Mistakes of a writer.

I wrote my first book during my late teens. I hadn't researched more about the world of publishing, and decided to self publish with a vanity press. I regretted it. My work contained massive amounts of typos and grammatical errors. I felt ashamed and decided to do a bit of research before sending anything out to the public. Luckily, this book hadn't been read as I expected. Then, after huge amounts of rejection from Literary agents, I decided to turn to Amazon Kindle store due to the success stories of Amanda Hocking and John Locke. That didn't work for me too, at least as of now. Why? Because I was too impatient to work on my craft as a writer and give the world my very best.

I released, two novels and two novellas. One of the novellas was edited by a professional editor in Canada, so it was readable. The two novels were copy edited, but to my surprise, readers still found out errors. One advice I would give to upcoming authors, especially indie authors, is that make sure your work is at its best. If you don't have money, save money, and hire a very good editor to work on it, even after giving friends and family to edit for you. This pays a lot. Most of the reviews I received on Amazon and Goodreads were talking on the same subject "typos and grammatical errors". People won't have the interest to read your entire book if they come across flimsy typos. Also the usual "you're and your" may not be tolerated by most readers. I learnt this the hard way.

I have finished the series of my paranormal romance story, but I've decided to take my time and work on them before releasing them to the world. I will be in Canada next year and will hire professionals to design book covers and edit the entire series. I already have a budget of C$5000. Then, I will release it to the world and make good use of the lessons I've learned. I am currently in Africa, Nigeria to be precise undergoing a year's course, and in the meantime, I've written a novelette that would be sold to Secondary Schools over here. Also, I am working on a new series, but will speak about that later. The purpose of this post is to educate new writers, that CONTENT is the most important aspect of writing.  Learn more about writing, join writing communities (autonomy, wattpad etc) give readers to critique your work and accept criticism. Once you have a solid content, it's just a matter of time before you get recognised for being a prolific author. But it takes time. Rome, they say, wasn't built in a day.

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Thomas Edison.