The Indie Publishing Process Part 1: From The End to the Finish

You just typed “The End” on the novel that you know the world has been waiting for.

That is a tremendous accomplishment, so first of all, CONGRATULATIONS! Take a few moments and pat yourself on the back, give yourself a little reward, or take a day off.

Because now, the hard work begins.

Note: I am an affiliate of Amazon and Kobo. If you make a purchase from a link marked with a * from one of those stores, I’ll make a few cents at no extra cost to you.

If you’re a seasoned pro in the writing and publishing industry, you probably have a pretty good idea what I’m talking about. But most first-time authors (myself included when I started out) have no idea what is truly involved in getting their manuscript to print, let alone making it a success in the marketplace.

Regarding the last: success is dependent on so many factors, but first, you have to have an industry-ready book. The best marketing in the world will only do so much for a poorly-prepared book, and it can never make it a bestseller. So let’s get the horse back in front of the cart and talk about how to make sure you’ve got a solid product before you start marketing it. (Though you should also be marketing it already. We’ll talk about that in a future post.)

This is a general framework for a process that I recommend and have found works for me. There are variations on this, but skip steps at your own peril—or under advisement.

First of all, understand that your book isn’t finished yet.

Your book is like a newly-hatched monarch butterfly egg. That little larva that’s squirming around has a lot of potential, but it’s nowhere near ready to go enhance the world. It’s got some growing and work to do.

In general, here are the steps I recommend you follow after finishing your first draft (a.k.a. The Cocooning Process).

Revise

Some writers prefer to insert a step before this to gain perspective on the story, which is to put it in a drawer and wait anywhere from a couple of weeks to a month.

I don’t. My books are often long, so by the time I’m finished, I usually have plenty of distance from most of the story. Or, in the case of writing short work on deadline, I may not have the luxury of waiting.

Do what works for you. But, whatever you do, don’t show another living soul your work (no matter how badly you want validation) until you’ve put it through a rigorous revision. Well, maybe show your mom, if she’s supportive (or someone else in your life that would fill this role). She’ll help you keep going so you actually finish the first draft. But no one else.

Why?

Most people are not professional writers and don’t have the ability to see through the problems (that exist, trust me) to give you advice that will actually help you. They can get caught up on details that you already know are a problem—but because of those details, aren’t able to see the problems you still don’t know about.

This can also be true of critique groups. If you choose to share parts of an incomplete manuscript with a critique or alpha reader group, make sure you know in advance the story you want to tell. If you can’t hold on to that and there isn’t someone in your group adept at drawing out their fellow members to find that out, you could end up revising based on someone else’s idea of what your story should be, and all you’ll end up with is a mess.

In a future post, I’ll talk about revisions and different techniques that work for me.

For now, I recommend that before you revise, you:

1. Examine your log line or original idea to remind yourself of the story you are trying to tell.

2. Know what your inner and outer conflict is for the main character, as well as all your other key characters.

3. Examine every scene to make sure it has conflict, reveals new information, and moves the plot forward.

4. Make sure you have all your structural building blocks in place. (Get my free download to help with that.)

5. Revise accordingly.

Share Your Work

This is the point where you get to let your friends and family or perhaps a professional give you feedback on your work. (Hint: friends and family charge less and can give you valuable feedback, even if they are not writers themselves.)

Start with beta readers. That’s what we call those folks who have committed to reading your error-ridden manuscript and telling you what jumps out at them as needing propping up or cutting. Ideally, your beta readers will include a few other writers with some idea about craft, grammar, and spelling. Other writers will usually trade beta read services with you, which makes them even more valuable as critique partners.

You can pay for beta reads, too. There are professional beta reader groups on Facebook, or you can tweet requests with #sensitivityreader, #betareader, or #critiquepartner. Be prepared to pay for this service if you are working with a stranger.

And if you find that super-honest, super-kind beta reader who gives you a ton of insightful feedback while asking very little in return? TREAT THEM LIKE GOLD. You don’t ever want to lose them.

Give your beta readers a reasonable amount of time to read your work, but give them a deadline. And know that not everyone who expressed interest is going to be able to follow through, for a variety of reasons. Expect this, and ask more people than you hope to get opinions from. (If you’re paying for a beta read, they better follow through.)

After getting their feedback, go through the whole “remind-yourself-what-story-you’re-writing” process, then revise again.

If your project required way more work than you realized, you may want to repeat this step. But don’t get stuck here.

Sometimes, you can or must skip the beta reader phase, either because of a deadline, lack of resources or friends in the writing community, or because you are already pretty confident that your story has got the goods. In that case, you can skip this stage and go right to working with an editor.

Hire an Editor

Your novel will have to go through several stages of editing before completion, and it behooves you to know what they are, what they’re for, and how much to expect to pay.

