Packaging & Marketing Tweaks: Story Savvy Self-Editing Episode 52

As promised, here are some recommended next steps and resources for once you've finished with the self-editing process!

First, I recommend working with an expert developmental editor who specializes in your genres. If you write fantasy, romance, or historical fiction, I hope you'll consider letting me help you make your good story great! If you want to read more about the developmental editing services I offer, you can find all the details here!

Someone around the dev edit stage, and certainly before trying to find beta readers, you'll need a good blurb! I offer professional blurbs written from reading the whole book as an optional add-on service, but if you want to write your own, the best resource I can recommend is Bryan Cohen's book How to Write a Sizzling Synopsis, available through Amazon here: https://a.co/d/eo6fRFm

After developmental editing and beta readers, you'll want to hire a copy editor. And, if needed or if you have the budget for it, a line editor before copy, and a proofreader after. Here are some of my favorites:
Isla Elrick: https://editingbyisla.carrd.co/

Alex Moyer of Alchemy Edit:  https://www.alchemyedit.com/

Betsy Judkins of Maine Woods Editing: https://www.mainewoodsediting.com/

Just as a reminder, I recommend not using the same outside reader for more than one layer of outside critique. So, don’t use the same person for developmental and line edits, or beta reading and copy edits. You want to get the highest number of FRESH eyes as you can on your book through the pre-publishing process.

Lastly, if you want to go the self-publishing or Indie publishing route with your book, I can recommend no better resource or source of expertise than The Self Publishing Show with Mark Dawson and James Blatch! By all means take full advantage of their huge backlist of blogs and podcast episodes, and when you're ready to make the plunge, their Launchpad course is wonderful: https://www.learnselfpublishing.com/launchpad
The other self-publishing resource I like to recommend is David Gaughran's Starting from Zero course! His approach is friendly, knowledgable, and his lovely accent is definitely a plus. https://davidgaughran.com/

Happy editing, and best wishes for all that lies beyond!

Episode 51 Overview:

Packaging & Marketing Tweaks

“What small tweaks can I make in editing which can help my title, cover, and other marketing aspects and considerations for down the road?” 

Happy Holidays!
For this final installment of this year-long self-editing series, join developmental editor Rebecca Hartwell and aspiring middle grade fantasy author Agnes Wolfe as they walk through small, low-pressure edits that can help a story after publication. 

In this Episode: 

• When do tackle tweaks for marketing
• Embedding titles
• Considering cover art in narrative descriptions
• Where to draw the line between improvement and stalling
• How to use your favorite lines 
• What comes after editing 

Resources:

• Hart Bound Developmental Editing
• My Top Self-Publishing Resource Recommendation (no affiliation) - https://www.learnselfpublishing.com/launchpad 
• Agnes Wolfe -agneswolfeauthor.com
• Great Blurb Guide: How to Write a Sizzling Synopsis - https://a.co/d/gqqRbyW 
• Dragonheart Academy -Dragonheartacademy.com

See you in February with more help for authors who want to make their good story great!

Episode 52 Transcript:

Packaging & Marketing Tweaks

Rebecca Hartwell: Hello and welcome to the Hart Bound Editing Podcast. This is episode 52, the very last episode of the weekly Story Savvy series, where we tackle the 52 biggest self-editing topics and tips to help you make your good story great as an aspiring author asks me, a developmental editor, all of the questions that you have wanted to. We have covered an insane amount in this series so far, including last week's episode on consuming and processing and productively implementing feedback from outside readers. Today, we are going to finish out this series by talking about marketing and book packaging within the context of self-editing. By the end of this episode, you will hopefully have a handful of quick, easy, and simple things to tackle in some low-effort self-editing around improving your title, cover, and other factors in how well your book attracts potential readers on sales platforms. Joining me to ask all of the questions is my good friend and co-host, Agnes Wolff. Hello.

Agnes Wolfe: Hi, I'm an aspiring fantasy author who hopes to release her first middle grade fantasy later next year, 2026, and also host and founder of Authors Alcove. I’m here today to tackle last-minute optional tweaking we can do to improve how our book launches into the world down the road. I just am thinking about how, a year ago, and it was a little bit more than a year ago where we had first decided to do this series, and I was thinking 52 weeks seemed like a really long time, and I cannot believe that we are on the very last episode.

Rebecca: It feels surreal.

