Self publishing: why would you do it -- and how?!

If you're thinking seriously about self-publishing, your mind is probably bursting with questions. How much will it cost? Which of the many options should you take? What will be expected of you? What can you expect from your printer? How do you get the books to market? Can you hope to break even -- or make a profit?

The reasons for self-publishing are many and varied, but by far the most common one is sheer frustration. You're not a new writer. You've spent five or ten or twenty years honing your craft; you're edited to perfection; you have something to say ... and to save your life, you can't connect with an agent or publisher.

This could be because you're writing in a marginalized niche where potential sales don't warrant a full-size printrun from a publishing house. It could be because you live so far away from the locations where the appropriate publishers are that you can't "do lunch" with them, or meet them at conventions. Or because you can't afford to travel to London or New York, take an agent to lunch, dressed in the kind of glad-rags that're mandatory for such meetings.

Perhaps you're hoping to earn enough through writing to fix the car, buy the kids new jeans, get broadband, so you can work properly ... sound familiar? This describes 80% of writers -- professional writers, not just the aspiring hopefuls! Very few can afford to take plane or train to the Big Smoke, dress like a business professional and pick up the tab for an extremely expensive lunch. It would blow a large hole in five hundred dollars -- in which case, the kids are certainly not going to be getting new jeans this month! And most people put the "necessaries" before the "pie in the sky" stuff, like wooing agents into maybe representing us. The worst news is that you might have to "do lunch" a dozen times to land a proper agent who will work hard to find you a proper publisher, who'll offer a proper contract ... but results are not guaranteed. You can spend years on this treadmill, spend a great deal of money and end up holding a handful of smoke.

At some point along this road, almost every writer will consider self-publishing. The ones who have begun to find the treadmill too expensive, too infuriating, or just too long (above seven years on the hunt, you must start to consider alternatives) will begin to study the craft of self-publishing --

And the first thing you learn is ... it's not a cake walk.

Detractors and doomsayers talk about self-publishing as if anyone can do it. They run down the craft as if it's so easy, and in fact -- it's not!

At least, not if you want to do it properly, with the object in mind of building a business and a career as a writer.

It is true that if you're largely without talent, and wholly without the commitment and integrity necessary to learn the writer's trade, you can self-publish at Lulu.com or CreateSpace.com, click a button and -- wham! You're on Amazon.com ... that easy.

It is also true that your book will be among the Greatest Literary Disasters of this century (and the century has already seen some horrors; you're in nasty company here).

Few readers are stupid. In fact, most are getting extremely savvy. To get a sale, you'll have to make a chapter or three available for free (10% of the whole work as a sample is a good idea), and in those pages you'll give away every secret. If you don't know how to spell or punctuate; if you don't know how to copy edit for repetitions and a blizzard of confusing pronouns -- all this will be apparent to the reader. You won't get a sale.

Here is the inescapable fact: your job is to become an excellent writer before you pick up the publishing challenge. If you're good enough as a writer, and after years trying to connect with an agent or publisher you're still working alone, going broke on the hunt, and getting gray hairs as five years turns into ten --

It's time. Pick up the gauntlet.

Self-publishing offers so many options these days, it's confusing. The first thing we're going to do is take some of the confusion out of the field.

Right here, we’ll assume your book is finished, and exhaustively edited. Think about this! It’s too late to find the grammatical and typographical errors, once the book has been printed, bookbound and delivered, ready for transshipment (forwarding though to your associate bookstores). If you’re not 100% sure of your editing and proofing, the time to fix the problems is now. Remember, the printer won’t proofread for you!

It’s a wise idea to look at the difference between all the various printers and publishers you’re likely to meet in your endeavors. Today’s market is a complex place, and it’s going to become more complicated as the traditional kinds of printers and publishers are joined by the electronic, digital and e-versions.

When most people think “publisher,” they have in mind a company such as Harper Collins or Random House, but this is far from the only option; and when most people think “printer,” they have in mind a massive workshop churning out tabloid printing — but once again, this image is becoming increasingly stereotypical.

