I've been reading a fair number of independent and self-published novels of late, primarily as research to see the type of market into which several of my clients are venturing. What strikes me again and again is the lack of editing, even standard copy-editing (which most people refer to by the misnomer of 'proofreading'). It's really, really hard to take a work seriously when you're looking at substantial errors, errors that could so easily have been fixed.
So I'm extolling the virtues of my own profession, to an extent, when I plead with authors seeking to self-publish, please, please have someone edit your work. There's nothing worse, in my eyes, than picking up a promising book and getting no further than the first page before you see a typo or a simple grammatical mistake. So please, please, please ... get your book edited before you send it off into the world. Trade favours with another writer, if you can't afford an editor, but please have someone (and not just your mother's sister's boyfriend's best friend who reads a lot) edit your book. (I'll climb off my soapbox now, lol).
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