Hey All,
So I’ve been an Indy author for almost two years now. I started writing back in spring of 2019 and published my first book on Kindle Unlimited in August 2019. Boy, did I make a bunch of mistakes with that first book. The feedback I got was the story was good, but the editing sucked, which was true because I edited it myself AND I relied on Microsoft Word’s grammar checker to catch my mistakes – hey it was good enough for my Master’s Degree papers.
I quickly invested in Grammarly, again thinking that it along with my read throughs would be enough. I later added ProWritingAid, tried Hemmingway Editor, Papyrus, and just about any other editing software I could. I constantly re-read my work catching new errors and ran the books through Grammarly and ProWritingAid every 3 months or so. At this point I still didn’t want to spend money on a professional editor because I only was viewing this as a side gig and only making $50 to $100 a month on average, sometimes lower.
The reviews about editing issues got better, but they were still coming in every once in a while. The final straw actually was not even about editing. Well, that’s not entirely true. There were 2 recent reviews one in French so I had to translate, I’m hoping that translation came across worse than what the reader actually was trying to convey but I was depressed for days after that since it went against me as a person and not just my book. But I got over it and moved on. The second review actually was a first. It said how could I as an author charge money for something that wasn’t professionally edited and a cover that was obviously self-made.
I actually discard the part about it being professionally edited because I knew it wasn’t I was doing the best I could. But the cover comment pissed me off because I have a degree in Web/Graphic Design. Yes, my covers are self-made but they are professional too since I am an IT professional and I have a degree in web and graphic design. That comment actually made me want to just stop writing all together. But then @DavidsonKingAuthor replied to my post on my personal FB page that helped me out.
Oh, my gosh, this is turning into a diary entry or something…
So after Meredith’s advice and talking with my husband, I got on Fiverr to find an editor. I canceled all my expensive subscriptions services (they are still less than a pro editor, but…). I’m happy to announce that Ginger Fella has been submitted to the editor and I will have it back in 2 weeks. Then the Eclipse series will go to the editor one by one. I will have all 4 books and both Novella’s back before the scheduled release of the box-set. The New Alphas series is going to be the last to be edited since my editor also has to edit Caspian Untangled BEFORE it goes to ARC readers.
Kaydee Robins 