First of all, editors are professionals, and should receive a professional wage. There are many editors who will edit your manuscript for rock-bottom prices, and they are probably struggling to make ends meet. While this is their problem, not yours, you should also question why their prices are so low.

They may do a fantastic job and be very good at their craft, but they might be just starting their editing career and are offering low rates to attract clients while they build a portfolio. Or maybe they struggle with retaining clients because their product is poor and are hoping that by undercutting more skillful editors, they can fill the void with new clients.

Whatever the reason and whatever an editor’s rates, be prepared that fiction editors need to eat. While they probably love editing, most decent editors will not want to gamble on your project with a low rate. They will set a rate that lets them keep doing this for a living. And these are the editors that will probably still be in the business for your next project.

Your manuscript is your passion project, not theirs. Editing is an incredibly time-consuming process. You are hiring them to provide a service, so be prepared to pay for the hours they put into it. (To get an idea of how much to expect to pay, check out the chart of average editing rates and speeds in USD compiled by the Editorial Freelancers Association on their site here.)

Ahem. Now that we have that out of the way, you need to decide what kind of editing you need. And if you don’t know? Ask an editor you are interested in working with. Most will request a sample and let you know what they think your manuscript is ready for.

You can see details about the different kinds of editing and what kinds of projects they’re good for on my Editorial Services page. Not all editors offer the same services, and some of them may package their services differently.

After every service you get from an editor, you’ll need to revise.

(By the way, I recommend you read the excellent book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King* before you ever reach out to an editor. Learning and applying the lessons in this fantastic little book will make your writing better and your manuscript cleaner before an editor ever gets their hands on it.)

The most valuable first step is often to get some kind of STRUCTURAL ASSESSMENT.

There are several types of editing that will address structural issues, but if you’re a fairly new or unpublished author, having a professional editor go through your synopsis or outline and point out potential weaknesses in plot and structure can save you a lot of cash on later steps.

If you’re missing a major piece or elements need to be rearranged, it’s much less costly to pay an editor to review an outline and let you know as much instead of having them read the entire manuscript.

More experienced authors could have an editor review their project at the outline stage before they even start drafting to help them prop up areas of the plot that need a little work. This could also be accomplished through a coaching call.

Every editor bundles their services differently. Personally, I offer three different bundles that make excellent first steps for an author seeking professional editing for the first time:

• A Structural Assessment based on an outline or synopsis

• A Partial Manuscript & Structural Assessment (see the next point for what a manuscript assessment covers)

• A full-spectrum Starter Bundle that combines the Partial Manuscript & Structural Assessment with a Partial Line Edit. (We’ll cover line editing below.) See the descriptions at each of those links to help you decide which option is right for you.

Next, get a professional BETA READ/MANUSCRIPT CRITIQUE or a MANUSCRIPT ASSESSMENT.

Manuscript critiques and assessments mean the editor reads your work and gives you a detailed report about it. Depending on the editor, they may also include in-manuscript comments about specific instances and issues. Each editor offers a slightly different service bundle under these same terms, so be sure to read what they specifically offer. If they offer both beta reads (also called critiques) and assessments, an assessment is usually a more in-depth edit.

Critiques and assessments will help you address problems like structural issues, consistent writing habits that will drag your story down, pacing, character development, and sometimes even consistent grammar issues. And dealing with those now will save you a huge chunk of moolah when you get to the line edit later.

Not to mention, if you’ve fixed big problems before the sentence-level editing begins, your editor will be able to buckle down into more nitty-gritty details that would have been missed if the big picture were a disaster when they got your manuscript.

Most manuscripts will only need a critique or an assessment, not both, especially if you’ve started with one of the structural assessment options above. However, depending on how much work your manuscript needs and how quickly you learn, you may want to consider using both.

Experienced authors with a good understanding of story structure and line editing may want to start with this step and then go right to a copyedit. (At this stage in my writing career, that’s what I do, and so do several of my editing clients.)

When you are confident that your story is relatively solid and you’re ready to dive into the details to make it shine, get a DEVELOPMENTAL LINE EDIT.

Line editing focuses on big-picture issues like structure and pacing as well as cleaning up the writing on a line-by-line, sentence-by-sentence basis. It makes sure everything is in the right order and that you’ve communicated everything the reader needs to be able to fully immerse themselves into your story.

Line editing is the slowest, and therefore costliest, type of editing, which is why it’s really important to make sure you’ve handled bigger-picture issues before you get to this step. It can be extremely painful to pay thousands of dollars for a line edit and then discover you have to cut or rearrange hundreds or thousands of those edited words.

However, I can’t emphasize enough how valuable this form of editing is, especially for newer writers. Most books that I DNF (Do Not Finish) are because of line editing issues—the writing is just so confusing and cumbersome that I get frustrated and stop.

