Two Common Mistakes That Are Hurting Your Book

Editing

It’s important to have your book thoroughly edited before taking the next step to print and publish. As much as we want to believe our writing is perfect, it’s imperative to have a professional at least proofread your book for spelling errors, punctuation, sentence structure, and flow. It’s hard for the reader to view you as a credible source of information, or even a good storyteller, if mistakes are overlooked and end up printed for everyone to see. You want to be proud of the product you have worked so hard on!

A common mistake we have seen is using the spelling of “Forward” instead of “Foreword.” Spelling this heading incorrectly is telling of bad editing, which makes your book look less professional and makes you look less credible as a writer. This section is located at the beginning of your book, so spelling Foreword wrong is not a good way to set the tone of the reader’s experience.

If your book contains a table of contents section, make sure all of your page numbers align properly with each corresponding section or chapter. If there are errors in your table of contents, it inconveniences the reader and makes your book look less professional.  If you ever make changes to your book, make sure you double-check to make sure the changes do not result in changes to your table of contents. This step can often be overlooked by writers.

Looking for an editor? Check our Editing Resources!

Formatting

Just like editing, messy formatting is another common mistake that can make reading your book more of a labor. If you are formatting your book yourself, do some research beforehand to see if there’s a basic formula to follow based on the genre or content.  For example, if your book contains a lot of dialogue, the formatting is going to be different compared to a normal body of text. A string of dialogue can be isolated on separate lines, rather than contained within a body of text.

A common formatting error we see is not justifying text. The text should be justified on both sides so that the edge of the text lines up smoothly, rather than left-aligned, which creates a ragged right.  This is also important to follow on your back cover if you have text displayed.

Page numbering is another decision you have to make when formatting your book. Whether you choose to have page numbers displayed at the bottom or top corners, it is important they do not go into the gutter, cutting them off when printed.

Cover and Graphics

If you are debating if you should incorporate reviews on your back cover (or inside your book), reviews are a great way to showcase your credibility, which could ultimately lead to an increase in sales. In general, your cover is the best way to grab potential readers’ attention, so it should be well-designed and eye-catching.  You can read more about this in our blog post, “People DO Judge a Book by Its Cover.”

One thing we alert our clients of the most is low-resolution images. This means that the graphics are under 300 dpi (dots per inch).  We recommend images be over 300 dpi to print clearly. Make sure you are checking the resolution of the images you are using.  If they look blurry or pixelated to you, then they will print this way. Having low-resolution graphics in your book will contribute to making your books look less professional. Imagine looking at a row of books, all with clear, well-designed covers, then seeing a cover with blurry images.  Would you be enticed to pick it up and learn more? Probably not. We will always let our clients know if we think graphics are going to print blurry ahead of time and give you a chance to fix them, but this is definitely something you should keep in mind when designing your book!