Do you self-publish your work? Are you publishing your first novel for free, hoping that you will draw in an audience to buy later books in the series?
It is now incredibly easy to self-publish, allowing more budding authors than ever before to share their work with everyone. You no longer have to go through the uncertain process of submitting your work to publishing houses and risking receiving rejections. Neither does your treasured manuscript need to sit in a drawer gathering dust.
While you don’t need to be at the mercy of those working in publishing houses to get your work published, there are a few valuable benefits that you will be missing out on by self-publishing. The most important of these is that your work will no longer be checked by copy editors and proofreaders.
It becomes difficult to spot mistakes if you know your own work too well. Unfortunately those minor context errors and typographical errors, such as spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors, distract the reader. The reader may stop being absorbed by the story and is less likely to buy other books that you write.
Improve your success as an author and your repeat or return sales rates by putting your work through those valuable final stages of the publishing process.