The biggest publishing house, Penguin Random House, is merging with the number three publisher, Simon & Schuster. Here’s what that means for you as an author: lower advances, less service, more publisher nickel-and-diming, and still more of the responsibility for success landing on you. Publishing houses struggle to maintain profits and market power in a…
Last week, two different authors told me they were sending chapters to a bunch of their friends to get feedback. One planned to send it to 40 people. This is terrible way to edit. Consider what happens when you crowdsource an edit Anyone who’s ever read a Wikipedia article has seen the incoherent and personality-free…
Robert Giroux, who eventually became T.S. Eliot’s editor, once asked Eliot if he agreed with the sentiment that most editors are failed writers. Eliot’s reply: “Perhaps, but so are most writers.” Putting the witticism aside, what are editors? Failed writers? Uber-writers? Or something different? I’ve been writing professionally for 38 years and editing for almost…
If you are writing a book as an expert on a topic, you may be having challenges with organizing your content. You should build your table of contents around the questions your reader will ask. The wrong way to organize your book I was recently helping a consultant who was planning a book on a…
A developmental editor can help make your book better. They also cost money — and spending that money wisely demands some preparation. Here are a few tips on getting the most out of a developmental editor. Choose the right kind of editor The job of the (nonfiction) editor is to stand in for your eventual…
Trademarks confuse writers. Here are some tips on how to address trademarks in prose — and whether you ought to protect your own special names for things with them. Start with this: I’m not a lawyer. I hope you find this helpful — it’s based on decades of experience as a writer — but if…
Sometimes people request that I do a “light edit” on their document, book chapter, or book. “Just give it a read and let me know what it needs,” they say. I can’t actually do that. I only know how to do a close read. How I do a developmental edit There is a switch in…
I charge what I’m worth. Whether it’s a book proposal, book editing, or ghostwriting, I figure out how much work it will take, multiply by my hourly rate, and price accordingly. My price is fixed. I don’t charge by the hour, I charge by the job. If you propose to pay me out of your…
Even if you feel a need to make your favorite magic words more important, don’t capitalize them in running text. It makes prose look uneven — and makes you look like an eighteenth-century pamphleteer. Do you write to impress? I edit a lot of prose intended for that purpose — including “thought leadership” blogs, business…