Most Common Mistakes New Authors Make—and How to Avoid Them

Getting your first book into print is a great achievement—though the journey from idea to reality is full of potholes. Most new writers fall into traps that undermine the quality of their book and limit its potential for success. At Chronicle Associates, we’ve helped hundreds of writers, and we can help guide you around the potholes.

These are the largest mistakes beginning writers make—and how to prevent them:

Poor Book Structure

Most new authors dive into writing without a solid structure or outline. What happens? A confused manuscript that loses readers. Good storytelling demands good planning—whether fiction or nonfiction. At Chronicle Associates, our ghostwriters collaborate with you to build a solid structure first, before writing a word. That way, your message is clear, your story is seamless, and your book is engaging from beginning to end.

Avoiding Professional Editing

Even the best writers need editors. The most common mistake is self-editing or skipping editing altogether. This will lead to grammatical errors, inconsistencies, and confused ideas. Professional editing involves developmental recommendations, copyediting, and proofreading—each essential step in producing a completed manuscript. Chronicle Associates offers full-service editing, making your book reader-ready and your best work.

Poor Cover Design

We’ve all heard the adage “don’t judge a book by its cover,” but in bookselling, people sure do. A bad cover can drive potential readers away. Amateurish or generic covers immediately detract from credibility. That’s why Chronicle Associates offers custom, genre-specific cover designs done by professional designers. Your book is worth a cover that stands out—and sells.

Overlooking the Significance of Formatting

Technical formatting issues can make your book hard to read and appear amateurish. Inconsistent typefaces, spotty spacing, and a messy table of contents are all ways in which bad formatting can distract the reader from your message. At Chronicle Associates, we print and electronically format your book so it will appear great wherever it is sold.

Excluded from Marketing and Distribution

Most new writers think that the job is finished when the book is published—but if nobody knows it’s out there, it won’t be read. Not marketing or not distributing your book properly are enormous losses. Chronicle Associates helps writers with platform-specific distribution, metadata optimization, and promotion to get your book into readers’ hands.

It is simpler to weed out such common errors with a good team backing you. With Chronicle Associates, new writers receive the direction, expertise, and end-to-end support they require to get published with confidence. We will assist you in converting your concept into a professionally published book that captures people’s attention.