I made the decision to go down the self-publishing route for a number of reasons. My work is important to me, not in a precious kind of way, but how it is treated is still important. This is why I enrolled on CMP’s proofreading and editing course
I wanted to be able to decide when the book was published and not have to wait for the official go ahead from a publisher.
I wanted to have complete control concerning each stage of the process, including the cover design and with self-publishing I was able to do this. Again, proofreading was important – hence my decision to do an online proofreading course
Most people assume that going down the traditional publishing route is the best deal and it still can be, but, isn’t there always a ‘but’, it isn’t always the best route.
A friend of mine wrote three books and had them published by three separate mainstream publishers, none sold more than a handful of copies.
The modern publishing deal tends to offer very little, if anything at all upfront and a small amount of royalties for sales achieved.
A conventional publisher will often drop any new author, who has not achieved enough book sales within the first year.
The much talked about multi-book deals, are sadly, on the whole a thing of the past. The standard is one book, with an option to buy a second. The option is the publisher’s back door.
The author I mentioned above was dropped by each publisher, as his books failed to attract enough sales.
He found that being a published author, with two books in print, meant nothing and it took him a full year to find an agent prepared to take him on.
Going down the direct route, I mocked up my own cover design and found a very low priced professional cover designer in Mexico, who is working on my forth cover design, as I type this.
When my book was finished, I was able to format and compile it myself, make test versions and only when I was happy, upload it.
I had a book go live on Amazon, across the global markets, within an hour. Within 48 hours it was in all aspects no different than any other Kindle book.
The following evening I had already sold two books and had my first Amazon review. I will be uploading a different version of my book to Amazon’s print-on demand website Createspace and this will offer readers a paperback option, printed per sale.
Our proofreading course students are sometimes puzzled by the Guardian Style Guide’s lack of deference to office bearers. Surely such Important People should be addressed with their Full Titles, including capital letters?
Not any longer! You don’t have to be on our online proofreading course for very long to discover that the GSG is no respecter of reputations.
It says that you should only use the term ‘Councillor’ when you first mention them – not something that goes down well in the corridors of power at your local town hall, where I’ve witnessed elected representatives foaming at the mouth with rage when they are not Properly referred to as Vice Chairman of the Planning Committee!
The GSG’s section under ‘Honorifics’ explains how to address someone by their title. It says that you use the full title when you first mention the person, but after that, you use only their name and no title. So even Boris Johnson becomes Johnson … and Lady Brady, of Apprentice fame, has to settle for being called Brady.
The guide admits that this reflects a society that is less formal and less deferential, and notes that some websites have abandoned capital letters altogether.
This certainly makes like easier for our proofreading course students, once they get used to it.