45. Marketers & Coffee: Proofreading for Your Book

Welcome to the Book Marketing Show Podcast, where each week we'll show you exactly how to sell more books and have fun doing it. And now, your host, Dave Cheson.

Hey guys, welcome back to the Book Marketing Show podcast. I'm Dave Chesson, and today I'm bringing on a professional proofreader for our next Marketers in Coffee session. Now, in this lesson, you're going to learn a lot about what proofreading is as compared to other... editors, as well as some of the benefits to using it, as well as potentially doing it yourself. Let's go ahead and bring on Caitlin Pyle to talk to us about proofreading and have a bit of coffee and a good conversation.

All right, guys, I've got Caitlin Pyle, who, if you don't know, is probably one of the most well-known proofreaders out there. Caitlin, thank you so much for coming on to the Book Marketing Show podcast. Thanks for having me, Dave. It's great to be here. So I think the first question that I've got to start with, which is one that I almost kind of stumble upon myself, is what exactly is the difference between an editor and a proofreader?

That's a really good question. And I'm kind of spearheading the mission, I think, in the proofreading world to help people understand the difference because there are quite a few people teaching self-publishing especially out there. who just say, hey, you can write this book and then you can have an editor and then you're done. And that's just not the way it should work. And I know because I'm actually going through and editing my very first traditionally published book.

Right now, I've self-published a lot and I did the same thing where I go through it over and over again. I have multiple people proofread it because in an industry like mine, when you are a proofreader and you're known for being the proofreading teacher or whatnot. If you make a typo, even one, people will murder you for it. So I've got to be very, very careful in that regard.

but the difference between editing and proofreading is quite simple you write the thing right and then it doesn't matter what it is anything you write and then you have somebody go through and edit it and that might be you i'm known to tear apart my writing a million times before i have someone go through and proofread it

So in my case, I actually skip editing and go to proofreading because I write it the way I want it. And then proofreader can sometimes do light editing where they're like, actually, the sentence would work better here, depending on what type of writing I'm doing. But proofreading is meant to be the very last set of eyes. And you could have one last set of eyes, two sets of last eyes.

In my case, I have got like probably 40 sets of last size because it's just that important to me to catch all those straight errors. And the reason why you need to have both an editor and proofreader. For most writers, editor is going to just shred your writing. It's just going to move things around. They're in the essence, in many ways, make it their own. And so they're looking at it.

rearranging things and they see the same thing over and over again they're leaving the same thing over and over again after a while you guys can probably all relate to this what you see on the page and what you see in your mind are the same thing regardless of what

what you actually have on the page and so you'll read over the most ridiculous typos i do it all the time it's just the way we are as humans so part of a proofreader's job is to catch those things that you don't see because their eyes are fresh and it's not their work so things like

straight errors where you have the wrong two or you leave out a word completely or any kind of weird things that you don't even realize you've done because you see something completely different on the page, a proofreader will or should catch that.

I've always looked at like with editors, they're kind of like people with a scalpel looking for the particular mistakes here and there. And then the proofreader is kind of like that final overview, making sure things look good, looking at the forest instead of the trees. Yeah, exactly. They're big picture people. And so you liken editing to a scalpel. So they're the surgeon, right? They fix the problem.

And then the proofreader comes and they clean up the mess, essentially. Use some alcohol, a gauze pad or whatever, and just clean up all the messes and make sure it looks great. Well, I won't lie. The first time I wrote a book, though, my wife was my proofreader. Matter of fact, technically, she was my editor and proofreader. And while I was on a super, super low budget, as in zero...

She definitely missed a couple of things. And bless her heart, she did her best. And I'm not the easiest person to correct, that's for sure. Grammar and spelling has never been my strong suit. But when we published the book, it did really well, the first one. And then... We started getting the reviews and they just kind of started slamming it for some issues. One of the big things that was, is that...

