Amazon Self Publishing

James - I have to agree with Lorraine, even though I self-edited my first story. I thought I'd done a good job but after publication found one or two minor errors and a major typo, though only one reader's mentioned it. Because I'm one of those people who grates teeth over other writers' mistakes, finding my own work had errors, even after several rounds of copy-editing and a line-edit, was a wakeup call.

The second story went through my own editing process plus a publisher's copy editor. Apart from proofreading I've subsequently read it twice and not found a spelling mistake, though one reviewer grumbled about my punctuation. You'll never please everybody.

It just goes to show what difference a professional's eye can make.

Keep the faith :)

It's the new writer's conundrum, isn't it? You need to be published to earn some cash, but in order to maximise sales (or even to get any at all) you need to be edited, which costs money you haven't got. Catch-22. However, would you have more returning readers if your books were professionally presented, and so make more sales? That's down to personal choice/ circumstances.

If your plot and characters are worth it, and you have all the rest right, what a shame to lose out because you can't afford to edit. Editing software is not capable of proper punctuation, nor can it understand nuances of meaning that could be altered by a misplaced comma. There's no way of replacing a human being in this, I'm afraid!

Lorraine