I’m revealing the five costliest mistakes I see new authors make when self-publishing. If you're using your book as a business card, you cannot afford amateur formatting giving bad first impressions to readers who immediately notice wrong fonts and layouts, especially if they read extensively in your genre.

Let’s start with the number one mistake that cost my client thousands: formatting your book before all editing is complete. My client paid for formatting before we finished all four editing types—developmental, line, copy, and proofreading—then had to pay for reformatting again after editing changed content.

Mistake two involves not understanding different format requirements where authors assume one format works for all book types. However, each book format has specific technical requirements with separate file types that Amazon won't accept if improperly formatted.

Mistake three is using manual formatting with hard returns and extra spaces instead of professional paragraph styles, or worse, formatting in Word which looks unprofessional and Amazon often rejects. Mistake four means ignoring industry standards where every genre has specific formatting expectations professional readers recognize instantly.

Join my free School community "Publishing for Leaders" at school.com where first 100 members get complimentary access to monthly group coaching sessions plus casual coffee chats. Book your discovery call at write4u.me for formatting, editing, or publishing support.

Until next time, keep writing, dreaming, and creating—your book is waiting to be born!

Hey friends and future authors, this is Lynn, a Liquidy Smarges, ghostwriter and book editor here, right for you. I'm so glad you joined me for today's episode, because this episode today is one of the most costliest errors I see new authors make when they are self-publishing their book.

Before we jump into today's episode though, I want to talk to you about a client I recently had who actually did this mistake. His name is Sean and he had hired me to edit his book after he had paid somebody to format his book. But after working together, we came up with a plan, we got his book done. I also helped him with renaming his book so it has some better SEO in it. And I also assisted him

with developing his playbook that accompanies his regular reading book, right? So we actually just went in and dug through everything and I just helped him up level his book, his playbook. And then we had to get his book reformatted. Why? Because the number one costliest mistake people make is that they make the mistake of getting their book formatted before they have all the final edits.

finished. And that is what we're talk about in this episode today. But before we jump into the episode, I want to give a shout out to my client, Sean. He left me a review on Google My Business saying, five stars for Lynn's editing services. She made the writing process seamless and enjoyable. Her ability to match my voice while elevating the content was impressive. She has great communication throughout the project. I'll be recommending her to new aspiring authors. So thank you, Sean, for doing that. I really appreciate

that recommendation.

All right, my friends, so are you ready to move past your writing hurdles and self-publish your book? Because if you are, I would love to work with you and get into that self-publishing mode. So make sure to join my community on school. That's S-K-O-O-L. So if you go to school.com, look for publishing for leaders, join my new free community. I'm gonna talk a little bit more about that in

in a little bit. But let's jump into today's show because I've got a fabulous episode for you today. And these are the biggest and most costliest mistakes I see people make all the time, especially new authors, because honestly, if you're a new author, like I remember, I was a new author, I had no idea what I was doing. So don't make these mistakes. Save yourself the time, effort, and cost, right? Because you can't get your time back, you can make more money back, but who wants to throw down

you know, several thousand dollars for editing and you have to do it again and then again throw down several hundred to a couple thousand dollars for book formatting and have to pay for it again, right? So that's not a good ROI for you if you have to, if you're wasting your money on mistakes, right? Because there's a difference between investing in your book and like paying for a good book editor, right? That's a great investment in your book and that's money well spent, but it's definitely not money well spent if you are

If you are paying for redoing work because you've made a mistake just because you just didn't know right? We don't know what we don't know. So now you're gonna know so here we go with his mistake number one Which is what I just talked about formatting before your book editing is complete. This is the costliest mistake because some people Get a book editor and then they're like, oh well I have to do my proof editing or I have to do my line editing or I have to do my developmental editing

