KDP Select

If you’re reading this blog you’re probably a writer, so I won’t need to go into the details around Amazon’s KDP Select program, announced this past December. If you’re not familiar with it, a Google search on “Amazon KDP Select” should point you in the right direction.

That said, the announcement stirred up a lot of rabble. There were many cool heads prevailing, pragmatically discussing the pros and cons of the program and how they may or may not benefit from it. There were also as many or more frightened Chicken Littles clucking about, predicting the inevitable fall of the sky.

I decided to shack up with the first camp and evaluate the program for a while to decide what was best for me and my readers. I’ve watched my sales on Barnes and Noble increase since then, but not by much. This past January was my best month ever and yet I only sold 10 copies there. Compare that to 1,041 copies sold via Amazon. Do the math and you’ll see B&N accounts for less than 1% of my sales.

Smashwords, Kobo, Diesel, Apple, and Sony account for 0%. I haven’t sold a single book on any of these platforms.

Many decried the 90-day exclusivity agreement required by Amazon for KDP Select. I can see that as a viable argument if an author is actually selling on the other platforms. I’m not, so I might as well be exclusive to Amazon, since functionally I already am. By signing the agreement (and making this functional dependency legal) I receive some things from Amazon that I’m not already getting.

First and foremost is the lending program. Prime members will be allowed to “borrow” my books and I’ll get something to the tune of $1.70 for each lend. That’s almost as much as I make on a sale. People who aren’t ready to take the plunge with me can do it for free and I’ll still get paid (and possibly gain a new reader).

I’ll also be allowed to promote my book for free for up to 5 days during the 90-day exclusivity period. I’m not sure how I’ll use this yet, but I have two new releases scheduled for 2012 and those free promotion days might come in handy.

KDP Select inclusion still allows me to make my book available in paperback, so it won’t affect that small group of readers. Since I don’t sell on Kobo, Apple, Diesel, Smashwords, or Sony no readers will be affected by pulling my ebook from their platform.

Who it will affect are Nook owners. It’s unfortunate that they won’t be able to simply purchase the book from Barnes and Noble. Unfortunately B&N seems to provide very little support or promotion of indies, thus I have very few readers there, thus the decision to drop B&N becomes easier.

That said, I sell all my books DRM-free, so they can be purchased on Amazon and then converted to ePub via Calibre. The resulting epub file can be sideloaded onto a Nook. It’s a pain, but there is a way.

A lot of people are afraid of Amazon getting too powerful. I suppose I am too, but someone always comes along to knock down those who become too arrogant. Look at Microsoft. Ten years ago they ruled the world. Then came Apple back from the dead and Google from out of nowhere. The game has changed now. Amazon is taking this step to retain its number one spot. As long as they continue to take care of their authors and their customers, they’ll keep it. They’ll keep it because they earned it. If not, someone else will take it from them.

Will KDP Select provide me more exposure? I hope. Will it procure more readers for me? Possibly. Self-publishing is about experimentation and taking calculated risks, so I feel it’s at least worth taking the 90 day plunge to see how it plays out.

Transparency In Indie Publishing, Jan. 2012

My name is Brian J. Jarrett and I’m a full-time programmer looking to achieve some modest success as an indie horror and post-apocalyptic thriller writer. Join me on my journey as I return to writing.

I wrote that back in October, 2010 when I started this blog as a companion to my return to writing. It still appears in the sidebar to this day. I had no idea that sixteen months later I’d be where I am now.

January was my best month ever. I sold 1,055 copies of Into the Badlands and 45 copies of Walking at Night: A Collection of Horror. These numbers blew prior sales out of the water, as evidenced below:

Into the Badlands:

• 2011-09: 46
• 2011-10: 60
• 2011-11: 165
• 2011-12: 411
• 2012-01: 1,055

Walking At Night: A Collection of Horror

• 2011-10: 10
• 2011-11: 7
• 2011-12: 17
• 2012-01: 45

I think I’ve already sufficiently discussed my surprise at these sales numbers. I’m still very pleasantly surprised. But now in addition to that we’ve made some changes around our house due to the success of my books. My wife is a former teacher, but lost her job about two years ago. She’s been working part-time at a grocery store, but the money isn’t anywhere near her teaching salary.

