​by Rosalind Bauchum

​Editing is like housework, it goes unnoticed unless it’s not done. Here are five reasons why professional editing is a necessity for your writing.
Novelists love stories and are often motivated to write by the effects a story can have on a reader. There’s a real power in being able to touch the emotions of someone, a stranger, who lives far away or even far in the future. Most writers have felt this long reach that words can have. It has changed their lives. It has made them writers. And what better reason is there to write than to inspire others to follow their dreams?
 
And yet, too many authors waste that opportunity. They confuse their reader with awkward phrasing, distract with careless typos, or turn off a potential buyer with a poor quality product.
 
A well-edited novel, on the other hand, will have that power to reach the reader. It will attract attention, seep into the reader’s thoughts and emotions, and might even cause them make a change, to make a tiny difference. And a good quality product will always sell better than a cheap fake.
 
If you’re not already convinced, here are five more reasons why you need professional editing for your novel:
 
1. Investing in a professional editor is money well-spent
 
Editing is like housework, it goes unnoticed unless it’s not done.
 
Professional editing is an indispensable, not just a desirable, part of a novel’s journey to publication. Editing can make your good novel great, get readers talking, reach the ears of professional publishers, and catch the eye of movie producers. An editor will make sure the reader remembers the dazzling plot and characterization, and not the problems with grammar. It takes teamwork to craft a polished and captivating novel that could become tomorrow’s bestseller. In short, authors need editors.
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by Stephanie Bauchum

For writers, author brand is predominantly about your “voice,” but the experience you deliver to readers can be applied to your photo, book cover, website, and more.
Part of promoting your book and career as a self-published author is creating a public persona, including identifying images, graphics, words, and photographs that work in harmony with your author voice. The ideal time to start this process is years in advance, but it’s never too late. The path to developing your author brand includes the following steps:

• Understanding what “branding” means
• Creating the elements of your artist brand
• Writing your author bio
• Taking an author photo

by Rosalind Bauchum

Book editing is both a craft and a discipline, and self-editing can be a tedious task not every writer is cut out for.

Writers face unique challenges in starting and finishing projects. At one time or another, all of us encounter the dreaded writer’s block. Just staring at a blank page can be one of the most frustrating and frightening things.
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Perhaps an even more crippling problem is self-editor’s block.
 
The writing stage can be exhilarating. Writing page after page and having something tangible in hand – a manuscript – feels like such an accomplishment. But as much as we might like to think we’re done when we’ve finished writing, there’s still much to do. It’s the book editing phase, where we produce subsequent drafts and revisions – quite literally re-seeing and making the necessary big changes to produce a great manuscript – that separates the amateurs from the professionals.
 
Editing can be harder than writing because we grow to love our creations, and we often have difficulty seeing them objectively. We have a hard time destroying the little superfluous bits that keep our manuscripts from greatness because it feels like we’re destroying pieces of ourselves.