Yes, at the risk of appearing to be mad again, I am going to ask you to read your eBook out loud.

You don’t need an audience for this, although if you have someone in the family that you trust and who can give you constructive feedback without criticizing everything you have done, you might want to ask them for their help. Most writers will do this so make sure you have some quiet time where you either have the house to yourself or you won’t be disturbed.

So why on earth should you read your eBook out loud?

Well, this might surprise you, but it is one of the best ways of making sure that you get the finished product to be as good as you can possibly make it.

You see, when you read something out loud, you will start to feel the rhythm of what you have written. Bear with me here, because I know that sounds a little odd.

It is true, however. If you read a paragraph out loud, you will immediately know if it works. Sometimes you will write something that you think sounds pretty good on the page. But when you read it out loud, your tongue trips over the words you have used, and you start to stumble and have to go back and try and read it again.

If this happens, then you know the words aren’t flowing as they should be and you should rewrite it until they do. In fact, you can rephrase the sentence out loud until you find something that works, and use that instead.

You may find after some practice, and after you have written a couple more eBooks (or any other piece of writing) that you don’t have to do this anymore. Some writers will automatically hear that voice in their head as they are writing (I can hear mine as I am typing this!), and they will instantly know whether the piece they are writing has that unmistakable rhythm that will carry a reader through from the beginning of a book to the end.

So don’t knock this process because it has a lot to commend it. You just need to get used to hearing the sound of your own voice for a while!

This information is one of 305 pages of detailed steps for Writing, Publishing, and Selling EBooks and now you can receive a FREE110 pages ABRIDGED VERSION just by clicking Work From Home Writing, Publishing & Selling EBooks.

To view the unabridged version and the 17 video tutorials see The Wealthy Plumber: Writing, Publishing & Selling EBooks

When you have had some distance from your eBook, the first thing you should do is to re-read it from start to finish. When you do, be sure to check the following points:

• Have you spell checked everything?

• Have you written for one person throughout?

• Have you kept things upbeat and positive?

• Have you included everything that needs to be in there?

• Have you gone off-topic at all?

These are the main points to consider when you are editing. In truth, if you have read what I have revealed so far in this book and really taken it in, you should find that there won’t be a huge amount of editing to do anyway. Most people think their book will be horrendous… and yet after they have had a couple of days to unwind from the writing process they are usually quite surprised at what they have written! It always seems to be better than they thought it would be.

Watch for certain points though. If you have strayed into an area that really shouldn’t be in there (say for example you’re writing that eBook on saving money on groceries, and you’ve inadvertently added in a section on reducing your costs on your cell phone), then take it out – you can always keep it for your next eBook!

If you find you have become rather less than positive at any stage, make sure you strike that part out, or re-word it so you are looking at the situation from the other side.

This is probably one of the hardest parts of editing. We all end up writing sections or paragraphs that we really like and we are really proud of, and yet sometimes they just don’t fit in with what we had in mind for the book itself.

So what do you do? You take the advice once offered by another writer: “Murder your darlings.”

This has been credited to several famous people over the years, but it is not really important to us who said it. It is more important to remember what they meant. The meaning is simple really; they were simply saying that you should be prepared to get rid of those passages of writing which you particularly like, because they are often found to be self indulgent rather than having any particular use to anyone else.

If you are unsure about any part of what you have written in this respect, simply highlight it and carry on editing your book. You will benefit from going through the book itself two or three times before you publish it, because you will be bound to miss things the first time round that you will catch easily the next time you look.

This information is one of 305 pages of detailed steps for Writing, Publishing, and Selling EBooks and now you can receive a FREE110 pages ABRIDGED VERSION just by clicking Work From Home Writing, Publishing & Selling EBooks.

To view the unabridged version and the 17 video tutorials see The Wealthy Plumber: Writing, Publishing & Selling EBooks

Wow – so you have finally finished your eBook. Well done! You have written every single one of those chunks you jotted down as part of your outline (aren’t you glad you took the time to do that now?). Simply by getting to this stage you have achieved a lot more than a lot of other people do who never get beyond the idea stage.

Now it’s time to congratulate yourself on a great job and forget all about that eBook.

Hey, don’t panic, you’re still going to be selling it – you just need to check it over first and make sure it’s ready to be wheeled out in front of your audience. If you put it aside for even just a couple of days, the editing process will be a lot easier to do, because you’ll find that any errors you’ve made (no matter what type they are) will be easier to spot. And you’ll always find that changing the odd word here and there will lead to a smoother and much more pleasant read.

Giving yourself a break from the whole process will also give you a chance to recharge your batteries in readiness for the editing anyway, so take a break – you earned it!

THE IMPORTANCE OF EDITING

Why do we edit books?

It’s a simple question, but there are lots of answers. Perhaps the answer that rolls everything into a neat package is this one:

“To make them the best that they can be.”

And if that isn’t good enough for you then how about this: if you write poorly and your content is of little value to anyone, you won’t make it in this business. Your first eBooks will make or break your career in a hurry. If you publish a high quality book that is well written and provides valuable and useful information to your niche market, you will build a reputation. Once you have a reputation, your affiliates will promote anything that you publish, and more affiliates will sign up to get in on the action.

Even if you are exceptionally good at writing and your first draft is pretty much the same as your final draft, you will still need to edit to a certain degree because you have to pick up on those typos, change words here and there and generally smooth it out a little.

Editing is very important if you want people to take your work seriously. Amazingly, some people will publish an eBook without bothering to edit it because they think that by the time someone reads it they will already have paid their money to do so. The author has the money, so why worry?

Understandably you don’t tend to see too many of these writers hanging around for very long. This is because the people who do buy from them once won’t tend to buy from them again – because they want an eBook with a more professional edge. And the affiliates that promote your book will disappear on you in the search of quality products to promote.

Every now and then someone breaks this rule and publishes an eBook that is pretty dreadful in presentation, but they get away with it because the information contained in it is so explosive and so useful to the reader that they are willing to overlook that shortcoming. For example, I once read a book that was very poorly written, and there were a shocking number of simple grammar errors. But I got through the book because I found the content interesting, and apparently so did Amazon buyers as the book has an Amazon rank of less than 200,000 and a feedback of 4 out of 5 stars.

These are very few and far between though. So don’t try to get away without editing because you think people will tolerate it. Always strive to make your books the best that you can. You will be rewarded for it if you do.

This information is one of 305 pages of detailed steps for Writing, Publishing, and Selling EBooks and now you can receive a FREE110 pages ABRIDGED VERSION just by clicking Work From Home Writing, Publishing & Selling EBooks.

To view the unabridged version and the 17 video tutorials see The Wealthy Plumber: Writing, Publishing & Selling EBooks