My January book royalties were double what she makes at the grocery store. She doesn’t really enjoy the work and the time away from home means that I’m spending more time on household chores than writing. It quickly became a no-brainer decision: my wife quit her job earlier this week. We’re going to be living off my IT salary with my book royalties going into savings. She’ll be home now to pick up the extra household work and I’ll have my time back to write (which is more lucrative than her grocery store job).

I entered into this looking for some “modest” success; a few dozen books maybe and a way to connect with a few readers. I’ve now sold over 1,900 books since September, so much more than I could ever have imagined. I’d say I exceeded my goal of modest success in that writing is now the family’s official second source of income. It has allowed my wife to quit a job she didn’t like and allowed me to continue doing something I love. It’s been life-changing, actually.

I’m also no longer measuring success by someone else’s yardstick. I still don’t know what other “successful” indie writers are selling. I’m not really so concerned anymore. Rather than judge my success by their sales numbers I’m judging my success by how much positive influence my writing is having on my life and my family. Right now it’s pretty damn successful.

What will next month bring? Hard to say. The first few days of February have seen a 25% slowdown in sales. Hopefully that’s not a trend that will continue. I’m sure there are plenty of ups and downs with book sales, but since I’m only five months into it I don’t have much history to use for predicting the future. I also have two more books due out in 2012, so hopefully those releases will counter any reduction in sales.

February will bring what it brings, but January brought unprecedented success along with life-changing opportunity. Sixteen months ago I could never have anticipated that. I’m excited to see what other opportunities self-publishing will bring over the next sixteen months.

I Don’t Need Awards…

…when I receive these kinds of reviews from actual readers.

Making Writing Work

A while back Joe Konrath put out a call for guest posts for his blog. This was mine. Unfortunately the day before I was going to send it to him he ended up writing a post with a similar message. I decided to go ahead and post it here anyway. It’s geared toward other writers, like most everything else on this blog. Hope you like it.

* * *

My name is Brian J. Jarrett. You’ve probably never heard of me.

I’ve never been published in a magazine of any kind. I’ve never had a story published in a collection. I’ve never had a novel published by anyone.

I’ve never once sent a query letter to anyone. Ever.

I wrote my first short story in grade school, then started writing more seriously in high school. After graduation I wrote a bunch of short stories and a novel. I thought about trying to become an author, but ultimately I gave up on that dream. I ended up going to college and becoming a computer programmer instead.

Fast forward a dozen years. It’s late 2010. I’d decided I wanted to write creatively again, mostly for myself. I thought I might be able to find a website to share some of my work. Maybe I’d write another novel.

Then I stumbled upon a blog that changed everything for me: A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.

I learned about a device called the Kindle. I learned that I could publish myself on this device via Amazon, electronically. There was little risk; I would write the best book I could and put it out there. Maybe it would take off.

I reread my old stories; none of them were good enough to publish as they were. Neither was the novel. I studied writing as a craft. I improved. I wrote a short story.

Then I decided to write a new novel.

I spent eight months writing my novel, Into the Badlands. I spent a month alone on the outline, a first for me. I collected a group of beta readers to provide feedback. I started getting up at 5:00 am every day to write. I wrote on nights and weekends. I revised, listened to feedback, revised again.

In September, 2011 I published my novel. Friends and family came out in support; I sold 18 copies the first week. I fully expected sales to slow to a trickle. I figured I’d sell 50 copies total, if I was lucky. Instead I sold 46 copies that month.

Then in October I sold 60 copies. In November I sold 165 copies. In December I sold 411 copies. I’m on track to sell over 900 copies in January, 2012.

I made some mistakes along the way. I skimped on an editor. I tacked on a bad ending without my beta readers’ blessing. I corrected these things quickly.

I also did a few things right. I wrote the best book I possibly could. When I found problems I fixed them immediately. I hired an editor to help me proofread. I used beta readers to keep me on track.

