Feeling overwhelmed after finishing a book is normal, and it’s okay to experience some challenges. To keep readers engaged, it’s essential to ensure your story holds water. Consider a developmental edit or critique to improve your craft and address common writing mistakes. Self-editing and learning from resources, writing courses, and free fiction writing series can also be helpful.

While the first book may be a passionate journey, it’s crucial to recognize the need for editing and revisions. Authors often want to push it out quickly, but planning from scratch in new projects can lead to better results. Remember that every book requires extensive editing before publishing.

To improve, gain experience, and recognize mistakes, learn from feedback and recognize weaknesses. If you need editing, explore available options for feedback and proofreading.

PS. congrats on finishing your book!

Some clients ask if they can start at the basic level and move up later. The main challenge here is, rather than starting with the Quick Kill and moving up, you really need someone to focus on big picture, story structure stuff more than proofreading. That’s why I started doing the first chapter critiques, and flirted with the idea of doing a cheaper, full-pass critique, but it takes so much time and effort, it’s not easy to keep the price as low as I do for proofreading. I’m conditionally flexible, and agree I should have a one price fits all, “reading-fee” that provides an editorial critique or manuscript review: no editing, just an overview of major issues.

The problem is, it can take just as long to read; and twice as long (not to mention twice the experience) to point out structural flaws and suggest fixes. At the same time, I recognize that most author’s books are pretty clean already, and the high-end feedback is the most essential part; and that my professional package price may be out of budget for some authors. Unfortunately I don’t have a great solution at the moment.

This is a huge question, so let me try to break it down:

First, I recommend self-publishing. Few if any hybrid, small presses or vanity presses are worth the headache. They will offer a publishing package, which may sound great, but will often source out the critical pieces like cover design and fail to market well at all (because, general publishers do not have a genre-specific list of potential readers).

Anybody who charges you money, is not a “real” publisher… that doesn’t mean they’re all bad, but many present themselves better than they really are and this is reflected in the price. At the same time, publishing isn’t free – you’ll have to pay for editing, cover design and book formatting, at least. I recommend going straight with individual service providers and uploading your files directly.

Also, just because it’s free doesn’t always mean it’s better: recently there was a Twitter feud sparked by an author claiming to be a “real” authors because they didn’t pay to publish; but they’d used a small press that doesn’t charge, and also failed to publish well (ugly cover, no reviews, etc…)

If you plan to pitch a traditional publisher, I will usually be happy to check your pitch or query letter for you. I can also edit your blurb or synopsis, though this can be a specialized skillset.

People ask all the time about publishing/launch services, but I don’t have any to recommend because I don’t believe in them. At best, they can help you pass the bare minimum, but after that you’ve lost control and it would be expensive to start over or republish if they screwed up.

It can be helpful to get someone in your corner, doing things for you or walking you through it, but in my opinion you’d be much better served learning how to do it yourself, even though it’s a steeper learning curve.

Information about prices for individual services can be found on the «Services» page. And the price of the service packages are indicated on the main page.

Average six weeks.

Get your book designed and upload to KDP.

Build an initial review team of people who like your genre or topic, show interest (based on blurb, cover and first chapter) and agree to read the ARC (advanced reader copy). Upload files, hit publish, remind people to post reviews. Run a 99cent discount promo with ad stacking across promo sites. And/or launch at full price with heavy ARMS/Facebook ads, pushing your book up to #1 and hope to stick there for awhile.