Don't make others pay

By Jenny Hilborne
Author: mysteries & thrillers

I'm in editing mode. This means numerous rounds of slashing and cutting from my manuscript and deleting offenders (never realized I had (oops) such a fondness for the use of had and was until now). I'm in fine company. A good friend of mine, and a good author, too, recently found and discarded 156 exclamation marks from his manuscript. The cleaning doesn't end with me. Once I'm done, it's off to the professional editor.

Hours upon hours in the editing cave makes me tired, hungry, and often irritable. The weekend cool down we were promised arrived, and it dropped from 100 degrees to about 99. My editing cave faces south, where it always feels like 115. Twelve or more hours spent sweating and poring over a manuscript for every offense I can find makes me feel like a school nurse ferreting for nits, and dragging them out kicking and screaming. It's a long process.

My relaxation after hard days like this is usually a book. Unfortunately, I can't switch my inner editor off, which tends to spoil my reading. Editing has turned me into a critical audience. A bad plot with good writing is one thing - irritating - but not a death sentence for the author...meaning, I'll give said author another go. However, I can't say the same for authors churning out a good plot with bad writing.

An aspiring author recently asked me what he/she could do if unable to afford a professional editor. Well, quite frankly, it depends on how serious you are about your writing. If you're serious, find the money and pay for a good editor, and don't go cheap. Find a good one, preferably a recommendation. An abundance of author forums can help with that. Jodie Renner, who doles out tons of free editing advice, is one editor I've recommended to more than one new author.

A few other ideas: join a critique group to get the work as tight as possible prior to editing, or try a kickstarter campaign, though without some kind of "fame" kickstarter might be a tough sell. If you have skills of your own, you could use the old barter system. Free cover design for a free edit. If not, then trusted beta readers can help, as long as you're not using friends who will tell you only what you want to hear. If you choose to self-edit, get a good book on how to do it properly. And read your work until you can't stand it.

If you're not sick of your own manuscript by the time you're done editing....then maybe you haven't read through it enough times. Whether you publish yourself or publish traditionally, don't skip over the importance of a good editor. If you bypass it, you're not the only one who has to pay.

Here are some links to articles that provide clear, concrete advice for revising, editing, and polishing your own novel, courtesy of Jodie Renner. Implementing these tips will also save you a lot of money on editing costs!

REVISE FOR SUCCESS - A Stress-Free, Concrete Plan of Action for Revising, Editing, and Polishing Your Novel http://jodierennerediting.blogspot.ca/2013/08/revise-for-success-stress-free-concrete.html

Revising, Editing, & Polishing Your Novel: http://jodierennerediting.blogspot.ca/2013/07/revising-editing-and-polishing-your.html

How to Save a Bundle on Editing Costs - http://crimefictioncollective.blogspot.ca/2012/11/how-to-save-bundle-on-editing-costs.html

How to Slash Your Word Count by 20-40% …and tighten up your story without losing any of the good stuff! http://jodierennerediting.blogspot.com/2013/08/how-to-slash-your-word-count-by-20-40.html

Editing Nirvana

by Peg Brantley
Evocative Characters. Intriguing Crime. Compelling Stories.




I received my edits back from my editor, Peggy Hageman, Tuesday morning. (Peggy edited the Edgar nominated The Queen of Patpong by Timothy Hallinan. By way of clarification, we've both agreed that I'm not Tim, but that's another topic.) Receiving her edits was the good news. The bad news?

A two hour dental appointment followed by a three hour root canal with an endodontist who happened to have an opening that afternoon. Where is delayed medical attention when you want it?

My post on Facebook indicated that I'd rather be going through my edits. One commenter said:

Somehow the comparison of edits to dental work (i.e., pulling teeth) is rather appropriate.

She was kidding of course, but it made me want to talk about how much I love this part of the process.

Actually, there's not a bit of this writing schtick I hate, including marketing (although marketing is at the very bottom of my Love List). Each piece has elements of excitement and challenge. and each phase demands my attention, and sometimes blind faith.

This professional edit part is where a kind-of-okay story gets bigger and better. Where the flat places are fluffed up and the holes are fixed and the unsatisfactory bits are either made brilliant or they're cut. The incredible skill of one editor is going to bring my sweaty effort, currently wearing dirty and tattered workout clothes, to something ready to walk out on the dance floor wearing the sexiest gown on the planet.