I had a bit of luck on my side as well. Into the Badlands features a world stricken by a horrific virus that turns humans into violent animals hell-bent on killing the survivors.

In other words, zombies.

I didn’t plan on writing a zombie book. I wrote a book about a father and his two sons trying to hang on to their humanity while they search for a safe haven from these monsters. But the book resonated with zombie fans, mostly because of this. They found the approach refreshing and compelling. Luckily for me zombies have a lot of fans right now and those fans have accepted my book. Also, one of my beta readers was an admin on a popular zombie website, another incredible stroke of luck. He put a post out in their book forum that definitely helped drive sales.

After nearly 1,400 copies sold in four and a half months I started rethinking my “hobby”.

I decided to make writing work for me. I read a lot of stories on here about writers quitting their jobs and writing full time. That’s awesome, but I don’t want to do that. I love my IT job and I make good money. I like writing in my off hours. My wife is a teacher, but the recession hit us and she’s now working at a grocery store.

So instead of me quitting my job to write full time, she’s going to quit hers.

With her no longer working she can now pick up the household chores that pull my attention away from writing. She can give me back the time I need to write more. As we all know, the more books you have the more you’ll sell. I have two books due out this year; a horror novel and the sequel to Into the Badlands. If all my books combined continue to sell as well as my single book has sold, we’ll be sitting pretty.

We’ll be making writing work for us, our way.

So maybe instead of you quitting work, maybe  your spouse can quit. Or maybe you supplement your regular income with your royalties. Save up for that vacation or new computer, maybe use your royalties to buy a car.

In programming we use the concept of the Boolean, a true/false. Writing in the post-Kindle world isn’t a success/fail scenario; there are lots of graduations in between.

The rules have changed and your indicator of success ought to change along with it. I’m on track to make $1800 this month in passive income from a book I thought no one would buy. I now realize I should have had more faith in myself. Could I have done this ten years ago? Doubtful. But I’m doing it now, and that’s what matters.

Granted, these numbers may be pitifully low. I don’t have much of a frame of reference. I do know that my monthly royalties are twice what my wife makes part-time at the grocery store in a month. That’s good enough for me to call it successful. Will it continue? I can’t say. But I will continue with the formula that’s working for me. I will write the best books I can and sell them at a reasonable price. I will continue to learn the craft and improve my work. I will listen to my readers. I will write the kind of books I would like to read. I will also continue to read, read, read.

I don’t care about being in a bookstore, or the New York Times, or winning some award. I care about reaching readers and that’s exactly what I’m doing.

How can you make writing work for you, your way? That’s up to you to decide…and that’s what’s so great about this brave, new world we call publishing.

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

Into the Badlands is succeeding far beyond my wildest dreams. Of course I wanted it to do well, but I also want to win the lottery when I play. I don’t ever expect to actually win anything.

Here’s a screen shot of today’s rankings:

The book broke the 3000 mark in the entire Kindle paid store for the first time ever today, reaching #2,819 out of more than 750,000 paid titles. It also remains for more than two weeks in the top 100 Psychological Thrillers bestsellers category, reaching a new record of #59.

To make this even better, the book has also broken into the top 100 Kindle Horror bestsellers and the top 100 Horror bestsellers overall (including non-Kindle releases). It’s done this before on one or two occasions, but #79 and #90 (respectively) are all-time highs.

This means that I’m sharing the top 100 Horror list with some of the authors I most read and respect. Want to see something mind-blowing?

That’s the Stephen King. I’ve read nearly everything King has published. He is the author who got me hooked on horror. His books have provided me with countless hours of enjoyment. I have a tremendous amount of respect for King. Without Stephen King, I probably would never have written a book in the first place. Now I’m snuggled up beside him in this list. Surreal. Absolutely unbelievable.

Here’s another unbelievable image (top 100 Psychological Thrillers):

 

Into the Badlands has sold 1,265 copies since September 3, 2011. It’s currently averaging 32 copies per day. It’s also received 14 reviews so far, averaging a 4.8 out of 5 stars. Readers seem genuinely pleased with the book and I couldn’t be happier about that. If January sales hold out, I stand to reach 1,600 copies sold by the end of this month.

