuscript evaluations (sometimes known as manuscript reviews or editorial critiques) are to be found. It’s big-picture work that looks at the novel as a whole.
  
  Editors who specialize in this level of service focus on how your book works – stuff like structure, plot, flow, point of view, characterization and pace.
  
  
• MICRO – this is where line editing, copyediting and proofreading are to be found. It’s sentence-level work that looks at the text on a line-by-line and word-by-word basis.
  
  Editors who specialize in these levels of service ensure your readers don’t trip up. Standard grammar, spelling and punctuation are focal points, but at copyediting and line-editing levels, clarity and readability are in play, too. Basic proofreading is usually the final prepublication check to catch any snafus that have been missed during the previous rounds of extensive professional revision.

What terms should you use when sourcing editorial help?
There’s a question! My advice is that you explain what you want rather than worrying too much about what it’s called. This is because different editors define their services in different ways. Here are some examples:

• I offer a copyediting service that I call ‘Proofreading Plus’ – so called because it goes waaaay beyond basic proofreading – and a separate final prepublication quality-control service.
• My colleague Sophie Playle offers a copyediting/line editing service that she calls ‘Line and copy-editing’, and three separate and different developmental editing services.
• My colleague Gale Winskill offers a service called ‘Copy-editing’ that includes deeper macro work, what Sophie and I would define as developmental editing.

And there you have it – three editors offering overlapping services and different terminology to describe what’s included. So what should you do?

Sorting out what you need

• Take a look at the PDF I’ve included to give you an idea of what kinds of amendments can be made at either book or sentence level and which service they might be included in (I’ve deliberately allowed for overlap).
• Then use the information as a cross-referencing point when you’re checking out potential editors’ websites. If afterwards you’re still not sure what you need, prepare a couple of sample chapters that you can send with a request to quote. That way, your editors can advise you on what they think needs doing and whether they have the requisite skills.
• Think, too, about the rounds of professional editing your book’s already been through (or not). If you haven’t yet commissioned prior assistance, you’re unlikely to be ready for a final prepublication proofread. I’m not saying this to be difficult – I’m just telling you what I’ve learned in 27 years of working in this industry!
• Consider asking editors to carry out short sample edits. Some of us charge a nominal fee while others do it for free. Even if an editor asks you to pay a nominal fee, consider it an investment. Samples will give you valuable information – not so much about who’s the best but, rather, who’s the best fit. You might just love the way one editor clicks with your writing even though several others have also offered excellent work.
  
  

Key points to remember

• Focus on what needs doing rather than what it’s called. You’ll save yourself a world of pain!
• Choose someone who makes you feel excited about being edited.
• Choose someone who’s comfortable with the genre you’re writing in. Take a look at editors' and proofreaders’ portfolios to see whether they have experience of working with books like yours.
• Once you’ve chosen your editor, brief them as well as you can. If you want your crime writing sharp and lean, and you feel you might have overdone the purple prose, tell them so they know that tightening up will be well received. If your fantasy novel is packed with made-up words, prepare your editor so they don’t bore you with unwelcome queries!
• Being edited makes some writers feel nervous or embarrassed. My telling you not to worry probably won’t help a jot, but remember this: we’re on your side – always! We’re your advocates and every change we make, or suggest, is done for you and serves your interests. We’re not there to criticize your writing but to elevate it.
• Be realistic. If you only hire one round of professional editing, at whatever level, please don’t expect perfection. It’s simply not possible.

So, that’s it for now. I hope you’ve found this discussion of the different levels of editing useful. If there are particular questions that you want clarification on, drop me a line and I’ll do my best to answer them.

As promised, here’s your potted guide! Just click on the image to download it to your device.

For more self-publishing resources, visit the library on my Self-publishers page. Or join the library to get monthly updates.

​Louise Harnby is a professional fiction proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Keeping your costs down
I’ve worked with many independent authors. Some are experienced, some are developing, and some are absolute beginners.

If you're in the early stages of your self-publishing journey, you'll probably welcome any help you can get. So in this article I'll summarize the problems I most often come across in beginner writing, especially in novels, so that you can raise your game and lift your writing to the next level more quickly.

​Also, paying attention to these issues at draft stage will reduce your third-party editing costs further down the line.

Don't forget to claim your free copy of my Guidelines for New Authors booklet, which includes this article and a wealth of additional information for beginner writers. You can find the link at the bottom of this post!

1. Rushing to publish rather than hushing to polish
Some new authors are so desperate to publish that they omit the drafting stage. Hush time means putting the book aside for a while and revisiting and self-editing with fresh eyes. If you don’t go through the drafting stage, you’re less likely to spot problems with plot, pace, readability and repetition. And that means your book will not be ready for the later stages of editing like copy-editing and proofreading.

Editor and writing coach Lisa Poisso has some excellent advice on managing the drafting process strategically: How to revise the early drafts of your novel.

2. Overwriting
Too much detail
Some beginner writers don’t trust their readers to fill in the gaps. This results in writing that gives too much detail. The narrative becomes laboured, boring even. There are some excellent examples in Christina Delay’s 5 Steps to Avoid Overwriting (Jami Gold blog); it’s what Gold calls ‘giving too much stage direction’:

Imagine if an author described a character traveling from a store to their home by listing every single action:

‘She inserted the key into the ignition. Turned the key. Waited for the engine to engage. Slipped the engine into reverse. Expertly maneuvered the car out of its parking spot …’

Gold recommends getting straight to the point – unless, of course, something important happens in the detail that’s key to moving the story forward. If it’s just detail that mimics the mundanity of real life, strip it out.

Repetition
Watch out for repetition, especially ‘wow’ words. If Jo thunders down the hallway, her face like thunder, you have a problem. If the reader is told that Mike is ‘in agony’ and ‘agonized’ several times in one paragraph, trim the fat (and think of some synonyms!).

High-intensity scenes of fear, danger, desire or confusion are those most prone to repetition and over-explanation in beginner writing, usually because the author is worried that the reader might not understand what the character’s experiencing. Gold calls these ‘emotionally overwrought passages of purple prose’.

When drafting, consider creating a list that features key moments of disclosure and emotion/response. By mapping these moments, you can see whether the descriptions lie in close proximity to each other, and whether you’ve already provided enough detail earlier in the book. Then you can cut accordingly. Less is more.

Telling twice
Telling twice is another consequence of not trusting the reader to fill in the gaps.

• ‘Help yourself to coffee if you wish. It’s over on the table.’ She pointed in the direction of the coffee table.

The bold text in the example above simply repeats what we already know and it’s therefore superfluous. It’s another issue to watch out for at self-editing stage. Removing this kind of detail makes the writing leaner and sharper.

3. Logic flop
Logic flop happens when writers try to avoid conjunctions (probably because they’ve been told that conjunctions are boring and shouldn’t be overused). This can lead to grammatical hiccups that disfigure the writing and trip up the reader.