One section kind of felt like it was out of place and it was brought up once or twice in the reviews. And at that point, I was like, oh, man. So the next book I came out with, I was like, all right, that's it. Thank you, honey. You're great. I'm going to have to pull out the wallet and hire an editor. And then I did hire a proofreader. And since then, I've actually always used a proofreader. But some authors out there kind of feel like...

they can do it themselves. What are your thoughts about that? And if somebody has to, I mean, let's face it, there are some people who are just doing this for the first time. They don't have the extra money to hire one. What would you recommend to them as they go through their own book?

Well, because I train proofreaders for a living over at Proofread Anywhere, we have a general proofreading course. And I say for somebody who's on a very strict budget, there's a bunch of people who have gone through my program that are looking to get their first testimonials and their first clients.

And somebody who's just beginning as a writer can pair up with something who's just beginning as a proofreader or even more than one person who's trained to be a proofreader. And they can gather testimonials. Your book can get proofread more than one time, potentially.

for very little to no money in exchange for that testimonial. That is something that we recommend from time to time to brand new proofreaders if they just want to get the experience. We have a ton of experience, obviously, within the course with the different practice materials that we have. But we don't have an entire book. That's a lot to ask for our students to go through before they go through their exams and get their certificate and things like that.

It's a great way for them to get experience, to be able to say, hey, I have experience proofreading books. And then they can get these testimonials from these new authors, and then they can grow their client's health in there after they proofread a few books. And so I say there's a will, there's a way.

And in my network, there's always going to be somebody willing to do it for very little or even for free. If the environment is right, if they need that testimonial and if it's somebody who's just beginning or if the material is something that they're interested in, there are so many ways you can make.

a like exchange in terms of the value provided to each other. When I was thinking, okay, I'll have my wife do it. Like, you know, she's the love of my life. We've been married for 13 years. I think it was. eight at the time, but I was like, sure, she'll do this. It was kind of like pulling teeth and I'm not going to lie. It was kind of a stressor to make her do it. And then I tried to get other people to do it. I swear, I think they just read the first chapter.

There was some input in the first chapter, and then the second, there was nothing. I was like, oh, you mean I got those right? And I felt like it was really, really hard to convince anybody to do it and to do it legitimately, especially on the free scale. Now, one of the things that I did was when I started to, and I still, before I send it to an editor, I read things out loud.

But that's my biggest recommendation is to read it out loud. Hear it as you read it. Because as I'm reading it silently, I start missing a lot of issues. It's like my brain fills in the blank when there is one. Whereas when I say it out loud, I kind of hear these things and I can pick up on them.

So if there's anybody out there that's saying I have to do it myself, I can't afford anybody or I'm really pinching pennies here, then my first recommendation would be read out loud. Second, really, really try to see if you can get somebody. you're going to be straining a lot of relationships and there's a good chance that they might not do a very good job because who has time? You probably wrote a long book. So just consider that as you guys are trying to contemplate it.

You were talking about a really good point here, something I really like about this, which is kind of the networking capability. One of the things that we promote on Kindlepreneur is that other authors are not competitors. They're an opportunity. No way can you write a book every month and keep your fans or your readers engaged and happy. And so, opportunities to build relationships with other authors in your genre niche give you...

a great chance to promote their books and they'll promote your books. And this builds up your community and your reach. So being a proofreader can get your foot in the door to build a connection with somebody and hopefully they'll return the favor. if not in proofreading and marketing. Have you run into things like this with either your students or anybody you've worked with?

Yeah, absolutely. I just think back to when I first started out, I actually had that fear. I'm like, okay, I'm going to put all my students who have paid me for my training in a Facebook group. Are they going to hate each other? Are they going to want to help each other at all? Are they going to view each other as competitors? Even when I was starting out as a blogger.

or I would Google to try to find my first affiliates. I would Google to see who was writing about working at home, who was writing about proofreading. And I was like, oh, these are my competitors. I'm like, no, they're not. So my mindset has completely changed in the last almost four years.