So how it works is that you want to do all four types of editing before you jump into book formatting. So I have an actual episode on book editing. So check out the types of editing that you can get for your book to find out more details, but just a rundown list. So, you know, one is developmental editing. That's the first editing you get done. That's the overarching editing. you just talk about like, explain things more clearly, organize your

content and it's overarching editing. The second is line editing where an editor will go through line by line to clean up your words and make them sound better. For me, a lot of times I'm making my clients words sound more powerful. So people like to use fuzzy words a lot, which is really common when you're not a professional writer. like something, it's, they, maybe, sort of, right? Or like a lot of people like to make comments like, I'm not sure if you know this, but so taking things

like that out and really tightening up your prose and your content is makes your book so much better. So that's line editing. Then the next thing is copy editing. That's cleaning up grammar and mistakes and punctuation. And then there's proof. So proofreader basically comes in behind a copy editor and cleans up any of the mistakes that the copy editor didn't find. So those are the four basic types of editing. Now I would be really leery if anybody says they do all four really well because that's not a thing, right? So you want to get a

person that does what you want really well. So I'm really good at developmental and line editing. I don't do copy and proof. That I refer to other copy and proof editors that do that. That's all they do because that's just not my jam. I love the big picture and I love the line editing and that's what I really enjoy to do for my clients. So when you're hiring an editor, make sure that you are finding somebody who doesn't say, I can do it all, right? Because that's not going to be a good editor. And you also just, you

want to make sure that they also communicate with you a lot. And I go into more detail in that episode on the types of book editing. So definitely go check that out. All right.

So if you get your book edited before you have all the four different types of editing done, you're going to pay twice for your formatting. Because if you get it formatted and then you get it edited again, then you actually have to go back and reformat your book. Because all of those word changes are not going to be in your formatted book. And your formatted book is what's going to show on Amazon. And when you format your book, especially if you're going to have a paperback, which most people have that option, is a paperback and an ebook, or is very common to

on Amazon that if you do that, if you reformat your book and it has changed the page count by 10 pages or more for your paperback book, then you have to redo your book cover because your book cover is not going to fit because your book cover was made for that specific number of pages on your book. So now that your book pages are changing, your book was getting smaller or bigger, then you need a smaller or bigger book cover

because you can't keep your old cover because it's gonna be outside of the bleed lines and Amazon won't accept it. So it has to be the proper size cover for Amazon to accept it. And if you do your book formatting before you're finished your editing, then you're gonna have to re-edit your book, right, again, and then you're going to pay for formatting again, which you don't want to do. So avoid that mistake and make sure you have all four types of editing done before you get your book formatted.

Number two is understanding the different format requirements. so print books and ebooks totally different formatting requirement. Ebooks are super easy to format, relative speaking to paperback because ebooks are electronic. So you can make one cover for your ebook and it doesn't matter how many pages it has in it, right? You just have one size because it's digital. And obviously it's not a physical product like a paperback book. So it doesn't matter how big or small it is. You have the same book cover for

your ebook. excuse me, that's really important to know.

So your print books have need different formatting like we just said your audiobooks also have a separate preparation if you have audiobooks if you're doing a hardcover book that is also a different size because hardcovers on Amazon only come in two typical sizes So if you have a paperback book, you can't just use that for your hardcover book You're have to for your your editor your formatter's got to reformat that into hardcover form, which I did

for a client last year. I formatted his ebook and then we did his paperback and then I also had to then I had to take his paperback book and format that into a hardcover book because hardcover book was a different size. So take that into consideration if you do want a hardcover book. There are reasons to want a hardcover book. I'm not going to jump into those right now because we're focusing on the formatting mistakes. But if you do want to format a hardcover book formatted just know that is a

another additional format in addition to your print book. So consider if you want that done before you look for a formatter because you want to find a formatter that can do both hardcover paperback and ebook just like I can. So if you're looking for that, you can definitely hit me up on my website, writeforyou.me or if you just want to, you're not sure if you need that, book me for a discovery call on my website. We can have a quick 15 minute chat and see if that's something that you are interested in doing. All right, but each format has its own specific

technical requirements, whether that's audio, hardcover, paperback, or ebook. So you need separate different types of files for each, and they have to be properly formatted because if they're not, Amazon won't accept them. Okay, so make sure that before you make a decision on formatting, you understand all of these issues and all of these points before you go into finding a book formatter so you know what to ask for. Okay, number three, using manual formatting instead of styles.