• Running barefoot along the corridor, Roy bolted into the bedroom.
• Roy ran barefoot along the corridor and bolted into the bedroom.

In the first example, we have a character seemingly doing two things at once – running through one place while he’s making his way inside another. And to the discerning reader, the first phrase will even seem to modify the second (Roy bolted into the bedroom in a manner of running barefoot along the corridor).

The second, edited version introduces a conjunction that brings logic and clarity to the sentence. Conjunctions are a perfectly natural way to join connecting action clauses that happen one after the other, and don’t need to be avoided simply on principle. Don't be afraid to embrace them!

4. Reluctance to use contractions
The use of contractions isn’t always appropriate, particularly when the writer wants to introduce formality (e.g. in a historical setting or in academic non-fiction) or emphasis. However, in contemporary novel writing, the narrative can feel laboured if contractions are excluded, especially in dialogue.

In real life, people don’t say things like ‘we are going’ and ‘I would have liked to’ so it’s often better to offer the contracted form. If in doubt, say the words out loud. If the likes of ‘we’re going’ and ‘I would’ve liked to’ sound more natural in the context of your book, then use contractions. Readers won’t notice if you do, but they might stumble if you don’t.

5. Overuse of exclamation marks
Take care not to overuse exclamation marks. Too many can be distracting and overwhelm the text. Exclamation marks can detract from the gravity of a statement, making it sound upbeat when a different mood was intended – tension, fear, anger, danger. If you’ve used the right words to convey the mood, the exclamation mark will often be superfluous.

If you do decide that an exclamation mark is necessary, don’t use more than one. Compare the following:

• ‘I can’t believe she said that.’
• ‘I can’t believe she said that!’
• ‘I can’t believe she said that!!!’

Read them out loud and decide which one best conveys the speaker’s disbelief. I think the first does the job perfectly well. The second introduces a light-heartedness that may or may not be appropriate. The third is overkill.

6. Speech tagging problems – sighing, smiling, laughing
Arlene Prunkl’s ‘Dialogue in fiction’ series is my recommendation for independent authors who want free, detailed guidance on managing fiction dialogue effectively. Part III addresses speech tags (among other things), though the whole series is well worth reading.

Beginner authors can be reluctant to overuse he said/she said constructions, even though they’re the most discreet way of tagging.

Prunkl says, ‘Your job, as a newer writer, is to show emotion through the dialogue words themselves, not through the tags.’ She therefore recommends avoiding tags such as ‘hissed’, ‘sighed, ‘laughed’, etc. – not because they’re not good words but because they’re not words that describe the action of speaking. To hiss is to make a sharp sibilant sound; to sigh is to emit a deep, audible breath that expresses relief or sadness; to laugh is to express amusement through spontaneous sounds and movements of the face; to say is to utter words – and that’s why ‘said’ is an effective speech tag.

Take a look at these examples; the bold versions are clean, effective examples of dialogue tags that won’t trip up the reader.

• ‘You think I care?’ she laughed.
• ‘You think I care?’ she said, laughing.
• ‘I’m done with you,’ she sighed.
• She sighed. ‘I’m done with you.’

I'm not saying you should only ever use 'said' – just apply a little caution!

7. Formatting too early
Focus on making your book look beautiful after the bulk of the editing has been done. Fancy fonts and heavily designed text are difficult to work with at editing stage.

Furthermore, the layout might have to be reworked if there are major additions or deletions to the text during structural editing and copy-editing.

Word’s styles palette is sufficient prior to the design stage. You (or your copy-editor) can introduce consistency to the different elements of the book (chapter titles, headings, quoted matter, main text, captions etc.) in a way that’s clear and simple.

8. Unrealistic expectations of what’s possible in one pass
Some beginner writers think that one pass – a ‘final proofread’ carried out by a third-party professional – is enough to guarantee absolute perfection. It’s not. The mainstream publishing industry doesn’t believe it’s possible, and nor should the independent author.

If you hire a professional to proofread or copy-edit your Word file, and that file has not  been through previous rounds of extensive and meticulous editorial revision, there will likely be thousands of amendments – spelling, grammar, syntax and punctuation errors and inconsistencies; layout problems with regard to spacing and paragraph indentation; inconsistency with regard to character names and traits, and across word forms.
​
Don’t expect your editor or proofreader to say, ‘I’ve made 8,000 revisions to your document, compiled 67 queries, spotted four problems with character-history consistency, noticed two character-surname changes, offered 200 suggestions for alternative wording, and I guarantee that, in spite of this, I have not missed one single literal or contextual error.’

Get as many fresh eyes on your work as you can afford. If budget’s an issue, that’s fine, but make sure your expectations reflect this.

Good luck with the self-editing process!

​And as promised, here's your freebie! It includes lots of useful guidance and links for newbie writers. I hope you find it useful. Click on the picture to get your copy.

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

BookMachine kindly invited me to write about proofreading and copyediting for independent authors who've already gone live with their book.

In ​'Post-publication editing for self-publishing authors', I discuss why some authors make the decision to work with editorial professionals post-publication, and how we might support them, all the while taking 'a tone that focuses on solutions, not criticism'.

Louise Harnby is a professional fiction proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

I can't quite fathom how I've curated this blog for so long and never featured The Chicago Manual of Style Online.

Here are just three reasons why I love it:

1. I work with a lot of independent fiction authors. And although I'm based in the UK, around half of my clients live in the USA. CMOS Online is my go-to style guide unless they ask me to use something else.
2. It's sooooo easy to search, and really comprehensive! On the very few occasions that I haven't been able to find the answer I'm looking for in the main directory, the Q&As have come up trumps.
3. At US$35 per year, it's superb value. (Yes, of course I wish it was free, but let's not be greedy!) That's a worthwhile investment because I can justify the stylistic decisions I make to fledgling authors in the knowledge that those choices are industry-recognized. And, anyway, you don't have to stump up the cash immediately; there's a 30-day free trial.

None of the above will be news to readers whose editorial businesses are well established. But if your proofreading or editing business is fairly new, and you're thinking about which style guides to invest in, CMOS Online is definitely one to consider, especially if you want to feel comfortable working with international authors who write fiction and commercial non-fiction.

CMOS Online isn't the only tiger in my tank, of course. New Hart's Rules and the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association are two more resources that I often refer to.

There are many other style manuals that a client might ask you to follow, depending on the material and the intended audience. ​Ultimately, what you invest in will be determined by your target clients' preferences.

​Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and the curator of The Proofreader's Parlour. She is also the author of Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers, Marketing Your Editing & Proofreading Business, and Omnibus: Editorial Business Planning & Marketing Plus.

​Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, follow her on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Here's an overview of just some of the resources available to writers in Norfolk (and East Anglia more broadly). It's quite a treasure trove, but perhaps that's not a surprise given that in 2012 Norwich became England's first UNESCO City of Literature.

