Starting an indie authorship comes with a lot of “unknowns” and a lot of questions. While this list is by no means comprehensive, it may be able to help you start to better understand the industry, the various paths that are available to you, and which options are best for whatever goals you’re attempting to accomplish.
If you have further questions you want to add, or want to talk more about one of these answers, that’s exactly the kind of thing you can bring up in your monthly book coaching session as an Apprentice. The questions on this list so far are pulled from clients, colleagues, social media forums, and WeCanPub.com Apprentices and Freeple.
💡 Is my book idea worth writing?
🪙 Can I publish a book for free?
👷🏿♀️ What kind of editor do I need for my book?
🤳🏿How many social media profiles should I have?
Is my book idea worth writing?
Whenever I hear someone ask a question like this, it pains me. In my decades in the publishing world, I have never told someone that their book idea was not “worth” writing. I don’t know of any likely situations in which I would tell a budding writer such a thing.
My speculation is that this idea of a concept being “good enough” or “worthy” is a product of the disease of perfectionism. Many new authors have it in their heads that they can write a book that every single person who reads it will absolutely fall in love with.
But since every person on the planet is different—meaning they have different backgrounds, desires, preferences, pet peeves, and the like—there is no way to write a book that will be beloved by every person who encounters it.
So, yes, your idea is worth writing. But, no, not everyone is going to enjoy it. And that’s statistically sound and expected in any creative endeavor. Don’t let the fact that a portion of people in the world won’t like your book be the reason that you don’t write it.
Success in the publishing world, based on my observations of the market over the years, is much more about connecting with an appropriate audience than it is about the concept or even how that concept is executed.
For example, if I write a book that, by the standards of the average romantic horror reader, is spot on, but I keep pushing it to hard sci-fi readers, I’m not going to get as strong of a positive response as I could. But, again, it has nothing to do with the content of the book itself. It has to do with the fact that I’m at the wrong house with the right package, as the saying goes. I need to deliver my romantic horror novel to people who love romantic horror if I want my book to be part of a market where it will regularly be well-received by readers.
The first person it’s most helpful to have like your book is you. If you like writing your book and even like the process of reading it repeatedly as you engage in self-revisions, the battle is halfway won. The next step is to find readers like you who enjoy the kind of content that you write.
With this strong match between author and audience, you can find the consistent, positive encouragement that helps keep you upbeat and confident throughout your writing career!
Can I publish a book for free?
Absolutely!
As an indie author, you have the option to publish a book without spending any time or money on it beyond writing the first draft (and some people don’t even do that themselves!).
This is a pretty straightforward question, sure, but I think it’s not the most effective question to ask and doesn’t get at the heart of what most writers want to know when they ask it. English has a talent for being a vague and imprecise method of communication sometimes!
Asking if you can publish a book for free is like asking if you can rob a bank. Are you physically capable of it (i.e., can you)? Of course! Most people have the smarts and resources to at least attempt to rob a bank, even if it’s just with their finger making the shape of a gun barrel in their jacket pocket and a stocking pulled down over their face.
The more effective question is whether or not robbing a bank is going to get you the results you’re looking for. My answer then would be a resounding “no.” That is, unless your goal is to be hauled off to prison for a felony. In that case, yes, attempting to rob a bank will put you on track to your desired achievement! 😀
The same goes for the “Can I publish a book for free?” question. You can. Many people do it every single day. But is that going to get you the results you’re looking for? Is that going to help you sell more books, grow your audience, gain a reputation for quality work, and so on? In most cases, it won’t.
In the lessons that cover all the book development steps, I’ve tried to highlight free or lower-cost options outside of hiring a seasoned, ethical professional. But even then, I emphasize the fact that this may lead to lower-quality results than you would get if you did hire an expert.
I don’t think anyone should be priced out of publishing. I want as many colorful, underrepresented, and off-beat voices to make their work available as possible so that the audiences who want to read their stories and information can have access to them. But just because you won’t be coughing up cash to buy the services of a firm or even a single freelancer, that doesn’t mean you can’t put time and effort into grooming a manuscript to make it exponentially stronger than what your first draft looked like.