So manually spacing instead of using paragraph styles is not a good idea. Okay. Cause then you have hard returns and extra spaces everywhere and it looks unprofessional and it's not going to, your book is not going to give you a good impression when someone picks it up. All right. So you need, and that also makes updates and changes nearly impossible and professional formatters can't work with manual formatting. Okay. So you need to make that style properly and get it professionally formatted. have a professional formatting program that I use for my clients.

And that is a great program that I use and I know how to use it really well because I formatted dozens of books on it. Okay, so you don't also don't want to another costly mistake is having your book formatted in Word document because a lot of people like, well, I see on Word that you can format your book in here. Yes, you can. But half the time, Amazon is not going to accept it because it doesn't do a proper job of formatting. It also doesn't look very good. And especially if you are listening to this podcast, I'm assuming you're using your book for a business

this reasons and or to up level your digital presence. And if that's the point of your book, and it's not just even if it's a giveaway, right, you don't want it to look unprofessional. You want your book to look professional. And if it's and that is a huge, you know, number one thing for you, if you are introducing yourself to a person for the first time with your book, right, you don't want to give a bad first impression. So keep that in mind, don't use word and don't manually form

format your book. Ignoring industry standards and conventions is another huge mistake people make because every genre has specific formatting expectations. You need to know what a professional book looks like and need to choose fonts and layouts that

are professional. Certain fonts and layouts are going to look very amateur and readers are going to notice that that looks wrong, especially if they read a lot of books in that genre. And typically readers do, right? Readers are going to read a lot of the same genre. So you need to make sure you know your genre standards. I know the standards for business books and nonfiction books because I have formatted and worked with dozens of authors on that. All right, my friends. So if you are really confused by all this, come join me in my new free community.

because we can get past your writing hurdles and self-publish your book. Let's navigate the publishing landscape together so you can share your expertise with a wider audience. And if you are feeling stuck and you're not sure what to do or where to go with your next book and you're tired of constantly hitting roadblocks and putting your book aside for months or even years, then go to school. School.com, S-K-O-O-L. You're gonna find a free

group in there and that's my group called Publishing for Leaders. So just like this podcast, Publishing for Professionals, this is Publishing for Leaders, right? Every month you get a free group coaching session and if you don't get your questions answered in that group coaching session, which has a specific topic that we'll talk about for self-publishing, come to our coffee chat that we have once a month, which is a very casual, relaxed, we just chat about self-publishing your books and you can get any of your questions answered that you didn't get answered in the free group.

coaching session. But I will tell you this my friend, if you don't get in soon, it's going to be a paid for membership because I'm only letting the first 100 people in for free. So jump in now while it's still free because the first 100 members are complimentary. So go to school.com, that's S-K-O-O-L dot com and look for Publishing for Leaders and join today. The link is also in the show notes. So if you're ready to get that publishing support you need from a community, join my

community, I'd love to have you in there. All right, so in the publishing support arena, right, we went also publishing support, we're to go back to formatting. So one thing, a huge mistake, one of my clients did is that he did not review the proof before he okayed it. And so what happened was my client

we had formatted his book. And what I typically do is we do the book formatting and he wanted a paperback copy and he wanted an ebook copy. So I did both his ebook and his paperback and it took a long time because he had over a hundred pictures in his book because it's a memoir. And it was a great book. I think we did a good job on writing the book. I loved his pictures because he had pictures spanning five decades and it was incredible to see the progress. the mistake, huge mistake he made was

When I finished formatting, what I do is I give the books to clients and I say look through this book and give me a list of the changes you need made, whether that's like a name spelling that I miss or you want an extra, you want to change a caption or you want to word something differently, whatever it is, right? And they have to be small changes. At this point, it's not rearranging your content or line editing. It's like, oh, we forgot to put this quote on here or, you know, really small things. So he said, no, no, no.