And to think I expected to sell maybe 50 copies of this book over the rest of my life. It’s selling more than that every two days now.

What’s next? A new horror novel this summer and the sequel to Into the Badlands this fall. With the momentum this book is gaining, I can’t afford to rest.

Will this continue? I hope so. I hope it gets even better. Even if it doesn’t, it’s exceeded my wildest dreams. I’m glad I took the chance on it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

“Into the Badlands”…Now in Paperback

I wrote this audacious post back in September about how I didn’t see any reason to publish on paper. At the time I felt pretty strongly about it. Despite selling more books than I had expected, I wasn’t selling boatloads of them, so it seemed a bit vain to go through the trouble of making a paperback no one would buy.

Then something happened; a couple months passed and I sold my 500th copy of Into the Badlands.

After that I rethought things. By then more people had asked for a paperback and since the book was actually selling on the Kindle it seemed like there might be some demand. It seemed less vain to do it. I also felt more compelled to make the book available in every format possible, so as to not alienate any potential readers.

So with that I went through the arduous process of formatting my book for print. It took a good week of work (along with a substantial learning curve), but now it’s all done. Into the Badlands can now be purchased in paperback form here. It’s a lot more expensive than the Kindle version, despite my attempts to keep the price as low as possible. Paper is expensive.

As Into the Badlands nears 1,200 copies sold it seems like good sense to have changed my mind about paper. I guess I must have found that reason I needed.

Transparency In Indie Publishing, Dec. 2011

Last month I started a series I’m calling “Transparency In Indie Publishing”. The purpose: to provide insight into one independent author’s experiences. Back in November’s post I mentioned how things had gone up to that point and where I thought things would go in December.

I’m glad to report that my predictions were way off.

I predicted I might sell 300 copies of my novel, Into the Badlands within the month of December. I felt that was a generous estimate. Turned out, it was low. In total I sold 411 copies across all channels in December, more than the prior three months combined.

Virtually all of those were sold through Amazon. Nook sales did increase a little, but in the end Into the Badlands only sold 5 copies, an increase of 1 from the prior month. The Nook continues to disappoint compared to Amazon.

Daily sales of Into the Badlands hovered around 13 to 15 copies up until just before Christmas. Christmas day it sold 7 copies. After Christmas, however, sales jumped to 25 to 30 copies a day, holding solid through the end of the year. All those Kindles sold during the holiday season are apparently being put to good use.

Another incredible thing happened in the final days of 2011; Into the Badlands landed in the top 100 bestseller list for the “Psychological Thrillers” category at Amazon. It made it to #74 at one point. To see my book in the same list as Joe Konrath, William Golding, Dean Koontz, and Jeff Lindsay was surreal. I could never have predicted that would ever happen.

In other news, I revamped my short story collection in December. I renamed it from The Signal: A Collection of Tales to Walking At Night: A Collection of Horror. I removed the Sci-Fi story so that all 9 stories would be horror-themed. This allowed me to better categorize the book. I also gave it a new cover which I’m very happy with.

I can’t say for sure if the makeover or the holidays were responsible, but sales jumped from 7 copies in November to 17 copies sold in December. I’d bounced around with price points, but none of that seemed to help. Eventually I landed on $1.99. I’ll likely leave it there since it’s selling better than ever. I like to think the makeover and renaming is responsible for the increase in sales, but time will tell. The numbers are small, but it’s still a more than 200% jump in sales. I’ll take what I can get.

So, through 12/31/2011, Into the Badlands had sold 682 copies. So far in 2012 it’s averaging 25 copies a day. I’m not sure how long that trend will continue, but if it does then I could sell over 700 copies in January alone. We’ll see how that plays out.

I expect to sell more copies of Walking At Night: A Collection of Horror than I did in prior months, but I don’t expect sales to skyrocket.

I’m currently at work on two new manuscripts, one being the sequel to Into the Badlands. I think it has potential to sell as well as its predecessor.