Agnes: We worked so hard! Anyway, so let's get it started. I feel like we've been nearly done with self-editing for several weeks now, talking about feedback and all of that. Given that this is the last episode of this series, what exactly is that line when are we actually done with self-editing?

Rebecca: So, after the scope of this series, which is mostly up through the end of applying feedback from developmental and beta readers, you are probably—hopefully—still going go through a little bit of editing beyond that with a line editor, a copy editor, and or a proofreader. But that is solidly outside my scope, and pretty straightforward, so we're not going to touch on that a ton here. My only real suggestion for the last bits of that self-editing would be that you don't have to accept all suggestions that you get, you don't have to accept all potential changes or tweaks or whatever. But do make sure that if you're going to make the choice to reject any suggestions or rules to those levels of writing, that you do so intentionally and with research. Sometimes that'll be nothing, if you have a great editor that you just totally agree with. Some editors are just bad editors, so you'll have to make that call more often, or maybe find a different editor to work with. Essentially, to answer your question directly, you're done self-editing when you have gone through all of the feedback and notes and whatever else from your proofreader. Once you have applied those changes, once you’ve gotten all of those last typos and punctuation issues and missing words corrected from your proofreader, that is the very, very distinct line. After that, everything is formatting, covers, book packaging, blurbs, marketing stuff. You’re done self-editing when you're done implementing feedback from whatever last, granular edit you pay for, which might be copy and it might be a proofread.

Agnes: So, where are we assuming an author is in their process when this episode would be most applicable to them?

Rebecca: This episode is designed for folks who have finished applying all of the feedback from their beta readers and/or their developmental editor but probably haven't yet gone through line editing or copy editing.

Agnes: So, you've mentioned that what you wanted to cover in this one were some fun and optional things. Is that just because of the timing of this episode, with the end of the year, when lots of folks are busy and distracted? Or would these things have been the last things to cover, regardless of the timing of the year, or if writers are listening to this series at any random point in the future?

Rebecca: This is absolutely for any time someone runs into this. First of all, it's very important to always end on a good note. Any project is going to feel better in yourself and be remembered more fondly if the last thing you do on the project is at least a little bit fun. So, that's part of it. But also, kind of like I mentioned with the last episode, I don't remember if that was directly about that one or shadowing this one. Anyway, it can be very helpful to work on shifting gears out of the editing mindset and into more of the marketing mindset. So, I've tried to design the advice or optional tasks in this episode specifically to try to ease that transition from, oh, I'm editing my book, into more of, okay, I am preparing for marketing while still interacting with my manuscript, if that makes sense.

Agnes: So, before we dive in with specifics, is there a common theme or unifying topic we should be bearing in mind around today's topic?

Rebecca: This is essentially editing for marketing. And for sharing your story down the line. A lot of the editing that we've covered in this series is more for the sake of making the story better. For improving it, for coming across as more professional or more experienced, or just as a better storyteller. This week's topic is specifically all based around editing for marketing. And just a few things to keep an eye on as you're doing so to list for yourself, which will then, at some point, get looped back into that whole marketing thing.

Agnes: I am kind of excited to talk about some of the things that we're going to talk about. What are these last fun optional self-editing tasks or tips for us? And I already know that you are going to mention some that I've already been starting to dream up and think about already.

