We are living in a new publishing age. As I write this, in 2015, the way books are bought, sold and printed has radically changed. The shift? The move over the last half-decade towards self-publishing.

Independent authors can now publish their own novels when they want, how they want, and with a cover they are happy with. Indeed, independent publishing provides many new and exciting opportunities for authors.

To become successful independent authors, we must write and publish as professionally as we can. With that in mind, I created this guide. The Complete Indie Editor will not tell you how to self-publish, how to get cool covers, or how to market your publications, but it will explain, in a series of fifty-five edits, how to prepare your manuscript for publication or for submitting to your editor or beta-readers

When you publish as an Indie Author, be it on an electronic device such as the Kindle or as a printed novel through Createspace or other print-on-demand services, readers are evaluating your writing by using Free First Chapter, etc. With so many novels competing against one another, you need all the tools you can get to convert interest into a buy…

Welcome to the world of copy-editing—the revision, correction and adaptation of a piece of writing for publication. An edit is the singular name given to an individual edit or group of edits in the process of copy-editing. By working through this guide, you will apply each of the fifty-five edits to your novel.

These Copy-edits include:
*Redundant adjectives & overuse of adverbs
*Over thirty overused words & phrases such as that, it, up/down, was/were, had, even, got, etc.
*Overuse of exclamations and the ellipsis
*Proper use of italics, quotations & capitalisation
*Word pairs & homophones
*How to handle numbers & time

…And descriptions of flow, show not tell, writing tenses, dialogue handling and more.

Applying these copy-edits to your fiction will allow reviewers and readers to evaluate your novel purely on the strength of your story and not on clumsy and weak prose, overuse of adverbs, repetition and flabbiness. Your readers may not understand why your fiction is more engaging, but subconsciously they will respond to the improved flow, the more immediate prose and leaner sentences.

The Complete Indie Editor cannot guarantee you marketing success; what it will guarantee is to give your novel the best chance it can get in a tough, competitive and new publishing world. Getting readers past page one, despite your ‘explosive, fast paced hitting-the-ground-running opening’, is what this guide is all about.

Let’s put it in a nutshell:
The Complete Indie Editor is a one-stop copy-editing shop to improve your novel before publication.

Welcome to the exciting world of Copy-editing!

Amazon Reviews for The Complete Indie Editor
“Very valuable and strongly recommended. Probably not a substitute for a real copy editor but it comes close. I would apply these rules first and then send your writing off to the editor.”

“An extremely useful guide for editing manuscripts, written as a set of editing tips. Some of them I already knew, but the book shed new light on their importance, some were new to me, and I was glad to be made aware of them.”

“An excellent little guide that works great as a checklist for polishing your novel. Succinct with just enough examples to get the point across, this book not only tells you how to edit your manuscript, but why you should do it.”

“Kev Heritage makes copy editing easy!”