Nobody's a competitor. We're all potential teammates. I see it now in the exact opposite of what I feared happened in my Facebook group in that everybody's helping each other out. There's people who are each other's backup proofreaders, especially in the transcript proofreading course when...

And they have too much work. They've got somebody that they can pass the names on to. They don't like farm out work to each other or anything or ghost proofread or whatnot. But they will refer their clients to their colleagues. And it's just the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. If somebody sees an ad. When they can't take it, they'll post a link to the ad in the Facebook group so other people can get it. And so they're always cheering each other on. It's such a community.

I'm all about that. And that's actually one of my recommendations to new proofreaders is within the course and to anybody who wants to start a business, if you want to find clients, you've got to go and hang out where... the writers are hanging out like who are the people that are producing text in the world that needs to be proofread if not writers self-publishing has boomed in the last four or five however many years

in a way that it just wasn't happening before. It used to be where you had to find a traditional publisher and you had to get picked up and paid in advance for your book and all these things. And you just don't have to do that anymore. And text is still king. I know there's a lot out there that's like video, video, video.

You want Google to find you, you still need text in which you should probably have your video transcribed. And if you have that transcript, you probably need that proofread. So there's just all this text that needs proofreading and there's more of it than there are proofreaders. And so there's no shortage of work. And I think that oftentimes the...

mindset of feeling like other proofreaders or other people in your industry are competitors, it stems from the scarcity mindset that there's not enough work or somebody else is succeeding and there's no room left for me, but that is not the reality.

Always going to be work and opportunity for the people who want it and the people who are willing to go and find it and make those relationship connections with people. So what got you started in proofreading it? Was it just like all of a sudden one day?

You decided to or you had always wanted to do something. It's a curious career to go into. Being so obscure almost made me not ever start my Proofread Anywhere blog. I was like, nobody's going to want to learn this. It's so boring. It's so nerdy. People are going to make fun of me. And some people did, but those people aren't my friends anymore. But I actually started when I was studying abroad in Germany back in 2007.

And when I was proofreading papers for master's degree students at the University of Koblenz in Germany, And I was like, I really like this. People would ask me to do it because I was a native English speaker and they were in the English program, things like that. So I would proofread their stuff. And then I got back and I did a little proofreading freelance. I didn't even know it was called freelance at the time.

And then about three months before I graduated from University of Central Florida in 2009, I got a job at a court reporting office as a receptionist. And then a few months into that, they realized that I had to utilize. And I wasn't even aware at the time, but they had all of the transcripts for the court reporters that worked for that office proofread. And the court reporters that worked with us were required to use a proofreader.

And so my boss at the time handed me a transcript on paper and she said, proofread this, see what areas you can find. And so I marked it up, read pen and gave it back to her. She's like, wow, you really are good. And so I got my first few freelance clients that worked for our firm.

that way and then I actually got fired from that job which is a whole long story you can find online I tell it all the time it's actually in my book as well really dramatic story about getting fired in august of 2011 but i still had those freelance clients so my income was cut off overnight after i got fired and i was like well i'm never gonna go through that crap again and so i had to figure something out actually dropped seven grand to go to personal

training school and didn't like that. But I think it's just as valuable to find out what you don't want to do because that way you find out what you really do want to do. And ultimately, I realized that I really enjoyed the location, independence and proofreading. I can't say that.

proofreading is life and that it's like only everyone to do in fact it somewhat depressed me because i had this the opposite of growth i had a fixed mindset that well i guess i'll just be a proofreader until i'm 80 and it's a good thing i have the skill because it's all i know how to do and i had no

concept of just being able to put new stuff into my brain in order to solve more problems so I can make more money. I just had no concept of that because you just don't get taught those kinds of things in school. And I slowly just added clients. And one time I, in July of 2012, got a freelance gig working with an agency in South Florida. And I did so much work for them that they referred a lot of their reporters to me personally.

