Rules are Made to be Left Up to Style

It drives me nuts that we have unbreakable rules for such small things like:

• west as a direction, but West as a location
• If you want to shorten a word it's 'em and not 'em (of course no curly quotes here)
• How to properly use ellipsis 
• Three different types of dashes 

But when it comes to the bigger things like capitalization and when you want to use commas, errors in writing become "the author's style." 

What I’ve learned so far in my editing class:

• Selling 100,000 books in a year makes you a New York Times Best Selling Author
• If you want to work with the Big Publishing Houses you need a Literary Agent
• Do Not become attached to the title you come up with
• Always get veto rights on you cover art
• Cover Art can make or break a book
• Always avoid Vanity Presses
• Keep a reference list on hand of all the words you have trouble spelling
• Keep a story specific list of words or phrases to save time on double checking