Festivals and events

• East Anglian Book Awards – this annual event celebrates literature either set in East Anglia or written by authors living in the region. Entry for 2016 is now closed, but keep an eye out for 2017 submission details.
• FLY Festival of Literature for Young People – hosted by the University of East Anglia, FLY is an annual programme of activities, readings, workshops and entertainment for 11–18-year-olds. The 2016 event has now finished, but FLY will be back from 10–14 July 2017
• Jarrold, one of Norwich’s oldest independent departments stores, Jarrold hosts regular author readings, signings and book launches. This year’s autumn programme includes the East Anglian Book Awards, Alan Partridge, and Elizabeth Haynes.
• King's Lynn Literature Festivals – this year’s event is the King’s Lynn Poetry Festival, taking place from 30 September–2 October 2016.
• Noirwich – Norwich’s annual crime-writing festival always includes some top names in the noir genre. This year’s author events include Ian Rankin, Sophie Hannah and Peter James, and there are also writing workshops and a number of fringe events. Noirwich 2016 kicks off on 15 September. Definitely one to put in your calendar!
• The Book Hive hosts regular literary events in Norwich, including An Evening with Tommy Wieringa (6 October 2016), The Making of the British Landscape with Nicholas Crane (4 November 2016), and An Evening with Carol Ann Duffy (1 December 2016) 
• UEA Literary Festival – the University of East Anglia has a super programme of ‘in conversation’ events lined up for this autumn, including David Lodge, Bernard Hill, Paddy Ashdown and Rose Tremain. The events start on 5 October and run through to 23 November 2016.
• Waterstones, Castle Street, Norwich – fabulous author signings and readings including Natasha Pulley (The Watchmaker of Filigree Street: 5 October 2016), The Magpie Murders – an evening with Anthony Horowitz (20 October 2016), and Garth Nix – Goldenhand (22 October)

Groups and organizations 

• East Anglian Writers – affiliated with the Society of Authors, East Anglian Writers welcomes applications from professional writers based in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk  
• Norwich Writers’ Circle – the group meets twice a month in Norwich, and runs an annual programme of events including writing workshops, competitions, guest-speaking sessions and social meet-ups
• The Book Hive – hosts regular literary events in Norwich
• Writers’ Centre Norwich (WCN) – a must-visit site featuring events, interviews, courses and workshops

Courses 

• Norwich Arts Centre periodically offers writing courses. Keep an eye on the calendar to see what’s available
• Unthank School of Writing – offers a range of onsite and online writing courses
• Creative Writing Online ­– partnership between the WCN and University of East Anglia
• Creative writing courses at the UEA – undergraduate and postgraduate courses
• Creative Writing with Norfolk Adult Education – this is a link to the group’s Facebook page. Here you’ll find information about what’s currently on offer from a range of regional providers. Past events include self-publishing workshops as well as novel- and script-writing courses
• Writers’ Centre Norwich – annual programme of writing workshops

Editorial support: proofreading, editing and indexing
If you are looking for an editorial professional in Norfolk, you can find a qualified member by visiting the Norfolk Proofreaders and Editors Network (NPEN).

Members offer a wide range of services including proofreading, copy-editing, structural and developmental editing, manuscript critique and evaluation, indexing, formatting, translation, and publishing consultancy.

Independent publishers ​

• Black Dog Books 
• Full Circle Editions
• Poppyland Publishing
• Salt – this vibrant independent publisher accepts unsolicited manuscripts and has had two books nominated for the Man Booker Prize in four years.

Louise's Writing Library for Self-Publishers
For more self-publishing resources, visit the library on my Self-publishers page. Or join the library to get monthly updates.

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

My new free PDF resource for independent authors is out now: The Mechanics of Self-Publishing Print Books: 10 guidelines in 10 minutes.

Aimed at writers who want to do their own print formatting – using Word – this PDF toolkit helps the independent, self-publishing author to deliver a professional-looking book to market. The guidelines are based on my own experience of publishing three print books, and my previous career experience within the publishing industry​.

And, because time is precious to us all, I've designed it so that each of the 10 sections can be read in a minute!

If you'd like to download this booklet's sister PDF, visit: The Mechanics of ​Self-Publishing Ebooks: 10 guidelines in 10 minutes

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

In my guest article on The Book Reviewers, I take a look at how independent authors can make their mark in the publishing world by branding themselves as professional writers.

The article includes a real-world case study featuring the creator of the Nathen Turner supernatural thriller series, Andrew Langley – ‘an independent author who exemplifies professional independent publishing practice’.

To read the article in full, visit ‘The marks of a professional independent author’, The Book Reviewers.

My new free PDF resource for independent authors is out now: The Mechanics of Self-Publishing Ebooks: 10 guidelines in 10 minutes.

Aimed at writers who want to do their own eformatting – in Word – this PDF toolkit helps the independent, self-publishing author to deliver a professional-looking ebook to market. The guidelines are based on my own experience of publishing three ebooks, and my previous career experience within the publishing industry​.

And, because time is precious to us all, I've designed it so that each of the 10 sections can be read in a minute!

Complementary guides – on the mechanics of self-publishing print books, and on the benefits and challenges of self-publishing – will follow in due course. 

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Every writer, copy-editor and proofreader comes across words that are used correctly but spelled incorrectly (typos), but we also have to look out for words that are spelled correctly but used incorrectly – this is the world of confusables.

What are confusables?
Some confusables are not only spelled differently, they sound very different too, e.g. imply/infer; militate/mitigate; reactionary/reactive. In this case, the writer might have misunderstood the meaning.

​Some confusables are homophones – words that are spelled differently but sound the same, e.g. rein/reign; stationary/stationery; prophecy/prophesy; loath/loathe. In this case, the writer understands the different meanings, but is unsure of the appropriate spelling.

Then there are errors that are simply a result of hands moving too fast over a keyboard – the meanings and correct spellings are known to the writer, but, in their haste, perhaps they’ve transposed a couple of letters or omitted a character.

​Or it may be that the automatic spellcheck has kicked into gear and the writer hasn’t noticed the problem because they’re concentrating on the bigger picture. Examples might include e.g. filed/field; adverse/averse; pubic/public.

Blind spots
Writers aren't the only ones with blind spots. Editorial pros do too. It’s our job to spot these problems and fix them. However, we’re only human and most of us have a few blind-spot words that our eyes are, on occasion, less likely to notice, even though we do know the differences in meaning and spelling.

My own blind spots are gaffe/gaff, brake/break and peek/pique/peak. I don’t know why my eye doesn’t spot these pesky confusables as readily, especially when the likes of compliment/complement or stationary/stationery scream at me from the page! However, I accept that I do have blind spots and have taken steps to ameliorate the problem with a little mechanical help – the macro.

How can macros help?
Using macros enables us to identify possible problems before we get down to the business of actually reading, line by line, for sense.

Every time we find an error, we have to think about it and decide whether to amend. By reducing the number of interruptions, we can focus our attention on the flow of the words in front of us and increase efficiency.

For this reason, I, like many of my colleagues, run my macros at the beginning of a project (though I often repeat the process at the end stage too).

