When it comes to self-publishing, there are smart ways to spend your money and then there are dumb ways as well. Many people fall in the trap of spending their money in the wrong places. What that usually means is that the book that they work so hard on falls into obscurity and never actually gets read. But if you know what the smart ways are to spend money on self-publishing, then you are much less likely to fall into these traps. Here are five very smart places spend your money when it comes to self-publishing.

The Developmental Editing

The first smart way to spend money on your book is with developmental editing. Developmental editing is when you spend money to have someone check your narrative to make sure that it flows correctly and that all of your ducks are in a row. For example, you want your continuity to be the same. On films, they have people that are specifically hired to check the continuity of a film. For example, if someone is wearing a red shirt in one scene, then you want them to continue to be wearing that same redshirt if they have moved onto a different scene but they have not had time to change clothes. You also want the plot to flow properly, and that is all part of developmental editing.

The Copy Editing

You also are going to have to spend money on copyediting. The reason that this is a smart way to spend your money is that the fewer grammar and spelling mistakes you have in your manuscript and your published work, the more seriously people are going to take you as a writer if you publish a book that is full of grammatical mistakes and misspellings, people are going to consider you an amateur and not by your books in the future.

The Book Cover

You also want to spend money in your book cover. No matter what anyone says, people judge books by their cover. That means that your cover needs to be absolutely killer in order to get people to be interested in it and buy it. Hiring a graphic designer to create your book cover is one of the smartest investment you will make.

Your Author Website

You will also want to spend a little money on your author website, both to make sure that it is hosted through a reputable and reliable service, and to ensure that it is designed properly and that people are able to navigate it successfully and find out about you and your books.

The Book Promotions

Finally, you are going to want to spend money on promoting your book. How you promote your book will depend upon what sort of opportunities you come across, and what you prefer to use is advertising and promotion, you have to promote your book if you want people to find it and read it. Every author needs to get the word out about their book.