Writing a book can be exciting and profitable. It can be the culmination of years of preparation. However, a few mistakes can sabotage all the time invested in your dream. Would not it be great to know in advance what mistakes to avoid? This article covers some of the common mistakes new authors make and explains useful alternatives.1. Editing the manuscript yourself.It’s fine to edit your manuscript for obvious errors. However, you alone will never catch all the errors. After you check your work, you should then hire a professional editor. Here are a couple of types of editors you may want to use and a synopsis of services they render:Copyediting involves identifying and correcting typographical and punctuation errors, misspellings, grammar capitalization, word usage, word breaks, and formatting inconsistencies.Line editing (also known as story, substantive, or content editing) involves substantial work on a manuscript which may include light rewriting, reorganizing, or suggesting more effective presentations. This level of editing also focuses on minimizing wordiness, confusing statements, vague generalizations, jargon or overuse of slang, mixed metaphors, redundancies, jargon or overuse of slang, gaps, use of passive voice, use of sexist or racist language, consistency of tone and focus, logic, and manuscript organization.If you are writing a novel, it is imperative that you include line editing in your budget. Expect to pay $600 to $2500 for this service. A skillful editor can rescue a problematic book.2. Setting a price for your book that is too low to cover your expenses and earn a fair profit.If you get this task wrong, you will probably lose money on your book. Setting a price for your book is one of the most important tasks you must perform. You must determine how much it will cost to print your book. Once you determine this, you must set the price of your book to be at least five times the cost to print each book. However, depending on where you plan to sell your book, you may need to have a markup of at least eight times.3. Thinking a vanity press is the same as a traditional publisher or book printer.Traditional publishers do not charge you to publish your book. Vanity presses will charge you to publish your book. Normally they are merely printing your book. Vanity presses will probably charge you substantially more to print your book than a book manufacturer. As an alternative to choosing most vanity presses, you should publish your own if you desire to earn a reasonable profit.4. Thinking the book cover design is not an important component of the book.People do judge a book by its cover. In a bookstore, you only have about 15 seconds to sell a book to a browser. The sales device is your book cover. A browser will look at the front cover and then the back cover. If the graphics and text are not appealing, the browser will replace your book on the shelf.Many new authors will find the cheapest person to design their book cover. That person may be a relative, friend, or person that is a good artist. However, they may be unaware that a book cover is a marketing tool. A good professional cover designer creates a cover that will help sell your book.5. Not having a marketing plan ready before you write or print your book.I normally write a marketing plan before I write a book. As a result, I have a feel for the demand for the subject matter and the level of competition. I decide on the market position I want to pursue. You should think about whether you want to position your book as succinct or comprehensive, easy to understand or complex, affordable or high end — all require different strategies.6. Failing to consistently promote your book once it is published.Whether your book is published by a major publishing house or yourself, you still need to promote your book. Many new authors think that if they write it, the rest will all fail into place. In other words, if they write it, the book buyers will come.Have you noticed how major companies still do extensive advertising on radio, television, magazines, and online? So, why would you think you do not have to market or promote your book?7. Incorrectly spelling the foreword of your book as forward.Calling your foreword a forward will be the kiss of death for many new authors, especially if this error appears on the book cover. Many bookstores, libraries, reviewers, wholesalers, and distributors will not want to stock or recommend your book. They will assume what’s inside the book is poor quality, because you did not know the difference between foreword and forward.

Once the app is downloaded, you have little time to take a sigh of relief, and then again start focusing on making things easier for the them till their goal is achieved.

According to the AppsFlyer, an app marketing company, the global uninstall rate for apps after 30 days is 28%. Entertainment apps are most frequently deleted, whereas apps based on Finance is least frequently deleted. No matter which app category you belong to, your strategy should be to remain in the mobile phones of users for a long time, and not just sit around but to fulfill your purpose as well.

If we analyze the encounters of users with an app step by step, it can help us unveil the critical factors that influence mobile app audiences, so that we can work upon those and achieve our purpose. Here are the details:

Step1. Finding Your App in Appstore

For this, we have to first find out what exactly users type to search an app. Based on a research, it has been found that 47% app users on iOS confirmed that they found the app through the App Store’s search engine and 53% app users on Android confirmed the same.

What have been their search queries? Interestingly, as the per the data provided by the TUNE research, 86% of the top 100 keywords were brands.With little scope for non-branded categories, most of the keywords were either of games of utility apps. Common keywords in the non branded category are: games, free games, VPN, calculator, music, photo editor, and weather.

Leaving brands aside, if we analyze the user-type of a Non-branded category, we will get two types of users:

1. Users are informed, and they know what they are search

2. Users are exploring possibilities, have no precise information in mind.

If you are a mobile app development company, targeting non-branded users, then your efforts must be directed to creating apps that compel these two types of users. To do so, we have to analyze once they are on an app store, what keywords they use to search. Regina Leuwer, with expertise in marketing & communications, bring some light to the subject. She reached out Sebastian Knopp, creator of app store search intelligence tool appkeywords, who shared with her the data of unique trending search phrases. And according to that data, in 2017, there were around 2,455 unique search phrases trending in the US.

Now, if we study these data to get information, we will find that name of the app is critical to attract the attention of the users.

If your app belongs to non-branded category, then make sure your app name is similar to the common search queries but also unique in comparison with your competitors. So that when your app name is flashed, they click it on to it, finding it purposeful and compelling both.

Step 2. Installation

Remember your users are on mobile devices has limited resources, from battery to storage and RAM to Internet. Everything is limited. So better create an application that is easy to download or say get downloaded with 5 minutes. One critical advice here:

1. Keep the application file size small.

If you are a developer, use APK Analyser to find out which part of the application is consuming maximum space. You can also reduce classes.dex file and res folder that contains images, raw files, and XML.

Step 3. Onboarding

After the user has successfully downloaded your mobile application, don’t leave anything on assumptions. Guide them properly. This you can do through an onboarding process, where users can learn the key functionality and where to begin with the mobile app. Below are the 3 things you need to keep in your mind when creating an onboarding process for your users.

Short and Crisp: The entire guidance of features and functions should be completed within few seconds, with easy options loud and clear option to skip.

Precise Information: Don’t introduce them to the app. They already know what they have downloaded. The objective to inform about the key functions and features.

Allow Users to Skip: Let the tech-savvy users skip the intro. Your app is to meet their requirement and not to have a friendly session.

Step 4. Purpose and UI
Here, the stage is set for your app and it is the golden chance for you to impress your users. What is needed here is the collaboration between purpose and UI of the app. It totally depends on the problem-solving capability and ease of use of the mobile app. Interface design plays the critical role, allowing the users to access features of the apps easily and quickly to perform the task for what they have downloaded the app. When it comes to interface design, make sure that the design is interactive and task-oriented. Here are some factors that you must take care off while creating mobile app interface:

1. Usability: The Mobile phone is an epitome of convenience and if your users find it difficult to use your app, then there is no way there are going to make the space for it in their mobile phones. From screen size to the color of the app, there are many factors that are equally critical and need attention.

2. Intuitive: To create an intuitive User Interface, you have to read the mind of the users, and develop a model based on that. The next should be precise, clear and ‘obvious’ in an interface.

3. Availability: Key features should be hidden in the drop down menu or even if so, it should be obvious for the user to look into the drop-down. An intricate work of design and research is required to make essential features available for the customers and they don’t need to navigate here and there.

If you need more help with the user-interface and innovative ideas for a mobile app, write to me [email protected] and I promise to get back to you with interesting mobile app designs.