What’s on offer in the world of confusables?
There are several free macros available to the copy-editor or proofreader who wants to tackle confusables with efficiency. See, for example, the excellent “A Macro for Commonly Confused Words” published by C.K. MacLeod on Tech Tools for Writers (updated July 2015).

Another option, and the one that I’m currently using, is the CompareWordList macro created by Allen Wyatt on WordTips. See “Highlight Words from a List” (updated July 2015). 

As some of you will already know, Wyatt has two WordTips sites; the one you use will be determined by which version of Word you’re running.

The linked article above will take readers to the article written for MS Word 2007, 2010 and above. If you are working with an older version of Word, you’ll need to follow Wyatt’s links to the sister site.
 
Why I’m using Wyatt’s CompareWordList
CompareWordList is currently my preferred tool simply because of how easy it is to create and update my own list of words to be checked – words that can, on occasion, be blind spots for me.

As I’ll show below, customizing the list of confusables doesn’t require me to amend the script of the macro once it’s installed. Instead, all I have to do is amend a basic list in a Word document – nice and simple!

Using CompareWordList 1: Create your list of confusables
The first thing to do is to create a list of the words you want the macro to find, and highlight, in a Word document.

• Simply open up a new Word document, give it a name (I called mine “confusables”), and save it in your preferred folder (I chose to save it in my Macros folder, but you can save yours wherever you want).
• Make a note of the location of your document (for example, mine is in c:\Users\Louise\Dropbox\Macros\confusables.docx).

For speed, and so you can see the basic format of the list, you can download a copy of a list here. If you want to rename it, do so. Then add words, or remove them, as you see fit.

Using CompareWordList 2: Get, and tweak, the code
Visit “Highlight Words from a List” and copy the code. If you’re completely new to installing macros, just paste the script in a Word document for now so that you can tweak it easily.

​Below is a screenshot of Wyatt's code. The highlighted sections show where I’ve tweaked the code to suit my own needs.

Tweaks to consider
(1)  I’ve changed Wyatt's code (as per his suggestion) so that it describes where my list of confusables is located: sCheckDoc = "c:\Users\Louise\Dropbox\Macros\confusables.docx". You’ll use the location you made a note of when you created your own list (see the section above – Using CompareWordList 1: Create your list of confusables).

(2) Wyatt's code emboldens the words found by the macro; I wanted them highlighted so I replaced the highlighted text as follows: .Replacement.Highlight = True.

(3) I changed the Match Whole Word instruction to False because I wanted the macro to find part words. This, of course, will pull up some false positives but it was the easiest solution I could find.

(4) I also changed the Match Case instruction to False.

Now that you’ve tweaked the code to suit your own needs, you’re ready to install it (the basic, step-by-step instructions below are provided for the benefit of those who are completely new to macro installation).
​
Using CompareWordList 3: Install the code
With Word open, open the “View” tab and click on the “Macros” icon on the ribbon.

• If necessary, use the scroll bar to take you to the bottom of the text.
• Paste the CompareWordList script at the end, under “End Sub”
• Close the window using the X in the top right-hand corner.

The installation is now complete.

Running CompareWordList

• Open the Word file in which you want to locate potential confusbles.
• Click the “View” tab.
• Click the “Macros” icon on the ribbon.
• Select "CompareWordList" from the list.
• Click “Run”.

Removing highlights one by one
Here’s a tiny macro that I recorded to remove a highlight as I move through a Word document. Installing this means I simply have to click on a highlighted word and run the macro.

Assigning a shortcut button (see below) makes the job easy and efficient. I decided on Alt H because I don’t have that keyboard shortcut assigned to any function that I carry out regularly.
​
Sub UndoHighlight()
'
' UndoHighlight Macro
'
'
    Options.DefaultHighlightColorIndex = wdNoHighlight
    Selection.Range.HighlightColorIndex = wdNoHighlight
End Sub

To install: Simply copy the red script above and install it in the same way that you installed the CompareWordList macro.

To create a shortcut key: In Word, select File, Options, Customize Ribbon (1). Click on Customize (2). A new box will open up entitled “Customize keyboard”. In the Categories window (3), scroll down and select Macros. In the Macros window (4), select UndoHighlight. Finally, choose your preferred keyboard combination by typing it into the Press New Shortcut Key window (5). Select Assign and Close.

To remove ALL highlighting in one go: For this job, Paul Beverley’s your man. A huge number of macros are available in his free book, Computer Tools for Editors (available on his website at Archive Publications).

Hope you find this useful!

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and the curator of The Proofreader's Parlour. She is also the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Proofreading for independent, self-publishing authors
To date, I've never received a style sheet from a self-publisher. I suspect this is for one of several reasons:

• I am the first editorial professional who has worked on the project since the writing was completed. The author hasn't created their own style sheet.
• A copy-editor has worked on the project prior to it landing on my desk, but they haven’t created a style sheet. Or, if they have, they haven’t given it to the author.
• The author has received a style sheet from the editor, but didn't realize that it would be valuable to me.

In any case, I always like to create one of these for my customers. Why? Because it helps me and it helps them.

Why create a style sheet?
Professionalism: I make a promise to my independent author clients that I’ll professionalize their work to publishing industry-recognized standards. However, I can’t assume that my clients know what these are – after all, it’s not their job to know. Some of my clients write full time but most have day jobs; many are producing their first books so the world of publishing is new to them. They need to be able to rely on the editorial professionals with whom they are working to amend their writing in a way that does no harm and that can be defended by reference to understood and industry-recognized conventions.

The bigger picture: Even if the author worked with a copy-editor before the proofreading stage, a proofreader’s style sheet shows that I am still looking at the bigger picture – making decisions based on publishing standards, or author choice, or consistency, or for ease of readability. It's not just about finding spelling errors – it’s about providing a professional service that acknowledges that the client is publishing a book, and that their book should look professional.

Clients appreciate them: I've had positive feedback from indie authors about my style sheets. Clients have told me that the style sheet helped them to understand why I've amended as I have; that it acted as a reminder of the decisions they can implement in future projects at the self-editing stage; and that it's a useful template for recording their own style preferences.

At-a-glance: The style sheet provides the author with an at-a-glance summary of what I've done and why I've done it. This provides clarity as well as an understanding of the proofreading process.

Appropriate focus: A style sheet allows the author to focus on what they’re good at – the writing – and me to focus on what I’m good at – the proofreading.

Tracking: Style sheets help me to keep track of decisions and spot any problems. I may be the first person to work on the project – proofreading for indie authors can turn into more than a prepublication check, and the boundary between copy-editing and proofreading can blur. And, even if the text appears to be in great shape (in terms of spelling, punctuation, and grammar), there may still be logic flaws that everyone else missed.

Laying things out in our own way: We all design our style sheets in ways that make sense to us – so even if I'm using a copy-editor’s as the foundation, creating my own (and embedding my colleague’s decisions into it) sharpens my senses and enables me to lay out the decisions in a way that makes the best sense to me.

