By Scott Boyd
Wow - so you have finally finished your eBook. Well done! You have written every single one of those chunks you jotted down as part of your outline (aren’t you glad you took the time to do that now?). Simply by getting to this stage you have achieved a lot more than a lot of other people do who never get beyond the idea stage. Now you have to prepare the book for publishing and you can save many hundreds and even thousands if you properly edit the book yourself. Even if you are planning to only publish the book in electronic form you need to professionally edit the eBook.
Now it’s time to congratulate yourself on a great job and forget all about that eBook.
Hey, don’t panic, you’re still going to be selling it - you just need to check it over first and make sure it’s ready to be wheeled out in front of your audience. If you put it aside for even just a couple of days, the editing process will be a lot easier to do, because you’ll find that any errors you’ve made (no matter what type they are) will be easier to spot. And you’ll always find that changing the odd word here and there will lead to a smoother and much more pleasant read.
Giving yourself a break from the whole process will also give you a chance to recharge your batteries in readiness for the editing anyway, so take a break - you earned it!
THE IMPORTANCE OF EDITING
Why do we edit books?
It’s a simple question, but there are lots of answers. Perhaps the answer that rolls everything into a neat package is this one:
“To make them the best that they can be.”
And if that isn’t good enough for you then how about this: if you write poorly and your content is of little value to anyone, you won’t make it in this business. Your first eBooks will make or break your career in a hurry. If you publish a high quality book that is well written and provides valuable and useful information to your niche market, you will build a reputation. Once you have a reputation, your affiliates will promote anything that you publish, and more affiliates will sign up to get in on the action.
Even if you are exceptionally good at writing and your first draft is pretty much the same as your final draft, you will still need to edit to a certain degree because you have to pick up on those typos, change words here and there and generally smooth it out a little.
Editing is very important if you want people to take your work seriously. Amazingly, some people will publish an eBook without bothering to edit it because they think that by the time someone reads it they will already have paid their money to do so. The author has the money, so why worry?
Understandably you don’t tend to see too many of these writers hanging around for very long. This is because the people who do buy from them once won’t tend to buy from them again - because they want an eBook with a more professional edge. And the affiliates that promote your book will disappear on you in the search of quality products to promote.
Every now and then someone breaks this rule and publishes an eBook that is pretty dreadful in presentation, but they get away with it because the information contained in it is so explosive and so useful to the reader that they are willing to overlook that shortcoming. For example, I once read a book that was very poorly written, and there were a shocking number of simple grammar errors. But I got through the book because I found the content interesting, and apparently so did Amazon buyers as the book has an Amazon rank of less than 200,000 and a feedback of 4 out of 5 stars.
These are very few and far between though. So don’t try to get away without editing because you think people will tolerate it. Always strive to make your finished book the best work you can produce.
Scott Boyd is an author of Internet Marketing and Health related Books. See more information about writing, publishing, and selling eBooks at Writing Publishing EBooks.
Or check out my jam packed Write EBooks Blog where you will discover a wealth of free information for a lifelong resource.
Your book enables you to communicate with audiences far beyond those you address directly in seminars, consultations, coachings, and keynote speeches. It’s a way to communicate with thousands of people you have never met. You strengthen your reputation as an expert. You become a thought leader in your field.