I’m almost ready to release Into the Badlands in paperback. I’m waiting on the proof to arrive. If it looks good then I’ll give the word to put it on sale. Pricing is going to be in the $13.99 range; that’s about as low as I can go and not lose money. Paper has a lot of overhead.

I also received the manuscript for Into the Badlands back from my editor. I incorporated the edits and have released it on the Kindle and the Nook as a “second edition”. It’s not fundamentally different; just cleaned up a little. The Kindle and Nook versions are live with these edits; other versions (including paper) will receive them shortly. The next two books will be fully edited before they’re released.

Overall, I’m ecstatic. As of today I’ve sold almost 780 books in all, earning roughly $1400. I’ve now upgraded my writing from “hobby” to “part-time job”. While selling at these numbers is kid stuff for a big name author, it’s huge for small fry like me. Big enough for me to consider it a part time job.

What will January hold? I’m not sure. Sales will probably slack off, once all the gift cards are spent and Kindles are full of books. Amazon did sell a lot of Kindles though, so maybe we haven’t even seen what’s possible. I’ll be watching to find out.

Transparency In Indie Publishing, Nov. 2011

If you’re one of the very few who read this blog then you’ll know its purpose it to provide other authors and reading enthusiasts some “behind the scenes” information about one writer’s experiences with independent publishing. Myself, I’m always curious about what other indies are doing, how well they’re doing, what’s working, what’s not working, as well as their thoughts, opinions, and ideas on indie publishing. I figured others might feel the same. So with that sentiment in mind I thought I’d do my part and keep the window blinds up so the world can see inside.

That said, I thought I’d start a little series I’ll call “Transparency in Indie Publishing”. In it I’ll talk about sales numbers and my thoughts and ideas around what may or may not be driving them. I’m not sure if my results are typical, but they’re real and can hopefully provide some insight and maybe even some inspiration for other indie writers.

I thought I’d focus on November, 2011. I’ll also do a quick recap of September and October. That’s as long as I’ve been in the game.

I released my novel, Into the Badlands, on September 3, 2011. I figured sales would surge the first week as friends and family bought the book in a show of both pity and support. The first week I sold 18 copies, which I believe confirms those suspicions.

Overall I sold 46 copies of the book in September. It was available for 27 days that month, so that’s 1.7 copies per day. Virtually all those sales were on Amazon. I sold 1 copy via Barnes and Noble (B&N), and that one was to a friend.

The “friends and family” factor does affect September numbers overall, but technically it’s all a sale in the end. It’s also more than double what I thought I might sell. I was ecstatic, to say the least.

In October things picked up. I sold 60 copies of Into the Badlands. 57 of those were on Amazon, 3 of those were on B&N. It was available for 31 days in October, so that’s just shy of 2 books per day, on average.

By the end of October I had exceeded my goal for the entire year. Ecstatic doesn’t begin to describe it.

October also saw the release of Walking At Night: A Collection of Horror. This was a collection of short horror stories. I’ve been reading that short stories don’t sell well; my actual numbers back this up. It went on sale October 12, giving it 19 days on the market. It sold 10 copies, 7 of those on Amazon and 3 on B&N. That’s about 1 book every two days.

Then November rolled around and blew all those numbers out of the water, at least for the novel.

Into the Badlands started picking up almost immediately. By the end of the month it had sold 165 copies, 161 on Amazon and 4 on B&N. Amazon is clearly the leader here, at least based on my books’ sales. The book was available for 30 days, which averages sales of 5.5 copies per day.

I also broke the top 10,000 in the Amazon sales rank multiple times in November. I made it as high as 8,000 on a couple occasions. That’s out of 750,000 paid titles. That’s seems positive, at least on the surface.

As kind as November was to the novel, The Signal (now renamed to Walking At Night, complete with a new cover) didn’t do any better than the prior month. In fact, it was worse. 7 copies sold, all on Amazon. Out of 30 days available that averages about 1 book every four days. I even dropped the price from $2.99 to $.99 which seemed to have no effect. Ultimately I settled on $1.49, which has actually sold a few copies.