Reducing queries: The style sheet shows my author why I've made certain decisions. I can validate my amendments by citing the resources I've used. Authors won’t ask themselves, or me, why I removed the quotation marks around the name of a pub, or why I changed a set of nested single quotation marks into doubles – I've already told them.
 
What is a style sheet?
Those new to proofreading, or who are considering whether it is a viable career choice, may not be familiar with what goes into a style sheet. And if you’re an author, you might not be either.
 
Broadly speaking, a style sheet is a record of preferences – the author’s or their publisher’s; a style manual's; or some other agency's. In many cases, authors are happy for me to make the decisions based on my publishing knowledge and my use of recognized style manuals (e.g. New Hart's Rules and The Chicago Manual of Style).
 
Ultimately, style sheets aren’t about rules but rather about tracking choices for the purposes of consistency and professionalism. They enable the editorial professional to keep track of decisions about spelling, punctuation, grammar, text layout, idiom usage, and (in the case of fiction) characters’ key features.
 
Tracking these elements helps the proofreader to minimize inconsistency, spot flaws and attend to problems with regard to how the words in the book actually work on the page.
 
What might a style sheet look like?
You can see a sample of a style sheet by visiting my dedicated Self-publishers page. Scroll down to the heading “Want to see a style sheet?”.

And if you’re a new proofreader or writer and you’d like a Word template for your individual use, feel free to download my sample style sheet. You can tweak it so that it meets your own needs. (I'm happy for this sample to be shared, too, as long as the appropriate url-linked attribution is given).

My style sheets can be fairly comprehensive, so I include embedded links to enable the author to move between the various elements (language preferences, formatting and layout decisions, main character names and key features, reference sources, and spelling preferences) with ease.

Resources

• Guidelines for New Authors (Louise Harnby | Proofreader)
• “Manuscript Management Tools for Fiction Authors (and Editors)” (Mary McCauley, 2014, Letters from an Irish Editor)
• Self-publishers: information page (Louise Harnby | Proofreader)
• Style sheet examples (academic, medical and fiction) (Katharine O’Moore-Klopf, KOK Edit)
• “Style Sheets—The Setup and the Benefits” (Beth Hill, 2012, The Editor’s Blog)

Louise Harnby is a professional fiction proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

One of the trickiest issues for the inexperienced self-publishing author is choosing an appropriate editorial service. 

Self-publishing is technically quite easy. However, when we self-publish we have to take responsibility for all of the things that a traditional publisher would handle. Among these responsibilities are various levels of editing.

In truth, most manuscripts require professional intervention. When I self-published two how-to guides for my editorial colleagues (Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers and Marketing Your Editing & Proofreading Business), I didn't rely on my best mate and my husband to help me knock my writing into shape. I hired editorial professionals – copy-editors and proofreaders – whom I could trust to sort out the problems that my own eye couldn't see. Because my colleagues are professionals, they weren't worried about offending me or saying what they thought I wanted to hear; instead they got on with doing the job they specialize in: making writers' writing better.

For the novice self-publisher, working out which editorial service to choose can be daunting. My colleague Sophie Playle has produced an excellent infographic to make the job easier. I liked it so much that I sought her permission to include it in my free booklet, Guidelines for New Authors.

You can download the Guidelines here if you want to access all the introductory advice on navigating your way through the self-publishing process.

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Nick Lewis kindly asked me to share my experiences of self-publishing, using the tools I already have on my desktop, in a 3-part series on his blog. Here's an excerpt from part 3, in which I summarize the benefits and challenges of going down the self-publishing route ...

You can read the full article over at the Nick Lewis Communications blog ...

Louise Harnby is a professional fiction proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Note from Louise: I've been charmed in the past two weeks – three special guests sharing their wisdom on the Parlour! This time it's my colleague Sophie Playle. Sophie and I met at our SfEP local-group meeting in Norwich.

She's a talented writer (more on that in a future post) and has a very specialist skill set within her service portfolio – manuscript critiquing. I asked Sophie if she'd tell us a bit more about it, and she kindly obliged ...

How I ended up offering a critiquing service
My journey to where I am now – a freelance writer and editor who offers critiquing (or manuscript appraisal) as one of my services – evolved partly organically, and partly with focused purpose.

It's a familiar story, but I have always wanted to write. At school, I never really knew what I wanted to do with my life in terms of career, but I did know that I loved the escapism of books and the swooning elegance of language. While choosing a university degree, I followed my passion and went for the English Literature with Creative Writing BA offered by the University of East Anglia.

I loved the writing element of the course more than anything, and from my first to my final year, I went through a steep learning curve.

Our final-year creative writing group consisted of a small core of writers. We would write short stories and submit them for our fellow group members to tear apart. It was invigorating. We all knew the value of criticism, and both craved and respected the feedback we received, eager to improve our craft. It was a tough but safe bubble.

In one of my private tutorials, my tutor complimented me on the quality of my feedback to other students (our feedback contributed 10% to our grade, but I was more motivated by the thought of genuinely helping my fellow writers). She asked if I had ever considered a career as an editor. Getting this endorsement certainly gave me encouragement, and nudged me towards my future career.

Leaving university, I began to apply for jobs at publishing houses for entry-level editorial assistant jobs. I also began a long distance-learning course in copy-editing. Eventually, I landed a full-time role at a large educational publisher.

Before long, however, I was craving fiction and creativity and writing again. So I decided to take the plunge and do an MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London – while still keeping in touch with my publishing house for the odd freelance project.

The focus of my MA was novel writing, and each of us on the course was plunged into the task. As with my final-year undergraduate class, each week we would critique each other's work – from sentence-level, language and grammar issues to the developing bigger issues such as point-of-view and voice as our novels progressed.

Much of our course was also focused on reading and analysing critical theory related to literature and the craft of novel writing, so that our constructive criticism had a sound academic foundation. I absolutely loved the experience, and my writing and editing skills developed dramatically in the challenging environment.

During my time working in publishing, I also set up my own literary publication called Inkspill Magazine. I decided to host a short-story competition, where all entries received a free critique, to test my critiquing skills in the real world. I received lots of positive feedback and, upon completing my MA, I decided to offer critiquing as a freelance service to writers.

My academic foundation and publishing experience (and the various tests I set myself) provided me with the confidence to offer a critiquing service.

So, what is a manuscript critique?
A critique sounds a bit daunting, akin to the word criticise – but it's not a harsh deconstruction. Essentially, a critique looks at the "big picture" elements of a manuscript (plot, pace, characters, voice, etc.) and offers a constructive analysis, with the aim of showing where the writing succeeds and where it could be improved, to better inform the writer's next step.

It is often called a Manuscript Appraisal, but I favour the term "Manuscript Critique" because what I provide goes beyond an assessment, also offering possible ways to address the issues I might highlight.

