Self-publishing is much faster than traditional publishing. But can you create a quality book that way? Yes, but only with a disciplined process and the right support team. Here’s my insider’s account of how Shel Israel and Robert Scoble pulled it off with their new book book, The Fourth Transformation: How Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence Change Everything. Shel…
Robert Scoble and Shel Israel just published The Fourth Transformation: How Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence Change Everything. It’s an indispensable guide to the future, and a gripping read. Get yourself a copy. This is not an unbiased review. While Scoble and Israel wrote this book and are responsible for the content, I edited it….
Managing reviews of your drafts is a pervasive problem. At my talk to PR professionals this weekend, only one person out of an audience of 150 said her review process worked well. Today, I’ll describe a key element of a disciplined process for soliciting, collecting, and combining reviews: the memo you send to reviewers asking for feedback. The reviewers’ memo: an…
In my experience, a big challenge for writers is the inappropriate edit. You know, the guy who corrects spelling errors in your outline, or wants to rearrange the whole thing during the proofreading stage. In fact, only 32% of business writers say that their process for collecting and combining feedback works well. I’ve written before…
The editor’s job is to fix pieces of writing. The writing coach explains how to write better. But writers who wish to be better need more. They need a sensei who will teach them writing through observation and editing. Only through writing and correction can you truly improve. Let’s look at what editors and coaches do, and what I…
It’s not enough to find the flaws in a piece of writing. Editors must know why they’re there. Good editors explain how the writer can cure the habits that led to the flaws. Writing Without Bullshit exists to reveal, not just how to write better, but why you don’t write better already. I don’t just want to make writing…
Being a great editor is hard. You must at once be naive and wise, omniscient and humble, impatient and implacable, sympathetic and uncompromising. You must think like a reader, like a writer, and like yourself. Here are 10 vital strategies to master the contradictions of being a great editor. 1. Critique as a reader, not as a writer You…
Like all writers, I have a fraught relationship with copy editors. I give them my perfect prose and then it’s pick, pick, pick. But I can’t live without one. Today: how to value copyeditors and your own prose, all at the same time. I’ve taken you through the whole editing process this week: idea development,…
Today’s question is simple: how can an editor and author collaborate to make a draft better? The editor must function as “first reader” and provide feedback that explains problems, not just solves them. That’s how you make writers smarter. Assume you’re reading a draft as the main editor for a piece of writing. First, figure out…