Rebecca: Excellent. So, number one is the title. If you haven't given serious thought to the title, now would be the opportunity. This is where you know your story the best. Because you have already done so many rounds on it but you're still sort of at the end of that process, you haven't had time of it being set aside for you to forget anything in there. So, this is that moment to really think about what title would be great, if you want to tweak it, if you want to try different options. And if and or when you picked a great title for your book, I personally suggest—this is not a rule, this is a fun suggestion—make sure that those words appear somewhere in your book. I didn't do that with my first couple of books. I now do it with my books. I just personally love it when I'm reading through a book and the title phrase appears just on a random page in chapter 38. So, if you want to play with that, now is a great time to just figure out, think through what scene could this come up in, in what context, who could say it? Is this a narration or dialogue? And just go sneak it in there, just for fun, just a little Easter egg game for your readers to play. Number two is your cover. Essentially, you should, at this point, have some sense for what covers are doing well or expected in your genre and your subgenre. So, know if that's going to be a person. If that's going to be a landscape, if that's going to be very scribal, if it's going to be objects like I've gone with for my Unlocked series. And whatever that is going to be, make sure that you have some good options for yourself in the book. So, if you know that having, let's say, lots of sort of magic-y, spirally, floral bits with a central object is what's on for your subgenre of romantasy. I'm clearly speaking from experience here. Then, you might want to go through, and if you have an object that is central to the story that is a good candidate for the cover, see if you can bring it up more, see if you can mention it more often, see if you can give it even more importance in a role in the story, and make sure you describe it in a way that is visually interesting and will catch attention and would look good on a cover. Same thing for characters, same thing for general kind of color scheme, whatever it is. If you can just go in and very subtly mention things throughout the story that will help that cover really feel tied into the story, bonus points. Number 3 on this is… I had a note written down that just says memes, but I don't think that's actually what I mean here. You want to have content marketing content. So, social media images is, I think, what I more meant to say there. Having lines pulled out, like I mentioned in one of the recent episodes. Going through just, if you really like a line, if you're particularly proud of a line, or you think it's really going to resonate with your readers, if it's particularly emotional or evocative or anything like that, go paste it into a list of favorite quotes from the book. Because, especially when you're doing your launch week, or however you want to launch, having images that are aesthetic to the cover, that promise a certain genre that will appeal to your ideal reader, that has these lines that are most likely to sort of pull the reader in, are great. Similarly, you can look at what's currently trending on social media in these ways. I've seen different things like, that moment when blah blah blah, and it's a little summary of one of the moments in a book, or you can use your tropes in similar setups like that on social media, usually on TikTok, things like that. So, this is a great moment, and can be very fun to go through and just pull all of those out. And then 4 on the list, aery much related to that is, assess your tropes. Make lists of your tropes. Go Google or otherwise look up lists of tropes in your genres, and go through, and if you see one that you're like, oh yeah, that counts, Write it down. Or, if you see one that you're like, oh, I almost did that! And all you would have to do is, you know, change a couple of sentences here and there to actually deliver that trope? Go do that. Readers shop by tropes, especially in the romance genres, and especially in romantic fantasy, so do that. Next on the list is a little bit less fun, but it's still necessary. Make a list of the trigger warnings that you could possibly add to the book. And again, look up a list and read through it, and if you see one that you're like, yep, I got that one, put it on your own personal list. It’s important to mention that you probably won't have to mention all of the trigger warnings for your book. There is a line where, you know what? I’m going to mention just the big ones, because people have phobias of everything on the planet. I’m sure there's somebody out there who has a phobia of clothing. You don't need to list that trigger warning in your book if you describe clothing at some point. But, having a list of, perhaps, the ones that you hit out of a top 100 most common? Not a bad idea. And again, doing that now, when you're sort of in this play space, is going to be better to deal with than when you're rushing to publish however many weeks or months down the road. Next on the list is, like I talked about, watching for those favorite lines or quotations, keep an eye out for character art moments, or scene art moments. If there's a moment in your story where you have an incredibly clear visual on it, and you think it could make a stunning picture for your Kickstarter, or your ARC team thank you gift package—make a note of that, maybe add a few little descriptions, just pay attention to where those moments are, and again, as fun, like you're collecting little candies, make a list of those. Very much related to that, keep an eye out for bonus scene opportunities probably beyond that lead magnet. So, if you have a solid lead magnet, be that a bonus epilogue, or a novella, a short story, flash fiction, whatever that is sort of related, while you're reading through the book for this point, or just thinking about it for these fun tasks, pay attention if there's, like I've mentioned in previous episodes, an episode from 1 POV where, as a bonus, just for fun, you could also offer the other POV on that same scene if they sign up to your mailing list, or if they follow you on social media, whatever the case may be. And, yeah, that's kind of my whole list here. You can collect things, collect thoughts. We’ve kind of already touched on it, but if you come up with more thoughts of, oh, I wanted to follow up on that in the next book, go write that down. Just all that kind of stuff.

Agnes: So, some of those that you mentioned don't really seem like they're optional. Wouldn't we need to do most of those anyway, at some point?

Rebecca: Yes and no. You can absolutely choose to just throw all of this stuff together once you are well and truly into publishing, launch, and marketing stages. But, doing it now can take stress off of that inevitably stressful week or month of your life, and the book’s life. But yeah, I think that a lot of this is optional. You don't have to have the title of the book in the story. And you don't have to have a cover that is centered around a very specific visual that you actually describe in the book. Essentially, you can kind of decide what is an instant optional for yourself. You don't have to have any character art for a book. I don't have any character art of any of my stories or characters. You don't have to have any bonus content or a lead magnet. And little things like quoting specific lines, or even editing lines in your book to be more quotable on a little infographic, absolutely optional. It’s very much up to you. I consider most of these things optional, but fun, and I do choose to do them. But I still, like I said, very much consider them truly optional.

