How do I proofread my own book? Help for beginner indie authors

Can you proofread your own book?

Truly, nothing beats a second pair of eyes on a piece of text, short or long. I know this all too well because I’m a professional proofreader and copyeditor, but I also write – books (yup, I've self-published four times), guides, booklets and blog posts.

​And I miss stuff – not because I have a problem with grammar, punctuation or spelling, but because I’m too close to the text. I see my own writing in terms of the ideas I want to convey rather than the text in front of my eyes.

That’s why I hire fellow proofreaders and editors to help make my written materials the best they can be. I don't expect those people to guarantee perfection but I do expect to them to ramp up the quality (and they've never failed me).

Here’s another thing I know – the better shape the file's in, the better the price. Editors and proofreaders are professionals and, though we love what we do, we have bills and mortgages too. So, very broadly speaking, the more intervention needed, the higher the fee.

There are things every writer can do to tidy up a piece of text by themselves, though. I’ve compiled them in one handy resource: The Author’s Proofreading Companion.

The steps in this toolkit won’t replace a rigorous professional developmental edit, line edit/copyedit and final prepublication proofread, but they will help rid your file of some of the nasties!

Here’s what the Companion shows you how to do:

• Remove double spaces
• Remove all rogue spaces at the beginning and end of paragraphs
• Remove double line returns
• Change hyphens used as parentheses to dashes
• Change tabbed paragraph indents to proper line indents (using Word’s ‘Styles’)
• Change a hyphen in a number span
• Find lower-case letters at the beginning of paragraphs
• Find a paragraph that ends with no punctuation
• Find a full point followed by a lower-case letter
• ​Change date styles with wildcard searches
• Run a confusables macro
• Remove unnecessary spaces before or after punctuation

Just click on the image below to get your FREE copy!

Hope it helps! And come back soon for more handy tips and advice designed especially for beginner writers.

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

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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.

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