If you can’t afford to get your entire manuscript line edited, get a partial done, learn as much as you can, revise your manuscript accordingly, and then proceed to a copyedit at your own risk. (You could even have a second partial done on a different section after you revise to see if there’s a little more you could learn and apply.)

Getting a Partial Developmental Line Edit and revising your manuscript based on what you learn before paying for a Full Developmental Line Edit could also save a lot of time and money on the full edit, so for newer writers, I recommend it either way. It will definitely save you more on the full edit than you pay to get it done.

Once you’ve had at least one developmental editing pass to make sure the big picture is solid, and you’ve had a line edit to make sure your writing is clear, immersive, and riveting, you’ll need a COPYEDIT.

Copyediting focuses on consistent usage and correcting details like grammar, spelling, and punctuation. It can include some light substantive (developmental or line) editing to rearrange sentences for clarity. While it shares some qualities with proofreading, this is NOT proofreading.

During a copyedit, your work will be brought into alignment with the style guide you and your editor have agreed upon. Note that for fiction, the style guide most commonly used in the USA is the Chicago Manual of Style (or CMOS). In the UK, there are several style guides and the choice for which is best for fiction is less stringent, but you would be safe relying on Hart’s Rules (which is now the New Oxford Style Manual). In Canada, we typically use Editing Canadian English, and then rely on the CMOS where it does not conflict.

Your copyeditor will also create a style sheet for you (if you don’t already have one) so that decisions that come down to “house style” (for instance, whether to use the ellipsis character or the traditional dot-space method, to name one of dozens of potential conflicts) are applied consistently throughout your project. You can then send this style sheet to other editors or your proofreader for future work.

If you are a more experienced author, you may be able to get a single developmental pass and then go straight here. Your editor will be able to tell you after reviewing your sample.

PROOFREADING is for checking a typeset or electronic proof for errors, as well as consistency in fonts, spacing, headings, etc.

This step is done after a manuscript has been typeset or formatted. It is the final step before publishing.

Ideally, your proofreader is only checking for errors that may have been introduced during revisions after copyediting, and to confirm that the style sheet created by the copyeditor has been applied throughout.

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So, in all, your manuscript could need anywhere from one to five rounds of professional editing.

Needless to say, this can add up, especially since these aren’t the only services you’ll need to hire.

Other Professional Services You’ll Need:

Graphic Designer

At or before the time you are ready to send your manuscript to an editor, you will probably want to hire a graphic designer to make your cover.

People absolutely judge books by their covers. Accept this and invest in the best cover design you can afford.

Unless you are a graphic designer yourself, always hire a professional.

Your cover is probably your single most important marketing tool. If you don’t get that right, it won’t matter what other time, effort, love, and money you pour into your book. No one will buy it.

To find a good cover designer, ask other authors who they recommend or use a curating website like Reedsy*. I have a resource page with some recommended cover designers. (Cover for my free epic historical fantasy ebook The Waterboy shown, designed by Patrick Knowles.)

Typesetter/Book Formatter

This is the person who will prepare your book for print or make it into an electronic book file that actually works.

This is one area that many indie authors choose to save money by learning to do it themselves. But be sure to do it well. A sure sign of a “self-published book” is an interior design that does not meet industry standards.

For print book design, I recommend you check out The Book Blueprint by Joel Friedlander*.

I design my own eBooks in Scrivener, but I’ve hired several of my print book designs out to The Deliberate Page (www.deliberatepage.com), the business name of Tamara Cribley. Highly recommended. (She also does eBook design.)

There are free and paid eBook software design options you can use, too. Apple users swear by Vellum. Atticus is a good Chrome-based alternative. Though it’s a newer program that’s still working out a few kinks, it is constantly improving and can dramatically shorten the time (and cost) it takes to format a book in both digital and print formats. Reedsy has a free web-based editor/formatter that I can’t attest to at all. You can find even more options if you look for them.

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Finally, you have a page-turning, polished manuscript. You have a cover that would make angels weep. And your interior print design is beautiful, classic, and completely invisible to the reader, which is exactly as it should be. You are ready to send your book out into the world.

How do you do that?

I’ll tell you in my next post, since this one is already long enough.

Happy writing!

Congratulations! It’s a butterfly! Now what?

Talena Winters is a freelance developmental editor, independent author, magazine writer, and tea and silver lining addict. She specializes in helping struggling self-published fiction and memoir authors unlock their inner writing wizards and unleash story magic. See her editing services here.

Other posts in this series:

The Indie Publishing Process Part 2: Publishing and Distribution

The Indie Publishing Process Part 3: Finding Your Ideal Reader (aka Marketing)

This page last updated 2024-09-05.