You’ve poured your heart into your manuscript. You’ve read it ten times and you’re sure you’ve caught all the errors. But have you?

The problem is: the closer you are to your story, the harder it is to see what’s actually on the page.

You Read What You Meant to Write

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, I wrote a romance novella. It was one of my very first completed manuscripts. I must have read it at least five times before I handed it to my sister to read. When she was finished, she said, “It’s good, except there was this one part where it says, ‘Just let me get my coat and jacket.’” I will never forget that.

The thing is, my brain knew what I meant to say and every time I read it, I read, “Just let me get my coat and shoes.” Or maybe I read, “…let me get my shoes and jacket.” Either way, I didn’t read what was actually there.

This isn’t a matter of being careless or not trying hard enough. Your brain fills in missing words, glosses over typos, and corrects errors automatically because it already knows the intended meaning. You’re literally too close to your own work to see it clearly.

The Errors That Slip Through

What kinds of things are you most likely to miss when you proofread your own work?

• Repeated words. “She walked to the the door” is invisible to you on the tenth read-through, but it jumps out at readers immediately. These doubled words are especially sneaky when they fall at the end of one line and the beginning of the next.
• Homophone mix-ups. Your spell-checker won’t catch “they’re” instead of “their” or “affect” versus “effect.” These errors are particularly frustrating because they make you look less professional, even though they’re some of the easiest mistakes to make when you’re in the flow of writing.
• Formatting inconsistencies. Maybe your em-dashes are formatted three different ways throughout the manuscript. Perhaps your scene breaks aren’t consistent, or your dialogue formatting shifts between chapters. These might seem minor, but they create a subtle sense of unprofessionalism that affects how readers perceive your work. And in romance and fantasy specifically, where readers often devour multiple books in a series, inconsistencies become even more noticeable.

The Time Trap

There is another hidden cost that’s often overlooked: the time you spend DIY proofreading often multiplies beyond what you’d expect.

You read through once and catch some errors. Great! But now you need to read it again to make sure those fixes didn’t create new problems. Then you spot a few more issues, so you do another pass. Before you know it, you’ve spent weeks rereading the same manuscript, and you’re still not confident you caught everything.

A professional proofreader can break this cycle. They come to your manuscript with fresh eyes and catch issues in one or two careful passes, freeing you to focus on what you do best: writing your next book.

If You Must DIY

As an indie author myself, I understand needing to watch spending when you’re putting out a book. Sometimes, you need to do something yourself—whether it’s creating your own covers, doing your own marketing, or proofreading your manuscript yourself. So if you’re going the DIY route, here are some strategies that can help you catch more errors on your own.

• Take a real break. I don’t mean a day or two—I mean at least two weeks, ideally a month. Work on something entirely different. Let your brain fully disconnect from this manuscript so you can return to it with fresh eyes. This is the single most important thing you can do if you’re proofing your own work.
• Change the format. If you’ve been working on your computer, print it out. Or convert it to a different file format and read it on a different device. Anything that makes the text look unfamiliar will help you see errors you’ve been missing.
• Read backwards. Start with the last sentence and work your way to the first. This breaks up the narrative flow your brain is anticipating and helps you focus on the actual words.
• Read aloud or use text-to-speech. Read your manuscript out loud to yourself, or have your computer read the manuscript aloud to you while you follow along. Hearing the words—whether in your own voice or through text-to-speech—can help you catch errors your eyes have been skipping over.

The Professional Option

Of course, even with all these strategies, DIY proofreading has its limits. A fresh set of trained eyes can spot issues you’ll never see, no matter how many times you read through. A professional proofreader brings not only distance from your story but also expertise in the specific conventions of your genre and an understanding of common formatting pitfalls.

If you’d like to chat about how professional proofreading might fit into your publishing process, I’d be happy to answer any questions. You can reach out through my website or send me an email—no pressure, just a conversation between people who care about making books the best they can be.