Starting with the self-revisions lesson, read about the various steps that a manuscript goes through prior to publication. Any services you can buy comfortably (I also don’t think going bankrupt or taking on debt just to publish a book is the best plan!), do so. Otherwise, lean on volunteers, software, or any other methods at your disposal to help you get some semblance of each service for your manuscript.
There’s no such thing as a perfect book. Even manuscripts that get a full gamut of premium editorial services will still be disliked by some people. So perfection is not the point of book development since it’s not obtainable. The idea behind the book development process is to make the reading experience reasonably entertaining and / or educational for the reader, showcasing that the author cares about and has pride in their product—something that publishing a first draft doesn’t accomplish.
What kind of editor do I need for my book?
This will vary depending upon the kind of book that you’re writing, your own level of skill and experience, and the audience that you’re writing for.
Most commonly, books of both fiction and nonfiction go through at least two types of editing.
DEVELOPMENTAL EDITING
First is developmental editing, which can be called other names such as “substantive editing.”
This kind of editing has been immensely helpful for the first-time authors who I’ve provided it to mainly because it was their first book. Sometimes when we are first attempting something, it’s difficult to understand how to remedy all the issues we might see within it. We may think a character arc is flatter than we’d like, or that a scene is being dragged out, or that the explanation of a concept isn’t as clear as it could be. Yet, we may have no clue how to enhance those aspects of the piece.
A developmental editor will have the experience and skill to help with those kinds of issues. Developmental editing is all about “big picture” problems with a book. This means the overall structure of the piece, not the tiny details (spelling, word choice, punctuation, etc.). Worldbuilding, character consistency, plot management, and content organization are all part of a developmental editor’s purview.
For fiction, this means making sure that the foundational elements of the piece are solid. This helps provide your readers with a satisfactory reading experience by providing the elements that they were hoping for when they picked up a book. If you’ve ever read a romance with very little love story in it or a thriller that moved at a snail’s pace, you’ve come across a project for which a developmental editor wasn’t hired.
For nonfiction, a developmental editor’s work is similar. They are making sure you are giving your audience what they want our of a book like yours. For a memoir, this might mean managing how the author’s life is conveyed on the page so that it is both honest and compelling. For a self-help book, this means providing the solutions that the reader is searching for in a way that they can easily understand and execute in their own lives.
I recommend engaging with a developmental editor when your draft is in the early stages (first to fifth draft, for example).
COPYEDITING
Copyediting is a service meant to clean up most of the grammatical issues within a piece. This is often done towards the end of the book development process just before the design services begin.
This kind of editor is looking at the fine details related to the mechanics of whatever language you’re writing in. They are making sure that conventions related to spelling, punctuation, syntax, and similar language elements adhere to the style guide you’ve elected to use. They also help make sure your project-specific style guide is consistently applied. For example, if you have a character named “Janison” and their nickname is “Janiss” then a copyeditor will be able to make sure these are consistently spelling correctly throughout the piece (where an algorithm might try to change “Janison” and “Janiss” to things like “Jamison” or “Janice.”
PICKING EDITING TYPES
While these two kinds of editing are what I most commonly get asked to provide to writers, don’t forget that there are other forms of editing and editorial feedback that you can purchase. Generally speaking, the more of these services you provide for your manuscript, the stronger the end product will be before you put it out for sale.
Examples include:
- Alpha Reading: The complete reading of a full or partial manuscript to provide a summary of feedback that the writer then uses to make their own adjustments to the piece.
- Manuscript Evaluation: A thorough, detailed review of a full or partial manuscript in order to provide clear instruction on what elements of the piece are problematic and offer instruction on how the writer can make changes to enhance the piece.
- Line Editing: A broader form of copyediting (and sometimes included with a copyediting service by some freelancers), line editing addresses the writing on a sentence level to manage the flow of the language, the consistence of the style of writing, and the clarity of thoughts expressed in each sentence.
- Sensitivity / Authenticity Reading: Recommended when writing characters that are far outside of the writer’s demographic experience so that the writing avoids presenting the characters in cliche, stereotypical, or disrespectful manners. Examples would be someone who has been thin all their lives trying to write fat characters, a Japanese author trying to write Black characters, or a wealthy person trying to write about the experience of people living in poverty.
