13 Tricks I Used My First Time Editing An E-Book

My first e-book was edited by a professional editor, but I did a lot of research and read a lot of guides on editing before that happened. 

That helped me learn what types of things to look for and how to fix them. Editing is one of those skills that gets better with practice you’ll have to do it over and over again until you feel comfortable with it! Here are some tricks I learned about editing an e-book:

Takeaways
1. Utilize tools like grammar checkers to catch errors.
2. Take a break before revising for a fresh perspective.
3. Create an outline for structural improvements.
4. Edit for clarity and conciseness in your writing.
5. Proofread multiple times for consistency and flow.
6. Consider reader feedback and make necessary adjustments.
7. Pay attention to formatting for a professional appearance.
8. Remove unnecessary words to tighten your prose.
9. Check for proper citation and attribution if necessary.
10. Read your work aloud to identify awkward phrasing.
11. Look for repetitive phrases and replace with synonyms.
12. Address pacing issues to maintain reader engagement.
13. Take pride in your editing process and celebrate progress.

Do A Search On The Word “That”

The word “that” is a great tool to use in your writing, but you can’t just throw it around willy-nilly. Its power is in its ability to serve as both a restrictive and nonrestrictive pronoun.

Restrictive pronouns are words (like he, she, they, and which) that are used to define or limit the nouns they describe. 

They’re essential for conveying relationships between objects or people in sentences; without them, we’d have nothing to connect our ideas with! 

Nonrestrictive pronouns (like who, whose, and that) also exist and they’re equally important but they’re not used quite so often because they add information about something already defined by other means: either by having already been mentioned in the sentence itself.

By being obvious from a context outside of it.”That” can also serve this purpose when used properly but of course, there’s no such thing as “properly” when it comes down to purely opinionated matters like grammar usage!

Writing a book involves navigating various challenges. Before you embark on this journey, it’s essential to be aware of the 13 things you should know before writing a book. This knowledge can greatly influence your approach and expectations.

Count The Number Of Times You Use Certain Words

When you’re writing, it’s easy to get lost in the flow of your thoughts and write without paying attention to which words you’re using. 

Before publishing your book, however, it’s important to make sure that your writing style is consistent across all parts of the book. This can be easy if you have a general idea of what words or phrases you use most frequently say, “the” or “and” but difficult if there aren’t any obvious patterns.

Fortunately, there are some tools available that will allow us to quickly analyze our writing style and make sure everything is consistent before we publish our first e-book!

Use Word’s “Replace All” Function Sparingly

You might not realize this, but Word’s “Replace All” function is a dangerous tool that can be used to harm your book if you’re not careful. 

This function is incredibly powerful and can replace just about any word or phrase in your document with another one, so it’s easy to accidentally replace the wrong thing or change too much text.

Here are some tips for using the Replace All feature properly:

Make sure you’re using the right option. There are several options for replacing text in Word documents; make sure you select one that will do what you need it to do (replacing only instances of a specific word or phrase). 

For example, if there’s an instance where someone says “I love reading books about cats,” and I want them to say “I love reading books about dogs,” then I would select “Replace all” from the Find menu and enter those words into their respective fields (in this case: Found Text and With Text), create my replacement text (“Dogs”), then click Replace All.

As you embark on your writing journey, beware of common pitfalls that can hinder your progress. Learn from the 10 poisonous mistakes that many authors make, and use this insight to ensure the success of your e-book.

Don’t Forget To Add Italics To Other Foreign Language Words

You’ll want to make sure you italicize other foreign language words in your story, but if you don’t do it correctly, it might come across as confusing and distracting to your readers. For example, if a character is speaking French or German, you’ll need to make sure to italicize any of the words that are not English. 

This will help differentiate them from other words that aren’t in another language and also keep your reader from getting lost.

However! You must be careful with this because sometimes italics can be misleading. 

For instance, if an author uses a word like “aloud” or “loud,” which is an adjective used alongside another word (like “shrill”), then they shouldn’t be put into italics because they’re not part of another language. So make sure that when you’re adding foreign languages into a story (or not), it’s clear exactly what English words should be put into italics!

When You’re Done, Go Back Through And Fix Punctuation

When you’re done with your first draft, go back through and proofread it. Remember that the “find” function can be used to search for words or phrases. This is a great way to see if you’ve spelled anything wrong or used the wrong punctuation. 

If you’re not sure about something, find someone who speaks English as a native language and have them read over your e-book for mistakes before sending it off to Amazon for publication.

Publishing a book involves more than just writing it. To maximize your book’s reach, explore strategies like writing and selling it on Amazon. This platform can provide significant exposure and opportunities for your e-book.

Make Sure All Your Lists Have Bullets Or Numbers

There are a few reasons why you want to use bullets or numbers in your lists. For starters, they’re easier to read. 

The human brain is drawn to the beginning of each new sentence, meaning that if you start a sentence with a number or bullet, your reader will be immediately drawn towards it when they skim through the text. It also helps readers scan your content quickly and easily.

Bullets and numbers also make it easy for people to use tables of contents or indexes (like me). If I had formatted this post’s lists as paragraphs instead of numbered points, I would have had to create an entirely separate section just for them because they don’t fit anywhere else in my document.

If A-List Has A Name In It, Put The Name In Bold Or in Italics

Lists need to have a name. This helps with things like navigating the document and making sure you’re talking about the right thing. For example, if I’m looking at your list of “Things To Do,” it’s helpful for me to know if we’re talking about the same list if I say “the Things To Do” or “Things to Do.”

So, when you create a list, give it a name (like Things To Do). Then put that name in bold or italics so that I can instantly see what we are talking about on any given page. It will also help you out because when people skim through your document they will quickly see where each main idea starts and ends.

