I underestimated how long the revision to Sell Your Book on Amazon would take. I had hoped to have it done and available by now, however the editor had quite a few suggestions, which I’m now implementing. This allows me an opportunity to stress the importance of professional copyediting when publishing a book.
A misconception that most authors who are pursuing conventional publishing have is that they don’t need to edit their work, and as a result, feel that paid copyediting services offered by publishing service companies represent another example of “money flowing the wrong way.”
Their feeling is, if they get published traditionally, “the publisher will edit it.”
It is true that IF your work gets accepted by a traditional publisher, they will edit it without any cost to you. But it’s not true that means you can submit a non-edited book for consideration.
That may be true for Stephanie Meyer, or Dan Brown, but it’s not true for you. If you are submitting an unsolicited–or even a solicited–manuscript to a publisher or literary agent, it is in your best interest to pay to have it professionally copyedited before submission.
Why? Because this is an extremely competitive industry and if your cover letter and/or query letter and/or book proposal and/or manuscript is littered with mistakes — or even contains just a few — that makes it all the easier to reject.
I’ll be the first to admit that every book I’ve published has contained at least one error — and that’s WITH editing! Imagine if I didn’t have them edited. The beauty of print-on-demand is that those mistakes are much easier to correct than a 5,000-10,0000 print-run containing errors. A number of my readers have been kind enough to politely point out small things I or my editor overlooked, and presto-done, POD makes post-publication changes a snap! That’s why pencils have erasers, keyboards have “Backspace” and why Outskirts Press has its revision option. — Why? Because we’re all human.
President of Outskirts Press 