Five Mistakes That You Should Avoid While Publishing

When it comes to publishing your book, it is vital to meticulously go through every detail as opposed to rushing through the process. It is easier to fix mistakes before your book is published. There are various publishing models to assist you in publishing your manuscript and making the activities of writing, publishing, distributing and marketing simpler. A few widely known publishing models are Traditional publishing, Self- publishing and Supported Self-publishing.  You must cautiously decide the right publishing model for your book. In traditional publishing, they screen content, select manuscripts, invest into the project to publish the book, distribute the book and pay the author royalties post receiving revenue from the sales of the book. However, the process of writing a book proposal, finding an agent who is willing to represent you and your book to a publisher is very complex. If you opt for traditional publishing, you will have close to zero control on your book. Self-published books have seen a meteoric rise, considering how it is affordable, efficient and respectable. You can do a professional job with your self-published book while retaining ownership and rights and enjoy complete creative and content control. There’s a middle ground between traditional and self-publishing, which is supported self-publishing. If you want control over the book and its rights while earning a higher royalty, supported self-publishing is the way to go. In supported self-publishing, the author uses the required services from a publishing firm to publish her/his own work. You can skip the queue of traditional publishing and enhance your work with professional editing, layouts, designing, marketing and distribution. While publishing, an author, more than often, takes up an entrepreneur’s role and on many occasions might miss out on some intricacies while overseeing the final project. Despite having the creative control in your hands, authors can commit avoidable mistakes in this ever-evolving industry because of a myopic eye. It is imperative to know about the oversights that may stifle the book’s sale.

Here are 5 effective tips you should follow to avoid making mistakes:

Professional Designing Can Make a Big Difference

It’s a truth universally acknowledged, a book is judged by its cover. If your book is “not-put-downable” because it’s content-rich, it should also be “easy to pick” because of its enticing cover. You have a vision, all you need is a professional artist to convey the same in a language and craft that they know the best. Online or at bookstores, you have a single chance to make that first impression, a self-designed book cover may have all the elements you want, but it can still lead to a lousy and unprofessional opinion in the minds of the readers. Your book cover is your identity, and as the sales increase, it may just prove to be your brand. Designing it professionally is a long-term investment. If you think that getting a professional designer is immoderate, you can always opt for freelance designers. You can reach out to numerous freelance designers on Bēhance. It is a platform which allows you to view the designer’s portfolio and understand their thought process behind every design they create. You can get in touch with them and work out a deal that suits you the best.

Familiarity Can Lead To Mistakes

Every reader wants (and deserves) a book free of errors. Even the greatest writers miss out on spellings, word choices, grammar, and more. When you hire a professional editor and proofreader, he or she takes the extra step in terms of augmenting the clarity of the copy. In addition to a thorough check on errors, a professional also makes sure that the content of your book is organized rationally, and looks presentable. This involves moving a sentence up or down or even deleting or adding a few. Hiring an editor is the most important step that your book requires. If you still think that getting an editor is not feasible, there are countless tools you must try that can help you avoid these mistakes. You can find a list of these tools here.

Promote Your Book On Social Media

According to Forbes, there are 600,000 to 1,000,000 books published every year. Which means copious amount of content already exists on social media. Social media has expanded and extended the reach of an author. You need to stand out of the clutter. It is advisable to hire digital media professionals, especially when it comes to ads as they can manage your budget more effectively. The reason being, tracking these spends across multiple platforms and campaigns can be really difficult and time-consuming. If you want to do it yourself, start by picking the right hashtags for your social media posts, the right target audience for Facebook and Instagram ads (yes, paid ads do work), and the right flow for your social media campaign. Avoid making your posts all about the sale. Engage with your followers, because more engagement means your content is more likely to be seen. Use aesthetic visuals, engaging contests and giveaways, such as providing free sample chapters. Make your book launch an event to celebrate. You could set up a page/event on Facebook for the launch, create a hashtag or a new social media account for your book. Run a challenge related to your content or giveaway your merchandise. You can also learn more about the marketing process and services to receive a clear understanding of the whole process.

Pagination Improves Reader Experience

Pagination is the process of separating print or digital content into discrete pages. Numerous authors avoid the pagination process, which leads to vagueness and unclarity in the book itself. Now, why Pagination? A book needs structure and organization to improve readability and smooth transitions for the readers. Pagination also helps in breaking sentences and paragraphs without losing on the reader’s flow of the story or being abrupt. Every reader prefers a book that doesn’t involve excess navigation. There are probably about 90 words in a typical paragraph. Let’s just say that in a manuscript of 75,000 words you will be dealing with over 800 paragraphs and 5,000 line endings. Because there are so many paragraphs, there’s a kind of random distribution that takes place in books. If you get to the bottom of a page and there’s only room for one more line, and that line is the first line of a paragraph, you will have an odd look at the bottom of that page. You don’t want to be in a spot like that and cause inconvenience to your readers. Hence, always opt for pagination and typesetting services from professionals. According to usabilitynews.org, Dyson and Kipping (1998) found that participants read through paged documents faster than scrolled documents.

Boost Your Credentials With The About Author section:

 Here’s a thought, if you aren’t a household name author like Steven King, JK Rowling, Malcolm Gladwell, most of the people buying your book would be unaware about who you are and your story. So how do they learn about you? And why is this important? It’s observed that very few authors think about it, but the “Author Bio” section eminently impacts the sales, reputation, book marketing, and social media. It takes a long time to read a book, but it’s very easy to make a quick judgment based on a short paragraph, which most readers do. If you’re seen as an authority on your book topic, readers will buy your book and read it. So, one of the best ways to be seen, as an authority, is to have a great Author Bio about yourself. Another effective form of marketing is attaching an Author Image. The About author section is the easiest means of communicating vital information to your readers. It tells the audience about the tone, style and genre of your writing and helps establish you as a brand. Always remember that the author’s reputation is consistently seen as one of the main factors that influence a book-buying decision. Avoid giving out your personal contact details such as your contact numbers or address. Instead, you can mention your Twitter or Instagram handle. In the end, you have put in countless hours and efforts into bringing your book to life. Therefore, it is important that you take into consideration these avoidable mistakes that can stop readers from appreciating the content. This will help you in developing an insight to not rush the entire process and release the book before it’s ready for the world. These common publishing mistakes are fairly simple, if not always easy to avoid. Instead of looking for instant gratification, stick to what you know and love.