What is the hardest aspect of creating a coffee table book?
When it comes to creating a coffee table book, or any book for that matter there are several challenges to be faced. Production costs and marketing a book are two that quickly come to mind. However, one of the hardest aspects of creating a coffee table book, which doesn’t always get mentioned first is self-editing.
A book has a limited number of pages dictated by your printing specs and budget. That means there is only so much content- visuals and text -that you can include within the pages of your art book. In a bid to make our books perfect and show how much we know, we can find ourselves trying to cram all our ideas into the book. This leads to a confused or over-long book. Therefore, you will need to decide what to include and leave out. This is the process of self-editing your book.
Self-editing is tough. It requires letting go of content that you think is absolutely brilliant and are trying to do everything in your power to keep in, but if you’re honest with yourself is superfluous to the narrative you’re creating.
Self-editing is what separates a good book from a great book. Self-editing requires practice and a measure of confidence in your abilities to create a book. Many successful novelists have spoken about cutting paragraphs and even whole chapters from the final versions of books that have gone on to become award-winning, bestsellers.
You have to be able to separate emotion from the editing task when making the difficult content inclusion decisions. If you find yourself hanging onto content that deep down you know is not right for your book, consider the following tips to help aid the letting go process:
1. Define the parameters of your topic
Being clear on your topic and what the readers need to know will help you narrow down your content and keep you focused. Make sure you’ve researched your topic well. Researching your book idea, the intended readers, the market and suitability for publication will give you the information you need to make informed editing decisions.
2. Get an outsider’s opinion
That’s what editors and beta readers are for. These readers are not attached to your manuscript so they can objectively question the necessity of including content that doesn’t work. Their opinions help you to see your book from the reader’s perspective.
3. Keep a file of your edited-out content
Just because the content you’ve cut doesn’t work for your current publication, doesn’t mean you can’t use it for something else i.e. in a future book, or as a blog post or social caption. Instead of deleting content you’ve edited out save it in a document, and include notes about why you felt it didn’t work for your book and where else you could use it.
Self-editing is a necessary part of the book publishing process. It is a learned skill fuelled by knowledge of your subject and the area your coffee table book is focusing on. You will self-edit your book before or alongside working with a professional editor. For more about editing your coffee table book get your copy of How to Publish a Coffee Table Book.
– Tapiwa Matsinde
[Image credits: The image shown is copyright Polina Kovaleva via Pexels. If downloaded and used elsewhere please credit accordingly.]8
