Let’s Talk Image: Professionalism and Reader Magnets

There are an infinite number of blogs where authors are told to be a brand or to build their brand. I’m going to skip that. Let’s talk about professionalism and how you (the author) are viewed by your audience. I don’t want to get into whether people like your books, whether it’s a niche genre, or anything subjective. We’re going to discuss how to present yourself professionally, even if the only interaction between you and the reader is the ebook file the reader buys from a retailer. (I’m focused primarily on ebooks here, since that seems to be where the hasty publications are most common.)

For the same reason you wouldn’t hand in schoolwork that’s messy and full of errors—you’d get a failing grade—there is no good reason to ever publish (traditionally or independently) a book with errors. Mistakes in the manuscript, the file name, or the cover image are really unacceptable. Will it turn away everyone? No. Are you going to come off as an amateur? Absolutely.

This is doubly important in a reader magnet—a book offered for free in exchange for signing up for a mailing list or otherwise attempting to pull in new readers—because you are being judged on the quality of your work. Do not think of a reader magnet as “just a freebie” where you can get away with errors because your reader didn’t actually pay for the book.

I regularly download tons of free ebooks in an attempt to find new authors I can follow (and buy from). My kindle currently has 750 titles on it, and that’s not including the ones that I’ve deleted after getting fed up with them or having read them a couple times. If there are repeated errors in the free ebook, why would I spend money on getting any other you’ve written? I don’t pay for paperback books with sections missing, so I’m not going to pay for ebooks that aren’t put together properly. It comes off as tacky at best, more likely as completely immature and not worth my time. I do sometimes read error-filled ebooks because the concept is interesting, but I won’t buy anything from that author.

As an author, you need to put forward materials that show you are worth your readers’ time and money. I feel like this should be common sense, but for some reason I come across it so much that apparently authors are devoid of any such sense. If you don’t believe me, these are actual photos of my kindle. (Actual authors’ names removed.)

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Professional eBooks…

• …have a nice cover that suits the genre.
• …have been edited and properly proofread.
• …have been opened on an appropriate device BEFORE publication to confirm the file opens as it should.
• …have files correctly built so the title and author show up as they should on whatever device is reading them, rather than including ugly things like a scrambled string of alphanumeric characters, “Unknown”, “My Book”, “Kindle”, “Draft”, “Final”, “Windows User”, etc. Cover image is also displayed, where applicable.
• …have embedded book titles that are NOT the same as the file name on your computer. This includes date stamps, docx, pdf, “for Word”, “for Amazon”, “Bk 1” instead of “Book 1”, etc. The same ugly inclusions above also apply here.
• …have titles properly capitalized, punctuated, spaced, and without random extra characters. A subtitle is allowed after a colon (:) like so: My Epic Title: Book One of the Subtitled Series, Another Epic Title: A Realm Novella. The title comes first! You do not write the title as “Series Name Book One: My Title”. Inserting the series in parentheses after the title is also acceptable, but do NOT include the colon AND the parentheses! “My Title: (Series, #3)” is incorrect.
• …are formatted correctly so that jumping to the table of contents, the beginning, the end, or any particular location works flawlessly. Note: Your in-your-face list of other books you want the reader to buy is NOT the beginning of the ebook! Page one of actual prose is. If I open an ebook to “the beginning” and find fifteen pages of table of contents, author’s note, book list with repeated begging for sales, mailing lists, newsletters, or anything of that nature, I’m not going to lie; that’s irritating. Yes, you may include whatever you like between the cover and the first page of content. That doesn’t change the fact that there is a correct first page of content.
• …do not beg repeatedly for additional book sales, mailing list sign-ups, or even every social media option under the sun. Less is really more here. If you’re going to put in links to other books you’ve written, do not put it at both the beginning and the end. That’s tacky.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

But Marie, you’re saying. I’m trying to self-publish my work, I can’t afford to pay for an editor and a professional book cover designer and a proofreader. I hear you. It can cost a lot of money if you’re not careful. That doesn’t mean you can skip steps. This is one of those places where you may need to spend money to make money.

You Need A Professional-Looking Cover

If you have the skills to make a book cover that is appropriate for your genre, great. There are some really awesome tools out there on the net to help authors make professional-looking covers.

If you do not have a way to do this, you should absolutely pay for someone to make a nice cover. A geometric design with overlaid text is the equivalent of a stick figure drawing instead of the Mona Lisa.

Know your genre! Fantasy novels almost always have a scene on the cover. Romance novels almost always have a couple, or at least a hint at one side of the couple, presumably the character believed to be the reader’s attraction—big, well-muscled men tend to feature on both a heterosexual romance novel aimed at a female demographic or a homosexual romance aimed at men.

Reveal something about the story! A book set in a medieval fantasy kingdom shouldn’t have an image of New York City on the cover. Aim for some combination of main characters, setting, themes, and plot on the cover, or at least implications of them. Set in a forest? Give me a background image of forest. Blonde heroine? She’d better be blonde on the cover, too.

And A Proofreader, If Not An Actual Editor

Writers usually edit their own work, it’s part of the process. (If you don’t, you should be.) But that’s not the same thing as having someone else review the manuscript. There really isn’t an excuse for you not getting someone else to proofread to make sure you didn’t miss anything.

No matter how many times the author rereads their own work, it is next to impossible to catch every error. Part of it is due to familiarity with the content. You could have missed an entire word, but because your brain knows what you meant to say, it fills in for you. That’s not going to help you out at this stage.

Even if the only person you get to read it is a friend or family member with attention to detail, you need to get someone to proofread your manuscript. This really isn’t something you can skip at any experience level. You won’t grow out of needing a proofreader.

Editors are useful and can enhance your work because they are focused on different aspects of the story than you are, or from different angles. Not everyone can afford to hire an editor, especially when they write a dense novel that has over 120,000 words. (That’s a lot, but fairly standard for epic fantasy and science fiction.) Friends and family might be able to offer some ideas, beta-readers are a good resource, and other writers can tell you what they might do with your manuscript.

If you don’t have anyone to edit, you should weigh the value of having a well-received book the first time around. Sure, you can go back and publish a second edition or second printing with mistakes fixed, but that doesn’t change the fact that the error-prone copy is out there in the world, and you will be judged accordingly.