The critique is offered as a report, which is usually between 5 and15 pages (though I have written reports of up to 25 pages) depending on how many issues I feel need to be addressed, or depending on the length of the manuscript. It doesn't include any sentence-based editing, though if there is a recurring issue throughout the manuscript, I would flag it up within the report as a general area to look at.

Who are the clients?
Most of my critiquing clients are writers on a journey to self-publication, or writers who want to increase their chances of representation for traditional publication. Generally, a critiquing client will be interested in making sure the core of their novel is as good as it can be, and looking for external professional confirmation and/or suggestions for development.

This type of assessment comes before any copy-editing or proofreading, and can be used to test ideas (with a sample of the novel plus a synopsis) or strengthen complete novels when the writer feels there is more work to be done but is not sure how to go about it.

The benefits of a manuscript critique
A critiquing service is not needed for everyone, but it can help a writer gain a professional outside perspective, help them develop their manuscript, provide confirmation of its quality, and help inform the next step of their project – in the worst-case scenario, that might be to put the novel in a drawer and chalk it up to valuable experience, and in the best-case scenario, it might be to immediately send the project out to agents and publishers! (Often, it will be the steps to take for a further draft.)

Often, beta readers (friends, colleagues, etc.) can give a writer a useful "big picture" perspective on their writing, but a professional critique goes much deeper – with the added benefit of an honest appraisal (something that might be skewed by kindness from friends!).

Writers are often told that they need a thick skin – and that certainly comes in useful with a critique. Though I attempt to critique with the utmost sensitivity and respect, I feel the biggest injustice to a writer would be to offer them hollow advice and empty praise. Sometimes the assessment can be a bit of a shock to the writer, so it is important to remember that the critique is designed to improve the project, and not to negatively criticise the writer as an individual.

It's often very difficult to accept that there might be some fundamental issues with a manuscript that will need substantive work, so when a writer sends their novel to be critiqued, I would say: be prepared for some more hard work ahead!

Copyright 2013 Sophie Playle

Sophie Playle offers writing, editing and critiquing services to independent writers. Find out more: Liminal Pages.

Independent author T.P. Archie recently published A Guide to First Contact, a post-apocalyptic novel set in 2060.

His search for editorial assistance initially led him to me. However, after some discussion about what was needed, we agreed that he’d benefit from an developmental and line editor, not a proofreader.

I pointed him in the right direction and he hired one of my SfEP colleagues to work on the manuscript.

​Now he’s been kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule to talk to the Parlour about this experience, and his independent publishing journey more broadly.

Parlour: First of all, congratulations on publishing your book! Can you give us a short synopsis of the novel and tell us how the idea for Guide came about?

T.P. Archie: Hi. Thanks for inviting me in. Guide alternates between the present day and a post-apocalyptic Earth.

On the edge of the solar system, Star Beings plan the next phase of their work. New life. An animite must be hurled onto the third planet. The impact will scatter organic compounds throughout Earth’s biosphere. But there’s a problem: the animite goes missing.

A hundred thousand years later, it’s the 21st century. A space mission to a near-earth object makes an amazing biological discovery which is brought back to Earth. This American secret is trumped when France announces contact with creatures from outer space. Then disaster strikes. Technologies in key industries begin to fail. The West collapses …

It’s now 2060. Most cities are long abandoned. All that remains of the once-mighty United States is the Petits États, centred on New England. Outside of there, civilisation survives in Enclaves, relying on the confederation of Sioux Nations for protection. For forty years a genetic plague has ravaged humanity. It began just after Earth was contacted by aliens. A new and mysterious power – the mandat culturel – controls access to advanced technologies.

Triste, hopeless with girls, but good with guns, is a bounty hunter. He has all the latest ordnance. His contracts pay well but are dangerous. They take him to the ruined cities; he spends a lot of time in the former urban area of New York. 

His current mission is to reconnoitre a long lost laboratory. He encounters a ramshackle band of opportunists whom he sends packing. In doing so, he meets Shoe. They find the lab. It has secrets linking it to the collapse of Western civilisation. Shoe is running from her family. She has other secrets.

In the dead shell of Manhattan lurks a secret pensitela base. Their alien biology protects them from the brutal savagery of the place. They have their own reasons for being there.

From the edges of the solar system, a Star Being monitors Earth. It has a plan – and Triste meeting Shoe isn’t accidental. His troubles have just begun. Eventually he is faced by the hard truths behind the fall of the West.

At its most basic, Guide is a series of interlinked narratives that combine to reveal how the apocalypse comes about. Other readings are possible. One of my objectives was to explore different kinds of first contact.

However, Guide didn’t start like that. It began as a test of Novel Writing Software – yes, there’s a product really called that! I planned to write three chapters, which I thought would be sufficient for my purpose.

So out it churned, an endless stream of 'hero takes on hordes from hell'. At about 8,000 words I took stock. I already knew it wasn’t intellectually satisfying yet I had found a writing rhythm. It occurred to me that while I was in my stride, I should experiment.

Why didn’t I add something with a bit of interest? I had a few characters kicking around in my head. "Everyone has a novel in them," I told myself; all I needed was a theme to link them together. In they went; and the violence was trimmed. That was it; I was hooked.

I wrote and added themes. There’s gender reversal – the story won’t work properly without it – and Darwin’s theory of evolution (these two are linked). Then the never-ending Anglo-French rivalry; followed by a drip feed of classical Greek philosophy. Each theme had a purpose. Why? I want SF that makes sense, including the cosmogony. Depicting aliens, for example, requires some attention to how they might see the universe.

In retrospect, I realise I’d grown away from SF/Fantasy; little of what was available appealed to me. I was sitting around waiting for someone to write the stuff I wanted, which wasn’t happening.

Parlour: Could you tell us a bit more about yourself and how you started writing?

T.P. Archie: I qualified as an accountant in 1990. My mother was born to a family of Estonian farmers and my father began life as a cobbler. I grew up in a one-parent family. 

Most of my early life was lived in Stoneyholme, a deprived part of Burnley. My mother rented from a block of terraced houses. There was plenty self-inflicted misery, but it was rarely safe to observe.

As the son of an immigrant with a German accent, it was my duty to avoid the occasional beatings that were due to me. Grammar school education informed me that the oppressive reality of working-class life stopped at the edge of the estate.

I began reading SF/Fantasy in my teens. This was later complemented by an interest in classical philosophy and history. Once I started writing, I found a great deal to say.

Parlour: Who are your biggest influences (from a literary point of view)?

T.P. Archie: My formative years were very much influenced by genre authors, e.g. Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein. I continue to be impressed by Tolkien’s myth building and the universe of Frank Herbert’s Dune.