Two things are critical here: 1) Use correct spelling; 2) Read back what you wrote out loud and make sure it makes sense!

Make Sure The Word “Percent” Is Spelled Correctly

We’ve all been there. You’re proofreading your e-book, and you notice something is wrong. All of a sudden, it hits you: the word “percent” is spelled wrong!

This is such an easy mistake to make it’s one of the most common typos out there and even if it’s not technically a typo (because that would require misspelling “percent”), it still counts as an error. If your readers are going to pay money for your book, they deserve good editing! So let’s take care of this problem right now.

The correct spelling of “percent” is just two letters away from its commonly misspelled form: “percent.” The easiest way to remember which one needs fixing? Think back on what percent means in English: 100%. When someone says they want 20% off at Starbucks or whatever other store offers discounts because they’re such loyal customers, what does that mean? 

It means 20% off the original price the full amount before any other discounts were applied. So if someone has been getting 10% off their purchases for years but suddenly has trouble remembering how much their discount works out to each time they shop there…just remind them that 1/10th = .1 x 100 = 10%, not .01 x 100 = 1%. Voilà!

Writing a book that resonates with readers and sells well requires a combination of skills. Discover 11 effective ways to write a book that sells to increase your chances of crafting a compelling and marketable e-book.

Make Sure The Word “Percent” Is Spelled Correctly

There are a few ways to check if you’ve correctly spelled “percent” as well as the other words in your book.

Check the context of the sentence in which you’re using it. If you’re trying to write about percentages (of any kind), use “percent.” If you’re talking about money, use “pence.”

Check the context of your document as a whole. If it’s a short piece, like an email or blog post, and if there are only one or two uses of this word per paragraph (or even worse: one per sentence), then chances are that your editor will let those go and focus on more important things such as spelling out numbers correctly instead. So don’t sweat it too much!

Make sure that all other occurrences of this word throughout all e-books are also spelled correctly before submitting yours for publishing review by Amazon Direct Publishing (which I highly recommend doing).

Make Sure All Symbols Are Consistently Formatted

When using symbols in your document, it’s important to make sure that they’re consistently formatted. If you decide to use one symbol for bolded text instead of two different symbols (one for bold and another for italic), then make sure that every instance of that symbol is formatted the same way throughout the document.

If you have a list of things and you want all of them to be marked as bullet points, then make sure every bullet point has a dot next to it, in other words, set up your formatting so that all bullet points start with a dot before their text begins. 

This will ensure that no matter where people are in the document or what type of paragraph they’re reading through, they’ll know which things are supposed to be bullets and which ones aren’t.

Finally, if there’s an item on a list within another item (e.g., “The first item on this list…”), then any symbols used should match those used by surrounding items for example: [

Check For Spacing Around Bullet And Number Points In Lists

Check for spacing around bullet and number points in lists. This is a very easy mistake to make, especially if you’re editing an ebook on your smartphone or tablet. 

If there are spaces between bullet/number points in your list (e.g., 1., 2., 3.), remove them by selecting the space(s) and pressing Backspace until they are gone. 

If there are no spaces between the item numbers (1, 2, 3), add one by selecting the first character of each item number before pressing Enter so that it starts a new line with nothing but dashes below it:

Check for spaces around commas and semicolons; check for colons as well if necessary. They should be there!

Law school papers require precision and attention to detail. Elevate your writing with 10 valuable tips for writing, editing, and revising your law school papers, ensuring your legal documents are clear, concise, and well-structured.

Use Ctrl+F And Find “Between,” Then Make Sure It’s Spelled Correctly Every Time

During my first time editing an e-book, I made a lot of mistakes. Once my publisher got back to me with all the errors, I had to fix them, but it wasn’t easy. The problem was that it was hard to find out where exactly you made an error without searching for each word individually. 

So I did the best thing I could do: used Ctrl+F and found “between.” Then I made sure it was spelled correctly every time.

To make sure that all instances of “between” were spelled correctly, use Ctrl+H (replace) and type in “between” (without quotes). Then press enter twice on your keyboard and click Replace All!

Conclusion

I hope this post helped you get your feet wet with editing an e-book. It’s a lot more work than I expected, but it also taught me how to do many new things. 

I learned more about writing in general and picked up some cool tricks along the way. Whether you are just starting or have years of experience under your belt, there is always more to learn when it comes to editing!

Further Reading

Ebook Tips: Explore valuable insights and techniques for creating effective ebooks that engage and captivate your readers.

Common Ebook Mistakes: Avoid these common pitfalls to ensure your ebook’s success and maintain a strong connection with your audience.

Self-Publishing: Editing Your Own Work: Learn how to polish your work before self-publishing, making sure your book is ready for readers.

FAQs

How do I create an engaging ebook?

Creating an engaging ebook involves understanding your target audience, structuring your content logically, and incorporating visually appealing elements like images and infographics.

What are some key ebook writing mistakes to avoid?

Avoid common ebook writing mistakes such as overloading with information, neglecting proper editing, using poor formatting, and not having a clear call-to-action for readers.

How can I effectively self-edit my book before self-publishing?

Self-editing your book involves taking breaks between writing and editing sessions, reviewing for grammar and spelling errors, checking consistency in style and tone, and seeking feedback from beta readers.

What’s the importance of a compelling ebook cover?

A compelling ebook cover is crucial as it’s the first impression readers have of your work. A well-designed cover can attract potential readers and convey the essence of your ebook’s content.

How can I promote my self-published ebook?

Promoting a self-published ebook involves utilizing social media platforms, reaching out to your existing audience, collaborating with influencers, participating in online book communities, and offering limited-time discounts or promotions.