And so I built up this freelance business almost accidentally. It took me about four months from landing that. quality control gig with that agency and i was making between three and five thousand dollars a month as a freelance proofreader and then about two years later so i grew that income to over forty thousand dollars a year

both in 2013 and 2014. And then at the end of 2014, I started proofreadanywhere.com. Thought it was going to be a total fail because like I said, who's going to want to learn this stuff? I have no idea. I had the worst mindset ever. I could talk about mindset. I do talk about mindset a lot, but I said, I give it six months. I was like, I don't know how to do this. What happens when this just totally.

peters out like everything else i've ever tried to do what if i decide i don't like it like everything else i tried to do like personal training i was just so down on myself But the blog really took off. It was really quite simple to find partners who were willing to interview me on their websites and send traffic over to see what I was about. And then I got my first students that way and they started getting their own clients and getting these great results. And so I'm like, I think.

on to something. And of course I kept improving the course based on their feedback and it doesn't look anything like it did the first rendition. And now we even have a second course that specifically teaches people how to work with entrepreneurs and writers versus the court reporting transcript course that we originally had and still have. And now the general proofreading course is.

quite a bit more popular because I think people are more attracted to fiction books and self-help books and blog posts and magazines. It's better paying to do the transcripts, but it can be very boring and very technical.

So yeah, it's kind of the short version of a very long story, but the rest is history, so to speak. Now, there are a lot of proofreaders out there that aren't doing it for the career aspect to make the large amount of money. I know a bunch of authors that kind of do it on the side. We already named one of the reasons, which is to develop more connections with other authors.

But another one is that they just do it to supplement their own book. Because every time they come out with a new book, they got to pay for a book cover. They got to pay for editor themselves. They've got to pay for the marketing, the cost, all those things. And because they were able to do proofreading as kind of a side income, they were able to get better book covers and kind of build their own.

career as a writer just by supplementing it with the money they made from their proofreading. So that's another thing that you can do. Either A, use it to network or B, use it to supplement your cost as a writer. The third thing that I liked from talking to some of my proofreader buddies, is that for them, it just keeps their pencil sharpened. They're always working. They're always seeing other people's style. They're looking at the way people did things.

One buddy of mine who I didn't give permission to use his name on the show because he operates in a pen name, but he was specifically saying that when he's reading these other books, and he's in the sci-fi genre, but when he's doing the proofreading of sci-fi, he's actually...

taking notes on the side for himself about oh man I really love this about that character I need to think about that for my next book they're not only building that connection and making a little money but they're really honing in their skill

And they're really approaching it for that matter. And he said from that point, his books have been even better because of the skill he's built from the experience. That is awesome. Well, first of all, I think it's brilliant, especially if an author or writer has. this knack for finding errors in their own stuff. Some of us are better at it than others. I tend to waver back and forth being good at it and my own stuff and bad at it, but...

To be able to help another author and then make some extra money at the same time, I think is brilliant. I think proofreading makes an excellent side hustle. I hadn't thought about what you just mentioned about actually using it, keeping the pen sharp, but also getting ideas to make your writing better. And that's what...

I recommend if somebody is like, how do I become a better writer? I'm like, well, write more, but also read more because you're going to see how other people are writing and you're going to see things. And that's how I think I became a better writer by just reading blog posts. And I would see this is what I don't like. And that's a really.

fluffy sentence why do they even include that or well that sentence is so punchy I like how they space it out and I just love it when words mean things and so now as a writer I think I've improved just because based on how much I've read and I mean I'm always proofreading everything anyway but that's excellent advice for sure

Now, there's no way I would make a good proofreader. It's definitely not in my DNA. But what are some of the signs that proofreading would be a great thing for somebody to look into? Well, it's really funny because those of us who know we are cut out to be proofreaders, we have always known that. We're always sitting in church, right at a restaurant, and we see the typos. We see the misused apostrophes, plurals, or like on Monday apostrophe S.