My first book, Red Tide, was edited by Harvey Stanbrough. He was the perfect editor for that book. My second book, The Missings, was edited by blogmate Jodie Renner. She was the perfect editor for that book. I've been blessed to be able to find the right editor at the right time.

Readers, do you know how important an editor is?

Writers, do you love this part as much as I love it?

I swear I can hear the orchestra tuning up...

The UnDone Book Paradigm Shift

Kimberly Hitchens is the founder and owner of Booknook.biz, an ebook production company that has produced books for over 1500 authors and imprints.

Hey, gang!  The full title of this post is actually "The UnDone Book Paradigm Shift and Why It Will Kill Your Authoring Career Faster Than Carbon Monoxide," but Google gets cranky about really, really, reeeeeeeeeaaaallly long blog post titles, so...it is as you see it.

Some of you may remember a blog post of mine from February, entitled "Amazon Ain't EBay, Folks," at which time I discussed the epidemic of "good-enough-itis."  That being, a sea change in the minds of people who are currently typists, who decide to become writers, and from there to authors...without stopping along the way to be absolutely sure that what they are publishing isn't merely "good enough," but is, rather, the very best that they can write. Today's blog post is about this also; it's about the phenomena of rewriting your books, after they've been published, which is part and parcel of this illness.

While I Was Minding My Own Business...

...playing hooky on a geek forum, I was involved in a discussion that started out as a request, from a new user, to "make light modifications onto mobi [A Kindle book] while [she was] reading them on [her] Paperwhite."  Now, mind you, this wasn't the author; this was simply a reader.

The discussion went back and forth a bit, with some of the geekier folks talking about how it would eat the battery, etc., even if it could be done, but the gist was, this was a reader who wanted to make changes to the author's original text.

The net result was that she was told that it couldn't, realistically, be done. However, another member piped up, saying:


"What would be good would be a mechanism (in the Kindle software) to report errors easily back to the publisher anonymously.

"Amazon could easily do this. Publishers wishing to join could provide Amazon with a 'typos' email address, and any reported typos could be automatically sent to the publisher with the exact location of the error.

"I would use it! Reporting typos to publishers is a tedious process. To be able to do it quickly and while reading would be splendid. And then if I ever re-read the book, the publisher will have (I hope) issued an update from the crowd-source proof-reading.  

"But I don't see that happening either, although it would be almost trivial for Amazon to implement."  [Italic emphasis added]

When I Picked Myself Up Off The Floor...

...after having nearly fainted, I decided to compose a reply.  Now, I know this poster, fairly well; he's an intelligent, thoughtful person.  I'm quite sure that any contributions he would make to a book would be of value.  However, after giving this some thought, here was my reply:


 "Oh, PLEASE, please, please, do not suggest that to Amazon, or even promote it as a good idea.

"Nothing against you, my friend; I'm sure your edits would be great. But as someone who often receives these little billet-doux from (authors who have received them from) Amazon, please don't encourage this. I can't tell you what it's like to get notices from Amazon to fix two 'typos' (one a British usage, BTW), in a 226K-word book. Or, to make changes because ONE letter is missing from a backlist book of 140K words, that was scanned and OCR'ed.

"I've ranted about this, privately, to Amazon, because it's the worst possible scenario--the dreadful books, those that are unreadable, receive no notices, no edits at all. Why? Because nobody reads them, thus the reading public doesn't submit errors, and Amazon doesn't (essentially) forward them. The amazing irony of the situation is that it's the popular books, the best books--the books that were edited in the first place, carefully constructed, formatted, etc.--that get read, and thus get these 'helpful hints' from readers. 

"So, the books that need it the most, don't get it at all, and the books that need it the least, do. Authors feel compelled to make the edits right away, and so end up remaking books more than once a year. And I'd point out: this never would have happened a mere 10 years ago; hell, not even five. The 'immediacy' and instant gratification of the digital age seem to imply that authors and publishers need to make those edits right away. Ten years ago, publishers would have taken any letters that they'd received about typos, stuck it in a file, and made the edits--if ever--when a second edition was published. Not even a second print run.

"While I see the advantages, to some publishers, of essentially 'crowd-sourcing' the proof-reading for a book, the change in the publishing world about 'instantly fixing typos' seems to me to be absurd, for, as I say, merely a decade ago nobody would have had their knickers in a twist about a few typos in a book. Now readers submit them as if they are the beta readers or proofreading personnel for a publisher--not the consumers. It's a paradigm shift, and I'm not sure it's a good one. 

