This article is about proof reading.
This is a crucial part of publishing your greatest story. Fortunately, from my own experience with ‘Jane Knight Rogue Officer’ I have fifteen reviews, all with five stars between UK and US on Amazon.
One reviewer had stated that the editing side was poorly carried out. So, even though my story is seen as a five-star standard, the editing side could have easily caused a poor rating. I could have given up writing there and then if I had not known that it was the editing, not the story.
I soon realised that proof reading does not make your book readable. It just shows no spelling mistakes and the grammar is great. It does not correct repetition of a character, personality or a past tense brought up in the story.
As a result. I will be getting ‘Jane Knight Rogue Officer’ edited now. Looking at resolving by end of Friday 7th November 2020 and reuploaded. In the meantime it is on Kindle Unlimited and so it is not a cost to the reader.
I have come to realise that proof reading is not the end of the story for polishing your final draft before uploading it on a platform for selling.
You must get your draft edited after proof reading. Unfortunately, proofreading only checks for spelling, grammar, and continuity. It does not cover repeated descriptions, consistency with format of dates, acumen, and repeated past tense that you mention a few times in the book.
Readers can remember a past time description being mention whether you repeated it in chapter one and chapter thirty or chapter ten and chapter twenty. The brain soaks up a story far better than a study book. A study book does not conjure up your brain to create an image of what is being read. But a fictional book does as you create a picture in your head as you are reading. So, the dialogue sticks in your head stronger than a sentence on trigonometry. Unless you have a photographic memory.
The cost of proofreading and editing at the same time can cost around £6.45 per 1000 words. That equates to £0.00645 per word not including VAT. This will be £0.00774 per word. So, if you have written 100,000 words for your fiction, it will cost £774.00. This is money well spent as you could be unfortunate to get a low review star for editing, not your story. Poor editing can distract someone from enjoying your book. It is like buying an Ikea chest of draws. The instructions are badly edited and so you cannot build your chest of draws and enjoy its use. The bad instruction has prevented you from enjoying having your clothes packed away.