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WIZARD OR WANNABE? by Mary E. Neighbour

WIZARD OR WANNABE?

How Authors & Self-Publishers Can Vet the Professionals They Need To Edit, Design & Shepherd Their Books

by Mary E. Neighbour

ISBN: 978-0-9962541-5-1
Publisher: Upriver, Downriver Books

Authors who self-publish should hire freelance editors, designers, and consultants to spruce up their books, according to this primer.

Neighbour, a book editor and ghost writer, warns readers that every manuscript requires much specialized effort to turn it into a readable, marketable work and offers expert advice on finding reliable professionals who can do it. These include experienced editors who will use a coldly objective eye to diagnose the inevitable flaws that authors cannot perceive in their own work and fix everything from a manuscript’s overall argument and tone to the placement of commas and dashes; designers who can craft eye-catching, genre-appropriate art and choose fonts for the cover; and interior designers who sweat the myriad tiny but crucial details of page layout, from picking the right margin size to avoiding unsightly “rivers” of space between words. In addition, a writer needs a book shepherd—the author has been called one—who can coordinate all of the above and also oversee a volume’s printing, distribution, and marketing to the “reader persona” who is the likeliest audience. Neighbour packs her slender, no-nonsense manual with lots of useful lore on everything from arcane publishing jargon to professional associations that keep databases of working editors and designers, and she provides a trove of practical tips for vetting prospective freelancers. (Among the questions she suggests for interviewing editors are “Do you offer free editing of sample pages, so I can see how we might work together?” and “How would you handle numbers in my manuscript?”) The author’s brisk, lucid prose is lit by tart humor (a professional cover designer is not “a family member who has never taken a design or composition course”) and, alas, marred by at least one typo that her own editor overlooked (a period missing at the end of the sentence “Self-publishing doesn’t mean you have to do everything on your own”). Authors who are serious about making a mark with their books will find a wealth of information and insights here.

A helpful, reassuring guide to putting together a publishing team.