I always enjoy your feedback, Wendy! I love that you now give yourself time — and room — to polish and tweak your manuscript. I hope others adopt your mantra, too. It’s very wise!

Sandy

proved my point

Ah, typos…the perfectionist meter. Someone should write a poem about them, they’re so mischievous and dodgy. Last week, I sent for physical copies of my new book (“Silence of Islands — Poems,” haha), believing it was ‘ready.’ Quite the wake-up to STILL find typos and even misspellings (!) in the final product.

Corrected now. And I even changed the font.

At least for this book, I finally set my release date way out there, to allow tweaking time. I’ll always do that going forward. Here’s the deal, no one’s holding their breath for the book. I’ve been buzzing about the thing to my list for over two year! So, launch date’s not the issue. However, folks WILL appreciate how lovely it is, how polished, and how clean of error, when they’re holding their copy.

Conscientious publishing is a matter of respect—for the reader and for oneself. My mantra is, “My readers are smarter than me.”

You’ve offered excellent advice, Alejandro. Thank you. I love your “constructing a building” analogy — it’s perfect. And you know, I am to this day uncomfortable with the fact that I gave that author 3 stars instead of 1. The next time, I’ll stand by my decision to pass on the opportunity to read and review.

Thanks!

Sandy

And I certainly couldn’t have gotten it done without the help of a professional editor! I found her on Linked In several years ago. Her insight and expertise were invaluable. I can’t stress enough that publishing a novel is much like constructing a building: one can’t do it alone. We need a number of different professionals with various levels of specialization to accomplish such a monumental task. It’s prudent and wise. It also leads to a greater chance of success and being considered a true professional in one’s chosen field.

I hope it gives authors something to think about, Syl. FYI, it’s hard to produce a 100% typo-free full-length book, but it’s a great goal!

Sandy

Now I’ll be sure to write that most excellent of books with the most excellent of covers and very few (hopefully no) typos!