Ten Tacky Signs That Your Book Was Self-Published

So you're thinking of writing a book.... Great idea! But....

Ten Tacky Signs that your book was self-published from The Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal

By Patricia E. Moody 1. No index - If your book is worth reading and remembering, it deserves, indeed MUST have an Index. Spend the money or get the software to do it, but a usable index is non-negotiable.

2. No margins - don't try to save paper by skimping on margins - readers can tell.

3. Questionable cover - your kid or your wife's cartoons for cover art, or bad scans of weird fonts, or bad words, swears, obscenities in your title - such as "kick-ass." The Mill Girl does not approve. Bob Wallace, the legendary Free Press editor who discovered Michael Porter (and made him rich!) used to rasp in between drags on his Lucky Strikes, "A book is forever." Well with the web, maybe not totally forever, but mistakes, like a coffee stain on your interview suit, can make a big bad impression. Fonts too big, too small, strangely colored? Get a book designer to lay it all out, or don't publish the first or second edit - get it right and make it pretty.

4. Don't get too creative with your publishing company name - i.e. Backroom Adventures, MyHammock LLC.

5. Spelling errors - every professionally produced book has errors – Wallace spotted this one at the front of a competitor’s book: Forword - but keep the errors down and off the cover.

6. Too many words! No pictures! A few flowcharts or diagrams, well-done, won't hurt if you don't want to spring for a photo. But 100-plus pages of words need to be broken up with at least a half dozen graphics.

7. Speaking of photos, if your author's photo is not a cropped, clear, well-pixelated image, the reader won't know what you look like and a faceless image is not the one you're trying to build.

8. Crazy self-serving endorsements - don't include your personal trainer's jacket endorsement unless the book is about exercise. Good endorsements take months to gather, even blind endorsements, and odds are that 4 out of 6 don't come in under deadline. Prepare for that by starting the hunt early. In fact, when you write your Book Proposal, develop a blue-sky endorsers list and work it.

9. Missing, faint or oddly-placed Roman numeral page numbers. The easiest of lay-out tasks can be overly segmented and fancied up. Readers, particularly of e-books, don’t want to get lost or confused – make it easy for them.

10. “I know where you work!” - Do include author contact info, including your e-mail address and book website, in several visible, memorable spots. Consider the author's bio as the natural place.

FORTUNE magazine "Pioneering Woman in Mfg"

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers, https://sites.google.com/site/blueheronjournal/, tricia@patriciaemoody.com