Publishing Monday: Top ten self-publishing mistakes

Want to know how to do self-publishing right? Over at Publetariat: People Who Publish there’s an interesting interview with Shannon Yarbrough, the founder/lead reviewer of The Lulu Book Review. Shannon is a passionate advocate of Lulu.com self-publishing services. He’s written an excellent guide to the top ten mistakes authors make when self-publishing their own book.

Though Yarbrough’s advice is geared toward those who use Lulu, many of his pointers are good whether you use Lulu or another service—or even ignore the print world in favor of e-books. Just ignore where he types “Lulu” and substitute your name of choice.

Here’s an excerpt:

1. Punctuation, spelling, and typos – none of us are perfect and every book has flaws, but your Lulu storefront/book page can not afford to contain these as people will take one look and decide that if you can’t put together a short blurb without errors, your book is too flawed to read. Editing has always been a dark cloud over the POD world, which is why accomplishing complete accuracy on your Lulu book page is an absolute must! Have someone review your work prior to releasing for distribution. If there are major errors, then it is too late to pull it back without paying for another distribution. Plus, you don’t want a reputation for releasing material that is not ready for prime time.

2. Know your characters and where they are! If his big blue eyes are so important to point out on page ten, they better not be brown eyes on page twenty. If she’s drinking a beer on page seven, she better not be finishing scotch on page eight. While these mistakes should really fall under rule #1 as typos, I bring attention to them only because I’ve seen this happen quite a bit. If you have a lot of characters to keep up with, I suggest buying a notebook and writing out character sketches or outlines of everything about them you need to know.

3. Formatting, formatting, formatting – Books are not emails or business letters. They have an expected format. If you know nothing about formatting a book, pull about 10 traditionally published books off your shelf and study their layout. Or go to a library or bookstore and just thumb through some popular books. Pay close attention to the number of blank pages between title pages, copyright pages, dedication pages, and Chapter 1. Also pay attention to page numbering (something my very own book fell victim to earlier this year). Are the numbers at the top or bottom, centered or flushed to the right? What page does the first chapter start on?”

You can read the rest here. Want to read more about self-publishing? Check out my posts here and here.

(Pssst: If you haven’t entered the MISTRESS OF THE SUN giveaway yet, there’s still time to go forth and comment. Entries must be received by midnight EST on Thursday.)

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