Agnes: So, which of these things do you do yourself for your own writing?

Rebecca: I've talked about the cover, I've talked about the title being in there, at least in the recent books. Let’s see… like I said, I haven't done character art. I will at some point, but it just hasn't been a priority. I definitely pull out quotes as I'm reading through. In fact, I will start doing that in early rounds of editing, just because that makes my heart happy, and it's nice to go through if I'm having a bad day where I don't like the story, to just go read a little short list of my favorite lines and go, okay, I did okay, that was pretty good, actually. I very much do that for myself, and while I do have a lead magnet and have drafted bonus scenes, I've never done anything with them, which I would like to start doing more in coming books, where I actually do send them through the line editor and copy editor, proofreader, so that they are as polished as everything else, and then I can put them in the back of my books to get people signing up to the newsletter. Haven’t done that, I intend to do that at some point in the future.

Agnes: So, are any of these things aspects you watch for when editing for clients? Could you watch for them, or help improve them if someone asked you to?

Rebecca: Kind of? If I notice that someone does say the book title in the book, I will usually do a little note of, oh, I noticed where you used the title Just a little observation. I don't ever see covers for the books that I edit with very, very rare exceptions, because that's just a step that comes after dev by, usually, months. So, I don't really have feedback on that. Sometimes I will have clients ask, hey, I'm really stuck, I don't know what to title this book. If you have any suggestions after reading it, please let me know, and I am happy to provide ideas, especially if I know their genre and their subgenre, I can look at those templates for titles and give suggestions that would fit in their genre. Beyond that, it really kind of depends. For example, if I see a line in a book that I think would be fantastic on a graphic promo kind of thing. I will usually flag and just go, this is a great line. So, if someone uses me as their dev editor, and I flag one, you know, maybe consider sticking that on a meme, and running with that during your launch, just because you know that an outside reader particularly connected with that line, or thought particularly highly of it. That's all it really amounts to. But, absolutely, if a client wants me to keep an eye out for any of these aspects, especially if they're like, hey, is there a scene in here that I could scrap from the main book to tighten things up but would still be a good bonus scene? I would love to help keep an eye out for that. If you want me to keep an eye out for something, ask, and I will. I'm not too picky about that, and these are all good candidates for that if it just feels like something that you want done, or want to have a list of but don't really want to do yourself. And I do regularly, I will always tag any trigger warnings that I see that I didn't see the author tagging ahead of time, because I feel particularly invested in that particular topic.

Agnes: Okay, so I want to prepare you. This will be my very last question of the very last episode of our 52-week series, which means I've probably asked you five hundred and twenty questions now. So, this is the last one, are you ready?

Rebecca: Yes!

Agnes: Okay, alright, just can you remind us the steps that we need to take as we step away from self-editing, and if there's any resources that you would recommend us looking up, that would be awesome as well.