- Beta Reading: Similar to alpha reading, but takes place just before publication, often around the time the ARCs are being sent out in order to get more timely information related to how readers may respond to a piece and provide key promotional guidance on how to present the reading experience to customers in an enticing way.
- Proofreading: After the book has been designed (and printed, if you wish), and is ready to be sold, a proofreader will review the entire piece to check for any problems that may have slipped through the cracks. This can include everything from typos to blurred images to missing page numbers.
This creates a list of the services in the order in which I think it’s most helpful to complete them, except for copyediting. That would generally go right before getting a professional beta reading done. Working from “big picture” issues down to “nit-picky” details has worked best in my experience.
So when it comes to figuring out what kind of editing would benefit your book the most—especially if you can’t afford to buy more than a couple of these services—your best bet will likely be to engage with a developmental editor first. You can get a sample edit and ask that they let you know what issues they see in the opening of your piece (each editor will tell you how much content they allow for sample edits, but it’s usually going to be somewhere around the first 10 pages / 2,500 words). If a lot of structural issues are noticed, we’ll recommend starting with developmental editing. Rarely (I can count on one hand how many times it’s happened to me in the past couple of decades!) we may see a manuscript in good enough shape that it might be ready to move on to line editing or copyediting immediately or maybe after a manuscript eval and another round of self-revisions.
Sample edits are generally not the thousands of dollars you might spend on a full developmental edit and they’re quick and easy to complete. You can expect to pay somewhere between $100 and $200 and those funds will often be credited to your project if you end up hiring the editor for the full service. For example, if the sample edit costs $200 and you decide to hire the editor to do the entire book, that $200 would be considered a partial payment on your bill of $2,000 so that you only owe $1,800 more.
If you find yourself only able to afford a single editing service, my guidance is always to let it be copyediting. More people seem to be more forgiving about content issues than they do about things like spelling and punctuation. It’s easy to think that a program like Grammarly or ProWritingAid can handle it. But, while they do offer some assistance (and are certainly better than doing no kind of grammatical review at all) there are simply too many nuances and exceptions that they don’t catch. Even though the program might not see something as problematic, a human who regularly reads books might and it will be all over their 3-star review for your book in most cases.
And often, these kinds of errors are what will keep people from reading the rest of the book anyway. They will see a bunch of missing words or instances of misplaced punctuation and put the book down because they believe that you didn’t take the time and effort to have the book edited by professionals. Not every reader is going to have this sentiment, mind you. But it’s common enough that it’s usually going to end up being worth your while to go ahead and pay for your professional copyediting service.
How Many Social Media Profiles Should I Have?
Like most things in life, there is no “one-size-fits-all” answer to this question.
My recommendation is at least one. I usually guide new authors to start wherever they are already personally active and work their way out from there.
For example, if you already have a personal Instagram profile and use it regularly, that means you are likely relatively comfortable with that platform. That means Instagram is where I’d suggest you start with your first author social media profile.
This prevents you from having to both learn a new platform AND try to build an audience there at the same time. You can just focus on creating content and interacting with your target audience as much as you consistently can.
As you start to publish more books and gather a following, you may realize that many of your kind of readers are active on Pinterest, for example. Then you can make your second social media profile a Pinterest profile.
Don’t be afraid to start slowly and build your authorship a little at a time. You don’t need to be on every platform on the planet. Chances are your target audience is going to be most active on a few major platforms, so that’s all you’ll need to worry about, especially if you only write in one or two genres.
Some authors have multiple social media accounts for the various genres they write in or pen names that they use. If you have the energy and capacity to post on these various profiles consistently, have at it.
But I’ve generally seen that newbie authors just end up overwhelming themselves and burning out when they try to do too much too fast.
I don’t use a pen name, so everything that I write is under the same name and showcased through a single social media profile per platform that I use. Knowing how strong my penchant for what we’ll call “energy efficiency” is, I’m confident that I would have a bunch of ghost profiles floating around if I were to try to have a different pen name for every genre that I write in. So far, no one has died because I only use a single name to write under. So if that’s the way you want to handle your social media presence, it’s by no means the end of the world.
And, if you change your mind later on, it’s not like you can’t create those extra profiles whenever you’re ready.
Start with a strong foundation on the platform where you’re most comfortable and build your way out from there to give yourself a solid start that’s less stressful to manage.