(www.thegoldenpencil.com)
Sometimes I think there is simply no way to finalize a manuscript – particularly a book-length manuscript! Can you tell I’m working on the copy edited version on my soon-to-be-released book on getting a book written?
After I accepted or rejected the changes made by my excellent copy editor, I printed out the manuscript one last time. Or maybe not. Part of the reason is she suggested I double-check the look of the headings and subheadings. I do that sort of thing best when I have actual pages to work with.
It was also time to give the book one more reading …read more

Just discovered a blog that is already proving to be helpful. It’s Biswomen which has a women’s business books category.
In addition to reviewing books there are also gems like: Orman’s “Women & Money” book downloaded 1.1M times in free period. The post points out that the Orman’s book remained number 2 on Amazon even during the free download version, leading to the thought that free or even fee ebooks don’t necessarily hurt sales.
That’s worth thinking about.
Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing – a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision – for those …read more

He’s done it again! Joe Wikert, creator of Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 Blog has a post called: Amazon Sales Rank and it’s truly helpful.
First it points to a great article called What You Need to Know about Amazon’s Sales Rank by Bill Stephens over at Beneath The Cover. Bill details how Amazon calculates rank then gives some guidelines about what those numbers actually mean.
Not content with just one source, Joe points to Amazon’s rather cryptic statement about their ranking plus a link to TitleZ currently free web based service that lets you compare ranking of many books and RankTracer which …read more

I suppose the holy grail of print on demand or POD is for us to be able to walk into any bookstore and order up a bound copy of any book for a reasonable price in about 15 minutes or so. Back in June, egadget.com published a blog, complete with picture, announcing the addition of an Espresso Book Machine to the New York Public Library. Built by OnDemandBooks, the largish machine will print one off bound books. Launched with something like 200,000 titles, not a ton has happened since.
But today, Publishers Weekly announced that OnDemandBooks has signed an agreement with …read more

Yesterday I published a post about how difficult it is to determine how many books actually sell. Self-publishing guru and grandfather Dan Poynter pointed to a page on one of his sites called: Book Industry Statistics
Take a close look; it’s a much more optimistic view of book publishing and the potential for profiting from writing a book than most. He says, among other things, that book sales may be greater than previously thought. Wouldn’t that be good news, and Dan makes a good case for it, quoting others.
Another part of the article I find fascinating is his breakdown on the …read more

Like everyone else who wants to get a book written, in addition to expressing myself, I also want to know, or at least guess, about how many books I’ll be able to sell. You’d think it would be simple, and it would be easier if publishers were willing to let the public know how many copies a specific book sells in a year. They don’t, so we’re left with best seller lists, Amazon ranking and reading oracles.
It’s even worse in self-publishing. PODdy Mouth – Daily Dirt on POD and Self-Publishing, a great blog if you’re even wondering about self-publishing, put …read more

Arghhhh… I just sent off the wrong version to a client. In this case, it wasn’t all my fault, not that it matters.
For this project we’ve got three people involved. Me, the client and the client’s secretary. I write, submit to the client who edits on paper, gives that to his secretary who enters the edits and sends the revised edition to me. I should have worked with the secretary to determine exactly how we’d deal with version numbers, but I thought what I was doing was clear… chapter number, brief title, date, my initials. We muddled along with me …read more

A client recently asked me what the difference between a copy editor and a proofreader is. The short form is that the proofreader is, for the most part, looking only for typos. The copy editor, however, goes further and looks for style problems, technical punctuation and grammar problems and even awkward sentences.
You might want to read the article I wrote called: What’s the difference between proofreading and copy editing?
Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing – a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision – for those who want to get a book written.

Hmmm… 52 New Writing, Editing and Translation Jobs today.
We’re moving into the holiday season. In the U.S. that starts with Thanksgiving and lasts through January 1. Trade publishers tend to almost shut down. It will be interesting to see how freelance writing jobs hold up.
Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing – a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision – for those who want to get a book written.

Mark Chillingworth states in his post, Wiley: publishers must push e-books, states that Wiley and others are urging book publishers to push ebook readers. The emphasis in the post is on textbook publishing, and, if I’m understanding correctly, the idea is that publishers could improve their bottom line if they were able to deliver more (text)books digitally; to do that, they’ve got to get readers to adopt ebook readers.
Well, maybe. I mean, that does make sense, but the ebook readers currently available still leave a great deal to be desired.
The iLiad is newish, looks good, uses something that’s supposed to …read more