Rebecca: Absolutely. So, while I know that we have already technically covered the topic of getting outside feedback, I imagine that most of our listeners who are listening to this episode, either live or catching up on the series, haven’t done so yet, as keeping pace with this weekly podcast while that process actually takes weeks and weeks, isn't realistic. So, assuming that that's true for our listeners, the next step is probably to go find some beta readers, multiple, ideally, or a good developmental editor. And I will do my only shameless self-promotion in the whole series right here and say that a big part of why I spent the last year teaching writers how to self-edit was to help them get their books in great shape to get the most out of a paid structural edit. And, to hopefully give listeners a chance to get a feel for me and my personality, and if my approach to story revision might be a good fit for them. I do have dev edit slots open through the end of this year. Well, I guess this will be releasing right at the end of the year, so I have slots open going into 2026, and I hope that folks who are looking for the services that I offer will consider checking out hartboundediting.com, linked in the show notes, and at least considering me in their search for a quality editor that can really help their story reach their highest goals with it. Beyond that, and speaking specifically as to what to do after beta and dev and all of those have been applied, we’ve already covered this a little bit—this is where the two publishing paths truly diverge. For trad, or traditional publishing, the next step is to find an agent. I recommend querying many, as you are likely to get a lot of rejections, so expect that. Do some research, understand that a lot of people have to query 100 agents before they get picked up by any of them. This is a numbers game, don't expect to get accepted by the first agent you query. Do more research into that path. There are so many resources out there. They are not hard to find. Go educate yourself specifically on that path that you want to take. For indie, the next steps are things like cover art, a copy editor, formatting and… or, sorry, formatting for publishing, like I talked about in more depth, I think it was in the last episode. As for the best next resource I recommend, especially for indie, kind of exclusively for indie, is Mark Dawson and James Blatch's joint projects. This includes the self-publishing show podcast, which is incredibly valuable right back to the beginning, which started in, like, 2009. And their Learn Self-Publishing website, which includes a great blog that kind of covers the same things as the show. Specifically, and most especially, I highly recommend their self-publishing launchpad course, which used to be called Self-Publishing Formula 101, or SPF 101. I will absolutely link these in the show notes, and I think that that course is worth every penny, especially if you consume a decent chunk of their free content before diving in with the course. It covers everything. In fact, it covers a lot of the self-editing stuff that we've talked about here, but then also has a very heavy emphasis on formatting and, you know, finding copy editors and cover artists and marketing email newsletters, all of the kind of stuff that I'm still learning in my own series, so I will happily kind of hand you all off to them, because I think that they are really doing a great thing with their programs. Also, I suggest that you join their various Facebook groups. If you use that platform. And, specifically, that you use the in-group search function liberally. If you have any questions remotely related to the topic of self-publishing or indie publishing, it's almost certainly been asked in that group before and well answered, so search for some search terms, read through the answers people have already given. It is a very high-value resource, and happy to pass things along in that direction, especially for folks who, like me, want to indie publish or self-publish.

Agnes: And just to up my own personal plugin, I have been plugging in hers throughout the series, but the one thing I can say, if you go with Hart Bound Editing, is that she is very thorough, she knows story structure, she's going to point out a lot of things that you may not have thought of. You know, I said that there was a lot that I kind of already knew that she had pointed out, but there was a lot of things that she pointed out—some of them were really tiny, and some of them were a little bit bigger. And also, just having… like, she does a really good job of presenting it in such a way that you don't feel like a failure, and that, I think, is a huge part of it. And you know that she's going to give you very detailed, and I think that is, I think, one of the most important things about development to editors, you want them to be thorough. You don't want them to just be like, oh, well, you should change to this, this, and then have, like, you know, 2 or 3 pages of comments that you would have probably gotten from a beta reader anyway. So you can guarantee that she will do an excellent job of actually being thorough and not just doing a beta read for a development to edit. Anyway.

Rebecca: Thank you for saying so.

Agnes: Anyway, so this is the last time that you're going to do our closing as a joint podcast. So, thank you for being willing to answer all of my questions over the last 52 episodes, and I bet you there has been probably about five hundred and twenty questions I have asked you that you have been willingly able to answer. Thank you.

Rebecca: I've enjoyed every minute of it, and I really hope that this year-long self-editing series has been helpful to everyone following along with it. We are so grateful to everyone who has liked, subscribed, and otherwise followed along. If you know any other authors who are nearing the end of their first draft or struggling with revising or rewriting their novel, please send them our way. I would love to help more writers understand and finish the process of self-editing. Both Hart Bound editing and Author's Alcove will continue on after this joint series has ended, and I hope that you will all come along for the ride. I will continue providing as much in-depth advice as I can for fantasy, romance, and historical fiction writers looking to improve their craft. And I'm very excited to follow Agnes’s adventures, getting her delightful YA fantasy novel published next year, as well as her other endeavors, like Dragon Heart Academy. Thank you so much for everything, Agnes. This has been an amazing series to do with you.

Agnes: I agree, thank you. It has been so much fun, and this is the first time I can't say I will see you next week.

Rebecca: I will see you all again in the future, and I'm sure you and I will do joint podcasts at some point in the future as well.

Agnes: I believe so, thank you. Bye!

Rebecca: Bye!

Rebecca: Thank you so much for listening to the Hart Bound Editing Podcast. I look forward to bringing you more content to help you make your good story great so it can change lives and change your world. Follow along to hear more or visit my website, linked in the description, to learn how I can help you and your story to flourish.

See you next time!