The duration of your editing process depends far more on you than it does on your editor. I recently told a friend of mine that I was working on editing two 70,000-word books right now. “How long does that take?” she asked. I didn’t have a simple answer, and that got me thinking. I’ve edited…
“I wrote a book” now means nothing. Anyone can write a book; anyone can self-publish one. If you’ve written a nonfiction book, the question to answer is, what makes it unique? People hear about books that sell One way to stand out is with a book that sells. To get your book to sell, you…
Books are great individually. But in big bunches, they’re not as sacred as they once were. I’m in the process of moving and I have a lot of books. I’ve been collecting science fiction books since I was a teenager — I’ve accumulated hundreds of hardbacks and hundreds more in paperback, with special bookcases to…
Developmental editing is the process of making a nonfiction book better in every way — including clarity of ideas, structure, tone, paragraphs, sentences, and words. Developmental editors aren’t cheap. Today, some ideas on how to manage that expense and make the book better at the same time. Cheap editors aren’t a bargain Depending on the…
Short answer: no, I won’t. I won’t introduce you to my publisher either. Look, I can understand your position. You want to write a nonfiction book. To get the book published, it has to get in front of publishers. The best way to get in front of publishers is with a book agent. And you…
Missouri Senator Josh Hawley’s book The Tyranny of Big Tech is a diatribe against large tech platforms like Facebook and Google. It’s a remarkably radical, even quasi-Marxist critique for a Republican — one that proposes a series of regulations that would endear him to the most liberal of Democrats. I have problem with both Hawley’s…
I see bad writing all the time. But it takes a prodigious talent to violate every writing principle in a single paragraph at the start of a serious nonfiction book. A book has one chance to grab you by the throat on Page One. If Page One is boring, you can assume the whole book…
If you’re writing a memoir, some parts of your life were probably exciting. Other parts, maybe, not so much. How can you craft all of that into a package worth reading? The problem is that no one’s life is a Hollywood epic. Stuff happens; we do stuff. Some of it is fun. Some of it…
Nonfiction books should start with a bang. Introductions are boring. Ergo, don’t start with an introduction. Despite the logic of this, many business and nonfiction writers start their books with an introduction. They either think it’s required, or fall victim to the fallacy that, having created a book, they need to somehow explain it. Why…