Why the jump in sales for Into the Badlands? It’s hard to say. Amazon did drop Kindle reader prices drastically. Maybe with all those new readers out there it’s meant more books sold for me.

I also noticed that my book was being purchased by more than just zombie book fans (as was almost exclusively the case in September and October). The general post-apocalyptic reader seems to have caught wind of my little book this past month. I think this may have broadened my audience and driven some sales.

AMC’s The Walking Dead is doing very well too, so that could be affecting my sales in a positive fashion. Zombies (of any fashion) are pretty hot right now it seems, despite being around forever.

The book has also received several 4 and 5 star reviews, which might be persuading more readers to take a chance on me.

Christmas is coming, so holiday buying might also be driving sales.

I have not monkeyed around with pricing on this book. It’s been $2.99 since the beginning. I think I can safely remove that factor.

So as of November 30th, 2011, sales across all channels look like this:

• Into the Badlands: 271 copies sold
• The Signal: A Collection of Tales: 17 copies sold

(As a side note Smashwords, Sony, and Apple have produced not a single sale. Thus far those channels have been completely useless for me.)

Obviously December isn’t in yet, but the trend appears to be continuing. Sales are off to a good start; as of December 4th Into the Badlands has sold 38 copies. That’s an average of 9.5 copies per day. Astounding. That’s almost double November’s numbers. If that trend continues I’ll be looking around around 300 copies sold by the end of the month. That’s a generous estimate I think, but not entirely unrealistic.

I’ll be back again in January with the next installment of Transparency in Indie Publishing, Dec. 2011 edition. We’ll then see how my predictions played out.

Not What I Expected At All

When I wrote Into the Badlands I wrote it because I love to write and the story held meaning for me. I didn’t expect it to sell and I didn’t expect to make any money on it.

I read Joe Konrath’s blog religiously, I follow the news about self-publishing, and I’m playing the self-publishing game with all the technique I can muster. I knew there were self-published authors out there selling thousands upon thousands of eBooks, but I very much doubted I’d be one of them.

Instead I set my sights on a more realistic goal.

I set a goal that I would sell 100 books in the first 12 months after my novel was published. 100 copies was a “stretch” goal; I felt it more plausible to reach for 50. In reality, I figured I’d actually sell 25 copies.

Even if I sold only 25 copies that would still be $50 in my pocket. I’d be getting paid for something I’d always done for free. And 25 people would have read my work. That’s still a win.

But then something strange happened. I released the book in September of this year. That month it sold 45 copies. I estimated 20 or so of those were probably sales to friends and family, so it was probably a fluke. I was happy, but realistic. I expected sales to screech to a halt in October.

That didn’t happen. Instead I actually sold more copies than I did the prior month. I sold 57 copies of the book, averaging almost 2 copies a day.

Those weren’t sales to friends and family. Those were sales to strangers. I even received two good reviews that month. (I haven’t solicited reviews, by the way; at least not so far. Not sure if that’ll change in the future.)

By the end of October I’d done something I never expected I would do: I not only achieved my 100 copy goal, I surpassed it. And I did it in 2 months instead of 12.

Then November rolled around and sales increased again. I couldn’t believe it. So far I’m averaging 4 to 5 copies sold per day. Perhaps that’s laughably low, but it’s an all-time high for me.

If sales hold steady I’m on track to sell around 125 books this month. So far in November alone I’ve sold over 100 copies. I’ve sold over 200 copies since it was published nearly three months ago. I also received two more positive reviews and an e-mail from a happy reader.

Will this trend continue? Have sales leveled out? Will they go down? Will they go up? I don’t know the answer to those questions. I do know that I have to take all my pre-conceived expectations and throw them out the window.

So what I was treating strictly as a hobby I’m now treating more like a part-time job; after all, for the first time in my life I’m actually making some money writing.

I’m also reaching readers, something I’ve never been able to do before. Based on the reviews so far it would appear the book is resonating with them. I couldn’t be happier about that.

