Finally, it's ready! There's a sense when a book arrives that your work is done. For published authors with a big marketing machine behind them that may be true. But it's only a milestone if you're self published. If writing a novel wasn't hard enough, the real work really begins right now. As I found out with my first novel. The temptation is to think that your book will sell by some kind of psychic...

I've done it! I've passed for press both the manuscript and cover. It's been checked, double-checked and triple-checked but there is always that nagging doubt that something has been missed. That I've looked at it so many times that I can't see the obvious. I remember years ago being passed a PhD thesis by a close friend after she had just submitted it. There was an error in the title on the very ...

One of the first decisions I had to make was whether to use the Troubador copy-edit service. It's quite a lot of money and optional. Also my manuscript has already been through an edit process and I was pretty sure it was clean, in which case I would be spending the money for nothing. I will never not use a copy editor again! To be honest I didn't really know what to expect. I thought my manuscript...