Outside the genre I have found Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Pasternak, George Eliot and Doris Lessing to my taste. I am also partial to Plato and the works of Idries Shah. My writing is also influenced by the work of Orson Welles. (Oh, okay – he didn’t really write :) )

By the way, I’m ridiculously pleased with my Philip K. Dick collection, tatty Ace editions and all. Dick is best known for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which inspired Bladerunner. Dick didn't need to spell out apocalypse, yet his settings work. His characters think a great mix of the mundane and the profound. Seemingly omnipotent creatures are driven by biology or freely admit their fallibility, as Glimmung does in Galactic Pot-Healer. Many of his works are laced with dark humour and are worth a reread.

Parlour: Like many other authors around the world, you've decided to go down the independent publishing route. Self-publishing requires the wearing of many hats in addition to the writing. What have been the upsides and the downsides of this decision?

T.P. Archie: Upsides: you control everything. Downsides: you control everything. Okay, that was tongue-in-cheek.

The main benefit is that you are in control over the pace of your development. Once you have a deal, you are locked into it. As an indie author, I don’t feel the constraint of writing to fit genre style/house style. Ask the right questions at author events and the strictures of formulaic writing become clear. I've read widely in my chosen genre, including many of its standards. There are many themes to explore/treat differently.

The most significant drawback was in the narrative – devising a practical approach to self-editing. While shaping ideas, I’d revisit text. If words didn’t come, I’d use "next best", i.e. placeholder terms, and work it until it was there or thereabouts. This resulted in intermittent problem areas. Sometimes I attempted to clean these up but this was a chore.

I’d ask of myself, "What comes through in the narrative? Does it need reshaping?" I was too close to answer that, and a long way from feedback. I moved on. In my heart of hearts, I knew there were better approaches but I lacked the comfort of funds, so investigation wasn't an option. Besides, it was still a hobby.

Did I plan to go DIY? I saw no choice. New authors produce first novels. First novels are best kept locked away in a drawer, hoping no one reads them; or (in my case) kept for practice.

Many new authors go on to sell a few copies to friends and families. It’s a hobby and a fine one. You learn how to put a PDF together; you Photoshop-up a half-way reasonable cover – and if that doesn't appeal there’s plenty of stock imagery out there.

Then you get to make friends with local book-sellers and libraries. Soon your edition has gone from sales of 10 units to say 100 and you can get stuck into decisions such as how many to print (economic order quantity for the business inclined). That’s a long road which begins with up front financial commitment, a dry garage and benign family arrangements.

So, back to me – before I spent, how ready was I? How much confidence had I in my book? What was acceptable quality? What did I do to reach that bar?

These are big, big questions which each author must decide for themselves. Anecdotal evidence suggests that a high proportion of self-published product doesn't make the grade. The follow on question to this, kind of asks itself: Am I self-critical enough? The only way is feedback.

Parlour: So tell us about that. What was your experience regarding feedback?

T.P. Archie: Completing that first draft gave me a tremendous burst of energy. There was so much more to write. What did I do? Jump the gun or wait? There were troublesome areas but I was too close to it to deal properly with them myself. I needed feedback and had none. So I seeded drafts to those who thought they might like to read it through, and I waited.

I hoped that this would put me in a better position to know if it was worth writing more. It was only hobby time, but I might as well get it right. I waited for feedback ... and waited. It was a long time coming. That time was frustrating, to put it mildly.

While I waited, I reacquainted myself with the rudiments of grammar and punctuation. I joined writing groups and reluctantly practised short stories. There’s nothing like reading out loud for finding flaws in your work.

Finally I got feedback from my draft. It became clear that I needed to reshape Guide. I realised there was still a long way to go and I had to up my game. The stage points of that journey weren't yet clear.  I continue to practise short stories, which, contrary to my initial opinion, gave significant benefit.

Parlour: How long did it take to get Guide from the conception stage to the marketplace? I ask because some of the conversations I have with more inexperienced indie writers leave me worrying that they might not be being realistic about the length of time the process takes.

T.P. Archie: A quick answer is four years. Could I have done it quicker? No.

Longer answer: At the time, I thought I would be finished with the process in six months. Having said that, it’s worth pointing out that my original objective wasn't writing per se. In fact, it didn't matter if I couldn't write; my objective was to test a software package. It was only when I’d "done enough" for that initial purpose (my target was 8k words) that I realised I had something to say. Basically, I was a committed hobbyist who got sucked in.

My early view changed from "let’s do 8k words" to "I bet I can finish this off in 60k words". I gave  myself three months to get to first draft (it took three and a half) and a further three to tidy things up.

This latter goal was totally unrealistic – it assumed a level of proficiency in editing my work that I didn't possess. The three months for first draft misled me because the effort, although considerable, was compacted together. Much longer was needed to give Guide a finished gloss.

How long would I allow now? It would make me uncomfortable to imagine I could do it in less than a year. At the moment I’d calculate the minimum time as:

• Writing time of at least three months.
• Plus at least six months away from the project to let it settle.
• Plus editing and formatting time of at least three months.

I haven’t nailed the time element of this process completely; my view is very much: it’s ready when it’s ready.

Why all that extra time? There’s little chance that Guide could have been ready earlier than it was. I wanted to get things right. While I waited for feedback there were things I could do that wouldn't be a waste of time. First things first: a test of commitment, learn the ropes. I learned Lulu (POD/ Print on Demand), dabbled with Photoshop, put work into devising blurb, table of contents, copyright, permission to quote.

The drip of feedback began. I got stuck into editing. The more I did, the bigger Guide got. It started at 60k words and grew to 80k. Then I received good-quality feedback. A complete rethink was required. I needed to convince myself that there was mileage in the next step.

Plusses and minuses two years after first draft would have read:

• Complete that initial draft.
• Bone up on grammar and punctuation.
• Get impartial feedback.

On the other side were imponderables that I wasn't equipped to handle, for example:

• Deal with feedback.
• Sell my work/communicate my vision.

I reasoned that, as long as my effort only cost me time, nothing was lost. I dumped 30k words, restructured and rewrote. By mid-2012 it had grown to 160k words – for those who like page counts, that’s 640 pages. It was an entirely different beast.

With hindsight, I now know that my product wasn't ready; I needed to develop as an author. What wasn't clear was how much time was required to become half-way competent.

Much of the past four years has been spent looking for feedback and dealing with it. I've a better idea how much work goes into publishing. Using other expertise means you spend more time in your comfort zone. I've spent a lot of time in business, enough to know that I've little interest in activity that adds little value. Successful authors should prioritise and focus on what they’re good at: writing.

During this time the stages I went through were:

• The hobbyist.
• How far can I take it?
• Is it worth the next step (i.e. paying a professional eye to look it over)?

"Sell my work" was scaled back into "learn POD". Queries to agents is something I've yet to master.

Parlour: Some independent authors take a completely do-it-yourself approach to the self-publishing process – including the cover design, editing and proofreading. Why did you decide to hire an editorial professional, how did you go about the task, and what qualities were you looking for?

T.P. Archie: By 2012 I’d done all I could, Guide could progress further. I rested it. A change of circumstances made that extra investment possible. Browsing on Goodreads gave me the idea that it needed other eyes, and that proofreading might be worth looking into.