"It's contributing to new phenomena in which the book is never done. We see books being updated, re-uploaded, authors imploring Amazon to send notices to the people who've already bought them--it's contributing to an environment in which Indy authors, particularly, have begun to think of Amazon as their critique group; that it's okay to put up a book that's not "really" done. It's not serving either the authors or the buyers/readers well. 

"I can see the point in sending notices to Amazon about a book that's rife with errors. But the types of notices we see, at least, are as I described above--1 or 2 errors in books of over 140-220K words. It's ridiculous. And as I said, I think it's contributing to a mindset that isn't serving either side of the equation very well, because when a reader buys a book, s/he should not be expected to contribute to the perfection of the book; it should be a complete work. That's what we thought ten years ago, and it's what we should think now. Amazon and Nook, Kobo, Diesel, et al, should not be Wattpad, and when an author/publisher puts a book up for sale, it should be polished, complete, and DONE."



Now, the poster to whom I was replying responded, saying he'd seen some good points my response, indicating his clearly superior intelligence (ha!), but I'm deadly serious about this.  At our shop, we see a plague of rewriting.  An absolute plague.  I mean, hell, we're easy--we'll take money to remake books all day.  But this mindset--that the book is never done--is a real detriment to authors.  An author should be working on her next book--not rewriting her last one.  Certainly not over and over.  

Nor should authors and publishers be falling prey to a mindset in which instant gratification needs to be indulged over a handful of typos.  It's simply not warranted.  We wouldn't be republishing a book in print, over those same typos, and it's flatly ridiculous to keep making changes of this nature just because a book is available digitally.  Why be held hostage to this?  A reader doesn't expect you to make changes today, if the book is in print, so why would you do it just because you are selling a book on Kindle?  

When that baby is done being birthed, authors need to stop trying to stuff it back into the womb.  If the baby is full term, great, give birth.  But if it isn't, stop pushing.  If all the labor is over, and the kid is out in the world, then get pregnant with your next.  Don't keep trying to re-birth that last book.  

So what's the message?  Deliver the very best book you can--but deliver it once. Not twice, or three times, or more.  Don't expect paying customers to be your beta readers, and don't rewrite the book once you've published it.  If you polished it enough before you published it in the first place, then you are doing nothing but distracting yourself from your real work, which is writing your next book.  If it's so awful that it warrants rewriting, you shouldn't have published it in the first place--and there's no excuse.  As discussed in my February blog post, there are tons of critique groups that are perfectly free, and plenty of sites like Goodreads and Wattpad upon which you can publish works-in-progress and get feedback.  

My blog post in short?  A book is not a Word document.  It's a BOOK. The faster you think of it as a book--as something that will be in print, immutable and stamped forever in history as your contribution to literature--the better an author you will be.

Is Amazon's Punctuation Punctiliousness Persnickety?

By:  Kimberly Hitchens is the founder and owner of Booknook.biz, an ebook production company that has produced books for over 750 authors and imprints.

(The second part of this post appeared in the Booknook.Biz newsletter, newly renamed The Booknook Beacon [sorta]--yes, I'm a sucker for alliteration--so if you've read the newsletter, feel free to skip that bit.  If you skipped the Newsletter--for SHAME!--then read on.)

Amazon Attacks

No, sorry--if you're awaiting a single-breasted woman with a quiver full of arrows to come out swinging, you're to be sadly disappointed.  For those of you earning your filthy lucre by writing, however, nose up:  we had another one of our clients harangued by mega-publisher Amazon about "errors" in her book--with a politely-worded demand that the book be taken down, fixed and re-uploaded.

The history?  We're speaking here of a widely-respected woman author, Edgar-nominated, legacy published, who's put up a handful of her backlist titles on Amazon, as well as on Barnes & Noble's self-publishing platform, PubIt, with our assistance.  Over the past few years, she's put these books up one at a time, each taking some effort, as all of her backlist had to be scanned and OCR'd (have Optical Character Recognition run) first, then proofed,  then edited a skosh (oy, none of you are immune from the rewriting addiction!), and then converted and magically (ahem) made into ebooks.  Her titles aren't wee shorties, but hefty, good-sized books.  We recently received an email from her which contained the Amazon missive, which instructed her as already related, for--wait for it--a whopping TWELVE (12) missing periods (and one word with--gasp!--a space in it).  Yes, Virginia--missing periods, and, no, you're not pregnant.  Twelve missing periods in 90,000 words. 

