We left off last time with beginning the topic of Self Editing, so let’s go on with that.
Self editing is the time you will pick up your manuscript (as the publishers will now call it) and tear it apart and re do it. (Screams of agony are heard wafting through the ether.) But, it’s either you do it or they will. And it’s going to be hard enough getting a new book into a publisher’s hands even if it’s perfect, so your job now is to make it the absolutely best manuscript you possibly can—so that it will be looked at.
Publishers literally have thousands of manuscripts cross their desks—maybe even dozens and hundreds daily. Why are they going to look at yours? Did you know there are upward of 300,000 titles published each year now? That’s almost 30,000 titles per month. Did you also know that almost half of the population does not read any books at all? This despite the fact that in a general size bookstore there are anywhere from 5,000 to 50,000 books on display and books are now in grocery stores, car washes and gas stations, on the Internet and in major book “stores” such as WalMart.com (at highly reduced prices.) Consumers will spend multiple billions of dollars purchasing books each year, yet the chances of any one book being purchased, especially a new one from a new author, are less than 3 out of 10,000.
This is the kind of competition you’re going up against, so are you prepared?
A publisher has fifty manuscripts come across his desk today. He sees one that is scruffy, on plain white paper, smudged, and with two typos and mis spellings in the first paragraph. The one right under that has a soft, colored cover with the title in huge letters and a sub title that seems to say this is an exciting story. It’s well typed in a font that is easily read and is on a soft, beige paper. Which one do you think he’s going to even begin to look at? Sorry. Facts of life in the book publishing world.
As he begin reeding, he find a dry story with looooong, rambeling, paragrahs, words mis speled, and gramer, and punctation, that keeps him wundering what it meens, rather thn alowing him too simply reed the story. How long would you continue to read a story consisting of sentences like the last one? Yet, this is often the first introduction they have to our new works.
So, the first thing you are going to do (NOT a suggestion) is to get comfortable with a couple of red pencils at hand with all the time in the world available and READ your own manuscript. Brutally. Viciously. And from the printed page, not the computer screen.
Reading from the computer is all right for drafting your work and for quick proofing, but it does not allow you to view your work as a manuscript—a book. It’s usually too cramped. You don’t see a whole page at once. It has to keep moving for you to continue. You have to keep pushing buttons or pushing around a mouse to keep things going. And it doesn’t hold and feel like a book. Once you’ve actually finished the writing and have done some basic proofing and editing (spell and grammar checking), you need to invest in a ream of half decent paper and print out the entire manuscript, preferably in “book format.”
I learned that the hard way and had corrections to make that at first I just did not catch. To me, book format is converting the normal “portrait” style printed page to a horizontal, or “landscape” view, then making it into two columns per page, and printing it out so when you hold it to read, it looks and feels like a book.
One more point to consider before we go any further with this. If you’ve written your work by pen or pencil or have used an actual typewriter, is there any way you can get the whole thing converted to a computer and a decent word processing program? You’re going to want to go through your manuscript a number of times making corrections and changes, and on a computer this is simply not a problem. A manually written or typed manuscript is going to be a major negative from the very beginning because you already know how much work it’s going to take to make the corrections and do all the re writing.
Borrow a computer, use the one at the library, have a friend enter it into a computer for you. Anything—but please, get it into an electronic format that will keep you from being afraid to work on it. With a computer, you can make a copy to start with and make all your changes initially on the copy. Save the original for your peace of mind. Even if you have to pay someone to “compute” your manuscript for you, it will be worth its weight in gold when you have to start turning your manuscript into a book. If you have it in a computer and on a decent word processing program like Word or WordPerfect, when you want or need to check the spelling and grammar or do a re write, you just push a button and sit back to let it do its thing. Please—get it on a computer. You won’t regret it.
See you next time for Part 3.
Care to comment? Write to me at JimMagwood@aol.com.
And visit the website at http://www.JimMagwood.com.
Also, drop in to The Author’s Inn, a site designed to showcase author’s works and connect them with readers. http://www.the authors inn.com.
Author Resource:
Jim Magwood is the author of the international mystery novel, SANCTION. Visit him and SANCTION at his website, http://www.JimMagwood.com . Jim is also the webmaster of the site, The Author’s Inn, dedicated to showcasing author’s works. Visit The Author's Inn at http://www.the-authors-inn.com .
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