HINTS AND TIPS FOR SELF-PUBLISHING YOUR BOOK Observations and advice on self-publishing, by Helena Wojtczak, winner of the Writers' News/ David St John Thomas Charitable Trust Self Published Book Award 2006–7. Click here to see RAILWAYWOMEN, the book that won the award. PAGE 1: SOME ADVICE ON PUNCTUATION PAGE 2: SOME ADVICE ON FORMATTING (forthcoming) PAGE 3: SOME ADVICE ON TYPESETTING (forthcoming) PAGE 4: SOME ADVICE ON PUBLICITY (forthcoming) PAGE 1 Someone once informed me that no publisher would reject a manuscript just because the punctuation was incorrect. I have several responses to this: 1. Why take the risk? 2. I am a publisher, and it would put me off. 3. Isn't it arrogant and lazy to expect a copy-editor to clear up your mess, because you cannot be bothered to learn a few simple rules? 4. Why waste hours arguing against learning to punctuate? You could spend minutes learning how to do it correctly instead. If one is self-publishing then of course it is even more important to get everything right because (unless you employ a copy-editor or skilled proofreader) there is no one to prevent you from going to press with mistakes. I teach self-publishing seminars, and collect examples of badly-presented self-published books, to show my students what not to do. It hasn't been exactly difficult to find examples! Incorrect punctuation There are only about twenty types of punctuation mark. If we want to be writers, is it really too much hassle to learn these essential tools of our trade? There's plenty of advice on the Net, and simple grammar books are easily available. The aspect of punctuation that confuses people is how to use hyphens, en-dashes and em-dashes. So, when do we use these three types of dash? It's really simple: hyphens come between words: Examples of use: Twenty-year-old; eighteenth-century (when used as an adjective); husband-to-be; numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine. Em dashes are used very frequently, mainly for asides within a sentence: I went there — to that shop — but they didn't have any. En-dashes have only three uses. The main one is for putting between dates: Queen Victoria 1819–1901; Chairman 2006–7. It is also used for connecting two words such as the London–Brighton train, the Everton–Arsenal match. In Microsoft Word, en-dashes and em-dashes can be found by using insert/symbol. In HTML they are & ndash ; and & mdash ; Inconsistency Sometimes I have seen 18th century and eighteenth century in the same book, or 1st and first. Although writing numbers as numerals is not always necessarily wrong, they look ugly compared to eighteenth and first, so use of the latter is advised. Numbers from one to ninety-nine should be written as words, not numbers. I've seen some dreadful messes in my time, mixing up the format of numbers even on the same page, for example: John had a 6 year old son and an eight year old daughter. (Oh yes, and the hyphens were missing!) Why does it matter? It matters because, if you don't follow the usual conventions, your work looks a mess. Your self-published book will be in competition with books from major publishers, and if it looks amateurish it won't pass muster. It matters because, if we want to call ourselves writers, it is the least we can do to learn the tools of the writing trade. Who would take a composer seriously if he said he could not be bothered to learn how to write music? Personal note: I learned correct punctuation, how to design and typeset books and how to lay out their covers electonically, by listening to people who were giving out free advice. I was (and am) grateful to them and thought I'd try to give something back by passing on what I've learned.