I’m still not writing strictly for the money. If I start doing that I’ll poison the work. I make enough as a programmer that I can afford to take chances with my books. If I write a book that doesn’t sell, I still eat. But if the book does strike a chord with folks it’s even more rewarding because I stayed true to myself while writing it.

So what do I do now? That’s an easy one. I continue doing what I always do: writing stories to entertain myself and hopefully others. I might not ever sell another book. I might sell thousands. Who knows? All I know for sure is that I will keep writing more books for the right reasons. With the right combination of hard work, dedication, and luck I think things have a very good chance of falling into place.

Editing: A Massive Underestimation

When I wrote and released Into the Badlands I thought I’d done a pretty damn good job with it. I read through it several times, ran it through a spell-checker one final time, then published. It actually started selling a few copies even. Then one day on a whim I paged through the book and read a few paragraphs.

I found an error. Then I found another error. Then another one. And another.

I was completely flabbergasted. How could there be so many errors? I spell-checked it. I read and re-read it multiple times. Yet there the errors were, like a black eye.

Immediately I stopped all the other work I was doing and went back to editing the manuscript again. This time, however, I had another plan.

I read through it again, fixing any errors I found along the way. Then I again ran it through the spell-checker that ships with LibreOffice. LibreOffice doesn’t have a grammar checker, but there’s a wonderful plugin that will add grammar checking via After The Deadline.

After the Deadline found all sorts of grammar errors and areas for improvement. Just running it through their software alone helped the manuscript tremendously.

But I didn’t stop there. I then ran the manuscript through Microsoft Word. Word has both a spelling and grammar checker built-in. It found things that LibreOffice and ATD didn’t find.

After that I took it a step further. I then ran the manuscript through Apple’s Pages (the word processor that ships with iWork). Pages has both spelling and grammar checking built-in. Wouldn’t you know, it found things none of the others did.

All three grammar checkers were good at finding duplicate words, homonym misusage, duplicate punctuation, and missing punctuation, to name a few.

I noticed that ATD was good about identifying passive voice. Microsoft Word seemed to excel at finding missing semi-colons, bad comma usage, and sentence fragments. Pages suggested replacing archaic words and expressions, along with suggesting simpler replacements for overly complex sentences.

It was like having three different editors editing my manuscript, all with different styles.

After all this I then re-read the book again, correcting any leftover errors I could find.

So while I can’t guarantee it’s absolutely perfect, it’s a damn sight better than it was when I released it.

Lessons Learned

So what did I learn from all this? Well, for starters, never trivialize the gargantuan task of editing. No wonder editors charge $700 or more to edit a novel. It’s absolutely tedious work. If I start selling a ton of books, then maybe I’ll farm the work out. Until then, I’ll be doing my “triple edit” on the final manuscript before it ever enters the public eye. It’s embarrassing to know there are copies of my book floating around out there with errors, but when you’re learning in public sometimes that’s the way things go.

I also made another mistake. I let the beta readers finish my book and then, without their feedback, I tacked on a cliffhanger ending. I was certain it would work, so I moved forward.

Turned out a lot of people didn’t like it. Once I thought about it, I didn’t either.

I made the tough decision to remove the “tacked on” ending, restoring the original ending that resonated with the beta readers. Again, there are around 120 copies of the old version of the book out there, casualties of my novice mistakes.

(A note to any readers out there: if you picked up a copy of the book and want to make sure you have the latest version, there’s an identification number just after the copyright information. The latest version is 2011.ITB.1.13. [Any version labeled "Second Edition" has been professionally edited. This is the version you want.] I think this can be done through Amazon, B&N, etc.; if not, contact me.)

Hopefully this story of missteps will help to keep you from making some of the same mistakes I made. It’s hard to resist not uploading the book the minute it’s finished, but it’s well worth it to first do your due diligence and run it through as many spelling/grammar checkers as you can (and by an editor if you can afford one) Also read it again, and again, and again until you’ve caught everything you can. I’ve read mine five times so far.

One of the biggest complaints people have about self-published books is the lack of editing. Don’t provide any more fuel to that fire. If your book is well-edited it’ll be taken more seriously.

It’s your reputation, after all.