Reviewers are a pain in the butt. I’m not talking about people who write reviews of your book on Amazon or Goodreads. I’m talking about people who offer their opinions as part of your book creation process. Unless you know who they are and manage them proactively, they will create angst and chaos. To avoid…
If you are writing a nonfiction book in a corporate setting, it’s likely you’ll have multiple reviewers for everything you write. This applies regardless of whether you’re the author or a ghost writer. And if it’s not managed carefully, this situation has the potential to significantly multiply the workload, reduce your final quality, and blow…
A friend became discouraged and frustrated by feedback on his manuscript. And let’s admit it: accepting criticism is hard. Managing feedback is a common problem. How can you get helpful feedback without taking it personally? The key, as with everything else in writing, is to prepare by choosing carefully who you ask for help and…
Here’s what went wrong. You started with a good idea. Then you showed it to someone. She told you it needed something more. So you added it. You sent it out for review. Your reviewers all suggested adding and changing things. They’re important and powerful people, so you did. The technical people insisted you include…
In my last post, I described what to do with document reviewers who say too little. But what about those who say too much? Here’s a comment from last week’s post: Josh, what is your advice for responding to the person who is asked to “review for accuracy only” and sends back an article completely…
Every piece of business writing needs reviews. Some reviewer comments are specific and helpful. Here’s how to deal with the rest of them. Feedback makes business writing better. A good writer may need to get reviews from technical experts, legal authorities, better writers, copy editors, or clients. But at the typical company, the feedback process…
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…