I want to just publish this. I'm a risk taker. I want to just do this. And I'm like, it's not a good idea. You really want to look through your book. He's like, no, no, no, I want to just do this. So I'm like, no, you really want to go page through page and at least just skim over your book and see that it looks correct and you don't see any glaring things that are wrong. And he insisted he didn't want to do that. So we went and published it on Amazon and he ordered a hundred copies of his books and there were several mistakes in there. He's like,

I can't give this out. There's so many mistakes in here, blah, blah. And I said, well, that's why I said when we finished with your formatting that you wanted to look through every page and check, and he did. So then it was the extra cost of going through his book again and making those changes. And then he had issues with the publisher that he was working with, or the print press kept sending him books that were the old manuscript that was incorrect. So he ended up

literally having 500 books at his house that were the Because they kept printing the wrong manuscript even though I sent them the correct the corrected manuscript and formatting They kept printing the wrong one So he literally spent thousands of dollars on a book that he couldn't even use he literally had to pay to ship them back before they would credit him and This publishing house was really sketchy I told my client don't go with them They're raising lots of red flags that I see and he's like no no no, but they're the cheapest and I'm like, but the

isn't always the best and they didn't turn out to be the cheapest because by the time my client had to pay to ship back 500 books, he was already losing a ton of money before he even got out of the gate. when you get your book formatted, make sure you check with the formatter that before you publish on Amazon or before you make that last payment, that you have looked at all formats of your book. If that's your audio, your hardcover, your paperback or your ebook.

and have looked through every page and have read it and made sure there are no glaring obvious mistakes. Now, are there going to be a couple mistakes here and there with your book? Yes. Even books that come out of the Big Five, my friend, are going to have those little mistakes. I mean, heck, I was reading a book about art and...

They there it was from I think Penguin. was one of the big five I can't remember which it might have been Penguin might not have been anyway It's from one of the big five, right? They were missing the word like in or thought I had to read that sentence three times. I'm like, my gosh They missed an entire word and this is a big five publishing house. So your book does not have to be perfect, but

If it has two or three small mistakes, like you missed a little thing here and there, no big deal. I see those in big publishing house books all the time, but you don't want any big glaring mistakes in your book and you want it to sound professional, you want it to be professionally edited. And then once your edits are all complete, then get your book formatting. If you're really confused by all this because there's a lot of steps, then jump in my school community and ping me with questions or come to our coaching call on March 12th is coming up. And that's the biggest mistakes people make on

KDP. you don't get that one, still join the community because the recording is going to be in the community so you can read it in there. So even if you miss the March 12th community coaching session on the KDP mistakes, then just join the community and watch the replay. It will be up there for you to watch. So you don't have to worry about putting it on your calendar. But definitely join the school community, my friends. I'm really excited to see you in there.

All right, okay, so.

that these are the biggest mistakes I see people make that cost lots of time and money, so you want to avoid those. So just make sure we're to recap these five mistakes. One is formatting your book before all of your editing is complete. And remember, get a professional editor. Number two, not understanding your different format requirements for your genre. Number three, using manual formatting or using Word to format your book instead of a professional book formatter. Number four,

following industry standards and conventions with your genre, choosing layouts that scream amateur. Number five is skipping the proof review process and not proofing and reading your book before you put it on Amazon KDP. So my friends, avoid these five mistakes and literally they could cost you.

$3,000 $5,000 if you don't do these things. So make sure you do all these things and be diligent with your book. I know it's a lot of work. I've self-published four books and I'm working on a fifth and a sixth one right now. And it is tiring and it's exhausting. And sometimes I have to take a break from writing my books and I'm a professional writer. So don't worry about that. Just do your best. And if you have to stretch out your timeline a little bit, that's fine. If you need somebody to assist you with your timeline, come to write4u.me.

hit my discovery call button and be glad to help you out. Alright my friends, until next week this is Lynn Aliquity reminding you to keep writing, keep dreaming, and keep creating. Your book is waiting to be born.