You must proofread your books, and edit them too

I read the blog of a man who writes and self-publishes his books through Authorhouse. His blog is actually about other stuff - his main employment is as a soundtrack producer - but when he's working on a book project he blogs about it.

And one thing he says is that he has three proofreaders who read each of his books. And yet, once the book is published, he always finds a typo or two that they - and he, in his own reviews, missed.

One reason for this may be that too many cooks spoil the broth. If you've got three different sets of corrections to make (he gives them print copies to read rather than electronic copies) whose to say that the person inputting the corrections doesn't miss one or two?

But the point is, he goes to the expense of having his book proofread not by one person, not by two, but by three of them. That may seem overkill, but really i's the professional way to do it. If you're going to self-publish your book, you have to do all the work that any publisher would do - what any professional publisher would do.

One thing this gentleman doesn't say is whether or not he uses an editor too. But he does have someone he calls a "muse" who reads his books and to whose suggestions he listens, so I suppose we can call her an editor.

Proofreaders and editors. If you don't employ them, then what you've got to do is set your book aside for at least a couple of weeks. Then, re-read it as if it were a new book, something you don't even remember. That allows you to look at it more dispassionately, to see any flaws, and be able to correct them.