People say that it takes a village to raise a child and the same is true for a book. You will need the help of a lot of different people to finally publish your book.
And if you’re someone who is committed to high standards and wants to improve the quality of your book, read on!
Are you just starting the process of writing your book? Or are you halfway through it? You might have finished your manuscript but you’re unsure how the final output is going to be! Or you’re just not confident enough that the quality of your book is great.
You’re just in luck because today, I’m going to talk about the five different types of people who can help improve the overall quality of your book.
Angel Writers
I love Angel Writers! They are literally angels who can help you write your book. Angel Writers are huge helpers especially when you are horrible at writing.
Now, there is nothing to be ashamed of! Some people have the gift of writing and some people don’t. However, I believe that an author need not be a great writer.
If writing is your skill and your passion, go ahead and write your book. However, if it is not, don’t force yourself to become a good writer first before writing your book.
As an author, you just need to bring your knowledge, skills, ideas, thoughts, and your message to the table! The rest of it can be outsourced, including the writing.
Now, an Angel Writer is definitely not a Ghost Writer. Don’t expect them to do the research and writing for you. Instead, they will be working hand in hand with you and will be sitting with you as they try to understand how the book should be outlined. They will then interview you based on that outline. This can happen over multiple sessions but in each of these sessions, they will be questioning you to get out the best information from you. They will be as curious as your readers will be!
If you may be dyslexic or you may not have the time to write, you need to be working with an Angel Writer to write the book for you.
Your Angel Writer will be recording all your conversations and they will listen back to what was discussed as they will write the book for you. These people will do everything they can to drastically improve the quality of your book. While you as the author will just have to sit back and keep answering the questions as if you’re on Oprah. That’s all you need to do!
Book Coaches
You love to write, in fact, writing is your passion however, for some reason you have found yourself stuck in between chapters of your book. Also, it’s been months since you started writing your book and you’re obviously been struggling to finish it. In addition to that, you’re unsure of the quality of your writing and you need some feedback and criticism on improving it.
Don’t you worry, as all this and more would be given by a book coach!
A book coach is this special person who would hold you accountable, would check on your progress every single week, and will give you inputs to improve the quality of your book. They will create a road map for your progress and will set strict deadlines for you to adhere to.
If you are somebody who works well in an environment of accountability then you should be working with a book coach. With the encouraging push you get from a book coach, you can bet that your book will drastically transform into something great.
Developmental editors
Now, let’s assume that you’ve not worked with an Angel Writer or a book coach and you’re almost in the stage where you’re finishing your manuscript. At this point, you should be working with a developmental editor.
If a book coach or an angel writer is already supporting your book, then they will pretty much guide you in structuring the book so you may not need a developmental editor. However, if you’ve completely written the book yourself and nobody else has seen your book yet, I highly recommend that a developmental editor goes through your book to give you inputs on your book’s structure.
A developmental editor would typically read the entire book and share a report with you on their overall reading experience of the book. They would put themselves in the shoes of the reader and tell you how the flow of the book was. Did it start well? Was it engaging enough? Are there any loopholes in terms of the logic? And should anything else be added to the book? Or should anything be removed from the book?
These are the valuable inputs that you’ll be getting from a developmental editor. They will also be marking certain sentences and paragraphs where they feel that they need more clarity and is needed a better way of explanation.
You as an author may not realize certain things from the reader’s point of view. But a developmental editor will be able to bring out those points and share them with you so that you can rework those portions of your book and then send them back to your developmental editor for further editing.
Copyeditors and Proofreaders
The fourth amazing set of people who can improve the quality of your book are copyeditors and proofreaders.
This could be the same person or it could be two different people.
After a developmental editor goes through your manuscript and you have made the changes, a copyeditor should be the next person going through your manuscript.
These are the people who will look at the language of your book.
So far, nobody has critiqued you on the grammar and language just yet but a copyeditor will do that job for you. They would highlight phrases and words needing restructuring and sentences that may need replacement. They will provide you inputs on the vocabulary and the sentences. All these changes would be highlighted for you in a different color typically so that the inputs provided can be easily read or seen by you. As an author, it’s your call to accept those changes or decline them. And if you’re self-publishing your book, you get to take that call.
Copyeditors and proofreaders will help you improve the overall writing quality of your book.
Beta readers
Now here comes the final set of people who can make a big difference to your book.
These are your beta readers. A lot of authors miss this step as soon as the book comes back from their editor’s desk. Once they have the book back from their editors, they immediately go and publish it. I recommend you not to do this!
If you have a community of target readers, give your final manuscript to some of them. Let them read it thoroughly and give you some inputs from the reader’s point of view.
A lot of seasoned authors do this because they know exactly who their readers are. They would pick some of them who volunteer to become their beta readers and ask them to go over their book. These people can give you some inputs that everybody else has overlooked and that could be super valuable. Get them to criticize your book early on. You don’t want to get those criticisms after the book is published. In fact, you may want to get those inputs and decide if you want to take them and make the necessary changes even before the book gets formatted and published.
Therefore, even if there are a couple of people who can read your book, please make them your beta readers and get the quality of your book improved.
There you have it! I hope you found this useful! Make sure to use one or more of these people to improve your book’s quality. It could be your angel writer, your book coach, your developmental editor, copyeditor, proofreader, or your beta readers. Make use of all these people and create that masterpiece that you’ve always wanted to publish.
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See you there and Happy Authoring!
