Top Ten Book Boo Boos

​We’ve been compiling a list of common mistakes and errors which tend to grate our nerves while reading books, and also turns us off when we are considering books for possible reviews. Since I only recently started sending out rejection letters, I thought it was important to let authors know common reasons why their book might get rejected for a review outside of just being a theme we aren’t interested in reviewing at this time. While this is NOT a list of set-in-stone guidelines used to determine who gets reviewed and who doesn’t, we hope this list will at least help future authors polish their book for publication.

• Punctuation, spelling, and typos – none of us are perfect and every book has flaws, but your storefront/book page can not afford to contain these as people will take one look and decide that if you can’t put together a short blurb without errors, your book is too flawed to read. Editing has always been a dark cloud over the POD world, which is why accomplishing complete accuracy on your book page is an absolute must!  Have someone review your work prior to releasing for distribution.  If there are major errors, then it is too late to pull it back without paying for another distribution.  Plus, you don’t want a reputation for releasing material that is not ready for prime time.
  
• Know your characters and where they are!  If his big blue eyes are so important to point out on page ten, they better not be brown eyes on page twenty.  If she’s drinking a beer on page seven, she better not be finishing scotch on page eight.  While these mistakes should really fall under rule #1 as typos, I bring attention to them only because I’ve seen this happen quite a bit.  If you have a lot of characters to keep up with, I suggest buying a notebook and writing out character sketches or outlines of everything about them you need to know.
  
• Formatting, formatting, formatting – Books are not emails or business letters.  They have an expected format. If you know nothing about formatting a book, pull about 10 traditionally published books off your shelf and study their layout. Or go to a library or bookstore and just thumb through some popular books. Pay close attention to the number of blank pages between title pages, copyright pages, dedication pages, and Chapter 1. Also pay attention to page numbering (something my very own book fell victim to earlier this year). Are the numbers at the top or bottom, centered or flushed to the right? What page does the first chapter start on?