On Mondays, you can get this special at this restaurant or whatever. And so we just are always seeing the language being this used and it drives us crazy. You see it everywhere. And so we're constantly just seeing errors just thrown at us left and right. And so I'd say that's the number one sign that you're...

Cut out to be a good proofreader. Liking to read is another one. And also being able to sit for long periods of time without getting bored. Because if you don't have good focus, and that is something you can condition. Some people are like, I just don't think I could sit there for that long. It is something. that you can condition. Because at one point, when I first started doing freelance as my full time income doing proofreading as a full timer.

I thought, oh, I can't read more than 100 transcript pages a day. But towards the end, I conditioned myself so much and taking breaks and just kind of pacing myself. I could read up to 800 pages.

in a day and do it well. And so you can absolutely condition that. And so even if you're sitting there and you can only read for 20 minutes before you get bored or whatever, but you still find errors left and right, it doesn't mean that all is lost for you. You can absolutely condition it. And you could also just...

specialize in shorter text. Nobody says that you have to proofread a book or you can just break it up into chunks. I think some of us think about how much time something's going to take even simple things like unloading the dishwasher like oh my god i don't have 15 minutes for that and then you actually time it takes like five minutes and so i always say if something seems daunting to you break it up into chunks so read

two pages and take a 30 minute break, whatever you need to do to get it done. And then gradually you'll find yourself being able to sit there for longer periods of time. So I would say those three things, being able to focus for long periods of time, liking to read. And of course, if

errors pop out at you left and right everywhere you look. Those are through very good signs. You make a great proofreader. That's awesome. Well, hey, Caitlin, thank you so much for coming on to the show. It's been really good talking to you about proofreading.

Well, I could talk about it all day. So thanks so much for having me. All right, guys. So we just heard from Caitlin Pyle and in this. Candid conversation, we really covered a lot. The first thing is, is exactly what is a proofreader as compared to other types of editors.

The big thing is, is that it's sort of the big overview to help make sure that your whole book flows together and flows nicely. Now for some of the authors on a very, very tight budget, I'm going to go out there and say that this is one of the areas where you might want to skip. But definitely invest in an editor. Don't make that major mistake. However, though, as you start to build some finances as well as some revenue from your works, I would highly recommend bringing in a proofreader.

to make sure your entire book flows well. This is something that, like I had said, I did not do the first time, and I tried to get around it by reading out loud and having my wife do it, but this caused a couple of problems. Nowadays, I have my editor and I have a proofreader that makes sure the whole thing flows together. So be sure to remember that as you're looking at whether or not you should hire one.

Now, another great thing that we covered in this is the potential of becoming a proofreader and some of the benefits. To quickly go over some of those benefits, number one is it's a great way to get paid. There are a lot of authors out there that need proofreaders. And especially if you're inside of your genre, this gives you an opportunity to network and build and grow your reach so potentially when your book comes out, you have another ally on your side to help promote your book.

Another great thing about becoming a professional proofreader is that it helps you to sharpen your skills and keeps you at the tip of the spear in your genre or your subject matter. As you go through and proofread other people's books, you can take notes like some of my friends have, improve the way you write, and just stay on top of things.

So there you have it. There are a couple of things that you can definitely benefit from to include making extra money on the side, improving your writing capability and staying on top of your genre, as well as networking and building a friendship with other people inside of your genre. If you're interested in Caitlin's course, Proofreading Anywhere, go ahead and go to kindlepreneur.com forward slash proofread.

That is an affiliate link to her course, but my editor has taken the course and she's a huge fan of it. And so I feel very confident promoting that if you decide that you want to do proofreading professionally. Otherwise, you can also go to her website and find some of the proofreaders that she has trained to be able to use for your book. And with that, I'm Dave Chesson of the Book Marketing Show podcast, signing off.