New self publishing authors: don’t let friends proofread, hire a professional | Andrea de Michaelis – Creating my own reality, one thought at a time

I’m reading a preview of a Kindle book written by a pilgrim on the Camino and self published by Authorhouse. The typos in the preview make it a distracting read (i.e., the “Pyranees.”) New authors, if you’re going the self publishing, vanity press (print on demand) route, don’t hire friends to proofread, hire someone qualified. Having said that, I downloaded a novel by an author friend who emailed to let me know she was embarrassed to find many typos, now being corrected for the print version. She writes in such a compelling way and the typos were few and not glaring, it made it easy to choose content over form in that case. I let her know that many of the review copies of books I receive from publishers and publicists are galley proofs, so I’m used to reading even famous and bestselling books in their preliminary, uncorrected form. But new authors, if you’re going the self publishing route, don’t hire friends to proofread, hire someone qualified.