I feel like not enough is said to authors about what happens between finishing (that is, really finished, after the editing is done) and promoting the book. Since that's exactly where I am, I thought I'd make a few comments.
Oh, all right, I'm bemoaning. (which now makes me imagine bees moaning)
After editing comes proofreading. I was going to mark that as the end point, but nay 'tis far otherwise.
Covers
This is sort of painfully obvious, but there's copy on your book cover, especially on the paperback. That needs as careful attention as any every place else on your project. I note as an aside that even a professional editor isn't going to do this sort of work. And that fiddling with that copy is a constant temptation.
Front and Back Matter
There's the dedication, the Table of Contents, maybe an introduction, all the stuff that happens before the story happens. Here again, no editor or proofreader is looking at this (typically). Are your chapter titles correct?
Then there's back matter, which will mainly be the call to action (CTA). Here's where you thank the reader, ask for a review, and show your other work. In some publications they even put in a chapter of the next-in-series.
Formatting
My current bucket o' woe. No matter the software you use, there's typically this sequence: source document -> formatting tool -> publication tool. There might even be more steps. We want the finished product, the published document, to be perfect, but each step transmutes the document and can produce unexpected results.
Examples, from my own experience: 1) the Back Matter got counted as a chapter and appears as if it's another chapter in the book; 2) the running head still had the current date, my bad; 3) ToC formatting was goofy in the print version though was fine for the ebook; 4) sub-titles showed up underlined; 5) hyperlinks showed with underlines in the print version.
And so on. Scores of things. You'd think I'd catch them all in one review pass, but not I. And every time ... *every time* ... I have to return to the source document and go through all the exporting and transforming steps again, ending with the upload and Preview at Amazon. Slow. Also, I have learned to resist the temptation to fix the problem at the formatter. Go back to the source document. Otherwise you wind up with seven different versions of the exact same document, just with formatting twiddles.
Print vs eBook
There's actually both proofing and formatting, as indicated above, along the eBook path and along the Print path. Different decisions get made. These aren't typically huge decisions, but they do make a difference on how professional the finished product looks. And, of course, there's always the fun of checking the eBook in different readers. That's less nightmarish than it was five or ten years ago, but it still needs doing.
And finally, you can't get the final version of your cover for the paperback until you have a final page count. And you won't have that until all the above is done. I've been finished with the novel for three weeks. It's not like I haven't been doing other things in the interval, but that novel still isn't actually published.
Also, if you're publishing through Amazon KDP, there's a step on the paperback where it offers a way to download the pdf. Do that and review that. Sure, you *just now uploaded* a pdf file. But do it anyway. Nobody is going to see that version. They're only going to see the one that Amazon processed. It's the modern version of reviewing galley proofs.
So, kiddo, you thought you were done?
Hah!
Oh, all right, I'm bemoaning. (which now makes me imagine bees moaning)
After editing comes proofreading. I was going to mark that as the end point, but nay 'tis far otherwise.
Covers
This is sort of painfully obvious, but there's copy on your book cover, especially on the paperback. That needs as careful attention as any every place else on your project. I note as an aside that even a professional editor isn't going to do this sort of work. And that fiddling with that copy is a constant temptation.
Front and Back Matter
There's the dedication, the Table of Contents, maybe an introduction, all the stuff that happens before the story happens. Here again, no editor or proofreader is looking at this (typically). Are your chapter titles correct?
Then there's back matter, which will mainly be the call to action (CTA). Here's where you thank the reader, ask for a review, and show your other work. In some publications they even put in a chapter of the next-in-series.
Formatting
My current bucket o' woe. No matter the software you use, there's typically this sequence: source document -> formatting tool -> publication tool. There might even be more steps. We want the finished product, the published document, to be perfect, but each step transmutes the document and can produce unexpected results.
Examples, from my own experience: 1) the Back Matter got counted as a chapter and appears as if it's another chapter in the book; 2) the running head still had the current date, my bad; 3) ToC formatting was goofy in the print version though was fine for the ebook; 4) sub-titles showed up underlined; 5) hyperlinks showed with underlines in the print version.
And so on. Scores of things. You'd think I'd catch them all in one review pass, but not I. And every time ... *every time* ... I have to return to the source document and go through all the exporting and transforming steps again, ending with the upload and Preview at Amazon. Slow. Also, I have learned to resist the temptation to fix the problem at the formatter. Go back to the source document. Otherwise you wind up with seven different versions of the exact same document, just with formatting twiddles.
Print vs eBook
There's actually both proofing and formatting, as indicated above, along the eBook path and along the Print path. Different decisions get made. These aren't typically huge decisions, but they do make a difference on how professional the finished product looks. And, of course, there's always the fun of checking the eBook in different readers. That's less nightmarish than it was five or ten years ago, but it still needs doing.
And finally, you can't get the final version of your cover for the paperback until you have a final page count. And you won't have that until all the above is done. I've been finished with the novel for three weeks. It's not like I haven't been doing other things in the interval, but that novel still isn't actually published.
Also, if you're publishing through Amazon KDP, there's a step on the paperback where it offers a way to download the pdf. Do that and review that. Sure, you *just now uploaded* a pdf file. But do it anyway. Nobody is going to see that version. They're only going to see the one that Amazon processed. It's the modern version of reviewing galley proofs.
So, kiddo, you thought you were done?
Hah!