I ranked proofreaders; you came top. Hiring an editor was a leap in the dark. I’d little idea of how to proceed so I went with gut instinct. Stephen Cashmore became Guide’s editor.

Parlour: What were the biggest benefits of hiring an editor?

T.P. Archie: It smoothed out my style and helped me understand what worked and what didn't. This has given me confidence in my other projects.

Parlour: Any challenges?

T.P. Archie: Definitely. The main one was to disengage thoroughly from the story design in mind – i.e. what I meant to convey – and actually deal with the editorial comment. I flip-flopped on some changes; in others, what I thought I needed to do didn't work. At times I needed to check my original intent; fortunately, my notes plus backups were up to the task. I found the editing process to be very helpful.

Parlour: If you could do it all over again, would you do anything differently?

T.P. Archie: Interesting question.

As far as the actual writing goes, things fell out as they did. The main characters had been in my head for some years. I felt little urge to write something I could get over the counter; the piece was always going to become complex. The decisions affecting the outcome couldn't be envisaged until after first draft.

Some were merely opportunities, which if not pressed would have held me back – e.g. I pushed for the local writing group to reform, even though I knew little of writing and less of those who would come to make up that group.

Selecting an editor was an act of faith but there was a real choice. I wasn't entirely sure how things would progress. Different outcomes were possible – but given a rewind, I’d be unlikely to do anything differently.

I still have more to learn.

Parlour: Many of this blog’s readers are editors and proofreaders. Is there any advice you’d like to offer to us about dealing with independent authors so that we can do our very best for you? I currently publish a set of Guidelines for New Authors, and, like many other editorial professionals, I'm keen to ensure I offer indie writers the information that’s most helpful to them. So what should we be doing and what might we do better?

T.P. Archie: Many potential clients don’t have a literary background and so won’t understand the value of your services. I think it’s worth taking me as an example ...

In 2012, Guide had progressed as far as I could take it, yet I was certain that its story was worth extra effort to get it into the marketplace. However, what to do wasn't clear. I had little idea what could be achieved and I put it on one side.

I came across the SfEP by accident, while following up a comment made on Goodreads by a US proofreading business. I ran a web search, ranked the results, emailed the top ranking proofreader who helped me find an editor. Encountering you (and hence the SfEP) wasn't a guaranteed outcome. It takes courage for first time indie author to let a professional look at his work.

The edit began. Issues were identified and ranked into major/moderate/minor. Changes were proposed. I prioritised my effort. Nearly all the minor changes were accepted without question. Suggestions for other issues were helpful and I followed many of them.

Guide had several types of problem. The story structure required a rethink, the style was inconsistent, and the text was too fragmented. In many places, the pace of the plot was let down by the narrative.

The benefits from the edit were significant. I put Guide into chronological order. Style excesses and inconsistencies were smoothed out. Fragmented text was joined up. I dealt with problems on a case-by-case basis.

Some solutions came from my editor; dialogue translation was provided for the one chapter where Russian is spoken. This added authenticity without detracting from the pace. In another case a solution evolved in the to and fro of the edit – a lengthy dialogue was demoted to the appendices, where it actually plays better.

The overall result is more readable.

The edit kept me in my comfort zone and solved a major headache; knowing how much to edit, and when to stop, was now solved. I had a better idea of what worked and what didn't. In addition I got an idea of where the boundaries of taste lay (where Guide strays near the edge, it is for story purposes). The whole thing has given me a great deal of confidence; I now know thorny problem areas can be identified and improved.

I'm certain my editor would agree with me if I said I was slow on the uptake. For this, and other reasons, what editors and proofreaders do needs to be out there and spelt out. A book on this sounds a good idea. [Editorial freelancers] are more likely to find value from those who are already seeking out their services.

Parlour: Having now achieved that final goal of getting your novel to market, what advice would you give to any indie author who’s considering self-publishing?

T.P. Archie: Self-publishing requires an author to get a lot of things right. Some of these are tasks with steep learning curves that can take an author away from his/her comfort zone. New authors need to make judgements on where their expertise stops.

​Where the processes are mechanical (e.g. POD formatting) it is clear if you have this right or not. As far as the actual writing goes, you are too close to your work to make that call. Any indie author seriously considering first-time publication would do well to consider putting it through copy-editing. I plan to do this with my next novel.

In the case of Guide some kind of final check was needed. Proofreading seemed a good idea; it actually needed copy-editing. That process was well worthwhile.

Parlour: What does the future hold? Do you have plans for future novels, and, if so, will they be in the science fiction genre?

T.P. Archie: I have four genre pieces in progress. In 2012, I dared to look forward, on the heroic assumption that Guide could be finished; I asked myself “What I would like to write next?” The ideas I liked were:

• Lucky: SF – an alien refugee stumbles across Earth;
• Joe and the Xenophids: SF/Horror – Earth gets invaded by big bugs;
• The Adventures of Matter Grabba: SF/Exploration – UK-WorldGov has commissioned a Survey Ship to investigate VIRGOHI121 – a dark-matter galaxy;
• Brant, a Fantasy: Heroic/mythic fantasy.

I've made starts on each of these.

There are also a number of themes coming out of Guide that I would find interesting to follow up. Before that happens I’ll do a little marketing. I'm on Goodreads, where I'm planning a "giveaway". I also want to tell local newspapers about Guide. There’s a press release, some bookstores to visit and, in between, I might read a few extracts onto YouTube. I promised to inform Octagon Press, agents to the written works of Idries Shah, as well as the Department of Public Affairs at Mayo Clinics ...

Parlour: Thank you so much, T.P. I think independent authors and editors/proofreaders can all learn a huge amount from the experiences you've so generously shared!

To buy A Guide to First Contact, visit Amazon or Lulu:

• www.amazon.com/dp/B00EUI42U2 (Kindle)
  
• www.lulu.com/content/7614126 (paperback)
  
• www.lulu.com/content/7946446 (hardback)
  

You can contact T.P. Archie as follows:

• Email: tparchie@gmail.com
  
• Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7034256.T_P_Archie/blog
  
• Daily Telegraph blog: http://my.telegraph.co.uk/archietp/
  
• Forthcoming YouTube readings: http://aguidetofirstcontact.wordpress.com/
  

Louise Harnby is a professional proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

If you're an author, you might like to join Louise’s Writing Library. Members receive monthly updates featuring self-publishing news and resources.

Independent writers looking for some introductory advice on self-publishing may find my Guidelines for New Authors a useful place to start – in particular, the section on using the appropriate editorial service. This free booklet includes guidance on:

• Financial success – an honest appraisal
• Marketing assessment
• Formatting tools
• Using the appropriate editorial service
• Self-editing advice
• Developing your writing skills
• Creating a style sheet
• Distribution channels
• Taxation issues
• Legal issues
• List of professional editorial societies

Louise Harnby is a professional fiction proofreader and copyeditor. She curates The Proofreader's Parlour and is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors and proofreaders.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.