Now, the part that slays me is--where is this editorial oversight when it comes to other titles?  Heavens, I wonder, am I the fool to bite the hand that feeds me?  But--I'm compelled to ask:  if editorial oversight and curation is to be imposed by Amazon, then what about titles like these?  Broken Bones, Cheryl Taylor and this beauty:  JFK VIP2RIP .  Twelve missing periods, compared to these, just as two exemplars?

My Theory, however, is:  

My theory runs like this, and I doubt it's an earth-shattering epiphany:  only those who get read, and who have fans, actually get audited.  In other words:  only those of you lucky to be talented enough, who have worked hard enough, have studied the craft enough, to write well enough to attract readers who care about your work, get these types of letters from Amazon, because it's your readers that send them the corrections.  The truly awful don't get read; don't attract readers; don't have fans that care about the quality of the work--and thus, slip through Mighty Amazon's Gates.  However, all that being said, the inequity of one author--who's paid a  lot of good money to get her (backlist) books up on Amazon, and in fine format, if I do say so myself--being told to "fix" the book and republish it, when books like those I've pointed out run about freely, like varmints gamboling on a newly-turfed lawn, seems grossly unfair.  I'm all for some curation--heavens know, you've all heard me whinge about it often enough--but if Amazon's going to police well-respected authors, then I think she needs to spend a little time looking beneath her own skirts, as well.   Self-publishing is self-publishing, regardless of whether it's Neil Gaiman or Cheryl Taylor, and inequitable enforcement seems a gross miscarriage for those who've done all the necessary heavy lifting, versus those who have not.  Why the discrepancy?

That's my primary note for this week; for those of you still equivocating about whether to spend that money on an editor, or whining about how "critique groups are mean," pay attention--suffering those crits may just save YOU a letter like this some day--and yours might be warranted.  

1st Annual WNBA National Writing Contest

No, guys, that is NOT the "Women's National Basketball Association," but, rather, the Women's National Books Association, and it has recently announced its first annual Writing Contest. The WNBA is a 90+ year old venerated organization of women and men across the broad spectrum of writing and publishing. Membership includes Editors, Publishers, Literary Agents, Professors, Academics, Librarians, Authors, Book Marketers and many others involved in the world of books.

Works may be submitted now until September 15th, and include unpublished fiction (short stories or novel excerpts) and poetry.

Interested?  They want only your "highest caliber work!"  Click here to find out more information.  

 Until next time, to mooch a phrase from someone worth mooching:  Good Night and Good Luck.  

Fourteen Things to Consider Before You Tie the Knot

By Peg Brantley, Writer at Work, Stumbling Toward Publication

Strong marriages yield strong results. Strong results strengthen marriages.

In a traditional publishing relationship, most writers are assigned his or her editor. It’s an arranged marriage. Some of them work, some of them don’t. It’s a crapshoot.

The world has changed, and now writers actually have choices. So do editors. We’ve entered the equivalent of the 60’s. Well, sorta.

Assuming we all agree every writer needs an editor in order to fulfill herself (and vice versa), the important thing here is to find a good match. Ideally, you want to create numerous offspring, make a lot of friends, and grow old together.

As I approach the time when I’m ready to enter into a relationship, I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that the first collaborative effort, and subsequent offspring, is like living together first to test the waters. Can we communicate? Do we have the same goals? Will you respect me in the morning?

Here are some things to consider (in no particular order) before you move in together:

•         Do you love my genre (or general genre)?
•         Who are your current partners?
•         Who are your former partners and why did you part ways?
•         How do you prefer to communicate?
•         Do you have a personal philosophy regarding editing?
•         What are your strengths?
•        What are your weaknesses?
•         How long does it take you, on average, to complete a project?
•         Are you too cheap? Too expensive? (This is not a trick question, although it can be tricky.)
•         What professional writer/editor organizations do you belong to?
•         When and why did you become a freelance editor?
•         What biases do you have that might reflect in your edits or editing style?
•         What are the main ways you feel you help a writer take their work to the next level?
•         Have you ever left a relationship early because you hated something about it?

I fully understand not all of these questions are going to be answered right away. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have them.

For those of you who have made the commitment, or experienced the pain of divorce, what should I be looking for . . . or looking out for?