Dear Writers, I’m your reader (as well as being an editor/proofreader), and what I’m looking for is a smooth and engaging experience with your words. Inconsistent capitalizing of words that normally aren’t makes me stop and wonder if this instance is different and how it relates to the rest of your story. Don’t make me…
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Getting Real About Self-Publishing Costs
Let’s get real. Publishing is not likely to be a major profit center in whatever business you are up to unless you plan on writing tens of genre (Westerns, science fiction, fantasy, romance) fiction novels a year. Except for a rare few, that’s how people make their living as writers. Publishing has never been a…
Word vs. InDesign for Document Revisions
After I ran into a misunderstanding for a multi-authored book revision between making changes to content and dealing with formatting, I realized again how Microsoft Word-centric most writers and subject matter experts are, and that I need to take extra time to educate in order to avoid client anxiety and create the best input for…
In Search of a Smooth Read
Taking a philosophical turn on the editing and proofreading thing today. There are all kinds of tools that editors use to find inconsistencies in word usage or capitalization, punctuation, etc. that make a proofreading pass, for example, go faster. Since most of these tools are not available for the Mac operating system (the one I…
The Virtue of Editorial Flexibility
When I first read this article on a conversation between novelist Donna Tartt and publisher/editor Michael Pietsch, I could definitely see Tartt’s frustration in dealing with editors in the past, which pretty much solidified her wish to stand out by rebelling against “the rules.” I’ll bet she does write readable, comprehensive prose, though, or she…