Let’s take a quick look at who printers and publishers are likely to be in this century ... at what they do, and what they don’t do!


The major publishing house...
...is a multi-million dollar corporation with offices in London and New York, and other centers around the globe. These are the top-end, mass-market publishing houses. They don’t usually look at work which is not first ‘screened’ by an agency. If they accept your work, they do everything for you: even if you’ve already edited it to your satisfaction, the chances are they’ll edit it again. Everyone has a different opinion about what passages are critical and which inspire yawns, and when they’re paying you (which is to say, you’re on contract), they call the shots. They’ll do the layout and design, the printing and binding, and the marketing.

You get royalties at the end of the day. Accounts are settled every three or six months (depending on the publisher), and you usually get paid after a further six months, for copies which were sold in the “accounting period.”

How much you get paid depends on the publisher. A standard royalty contract is something like 10% Net. Net Price is the part of the retail price which is returned to the publisher, and is a fraction of the Gross, or RRP, Price. Net Price is largely what the publisher negotiates for. It can be as little as 10% of the gross price, if the book is proving hard to market ... it can be as much as 40%, if the publisher owns the distribution company too! If you sign with a small press (as many new writers do), a safe bet is, Net Price = 25%. So your royalty will be 10% of one fourth of the RRP.

If the book retails for A$19.95, Net is about $5 and your royalty will be in the order of 50c. You might get paid an advance of up to two-thirds of the book’s expected income ... but remember, the book then has to sell enough copies to recover the advance before you get paid again. You’ll only get paid for sold copies. Shop soiled returns, review copies and remainder copies don’t earn royalties. If you’re with a major publisher and the printrun is 20,000+, you can do quite nicely. If you’re with a small publisher, and the printrun is 3,000 - 5,000 it’s not quite so lucrative, even though the thrill of being in print remains the same.


The small publisher, or small press...
...is a small business, or perhaps even an individual who can be publishing out of a home office. By far the largest body of listings in any of your Writers’ Marketplace-type directories are small publishers. The downside is, they sometimes only do two books in any one year, and their printruns can be under 2,000. The upside is, they’ll look at your work when the big companies at the high end of the industry won’t. The small press is still a fully professional publishing house: they don’t charge you a penny in fees or commissions ... they do pay royalties. And most importantly, they’ll give you a start when no one else will. Many writers start here, though it remains a minefield. Small publishers begin to grow and are often taken over, “absorbed” by bigger publishing houses. This is not good news for the small publisher’s writers, who usually get dropped. The whole reason for the big publisher taking over the small fry was only to get rid of competition on the battlefield: the bookstore


The so-called “vanity publisher”...
...is a different genus, with a number of species! The rabid hyenas of this part of the market get the most coverage, because they charge the writer for everything, from the editing to the layout, and even some or all of the copies to be printed. In fact ... you have just self-published your book, they didn’t do anything for you, except take the credit for it, publish under their label — and, to be fair, if they’re a good vanity press, they’ll market the hell out of the work for you.

Some (most?) people get ripped off royally by the hyenas. The bad vanity press never rejects any book. No work is so poorly conceived of or crafted that they won’t take a few thousand dollars from the writer to lick it into something faintly resembling shape, put covers around it and get it into some bookstore, somewhere. But selling copies is another question ... and you won’t get paid until, or unless, you start to sell copies.

Yet, every vanity press probably dreams of the day when a potentially major writer comes to them ... this writer, having been rejected by every literary agency in the accessible universe, is ready to invest in the publishing venture. The saying used to go that if you had a good book, it would find a publisher. In today’s flooded, top-heavy marketplace, this is no longer true. Great books get rejected. Lesser works (read: rubbish) quite often get printed ... because they’re commercial ... or they were written by the publisher’s friend or relative and are printed as a favour ... or because a foolish writer, who in fact should know he or she is not-ready-yet, sluiced money into the hands of a vanity publisher.

Focus on the italic sentence, above. Great books get rejected. Not every book produced by a vanity press is rubbish; not every vanity publisher is a conman. When great books have been tossed out by literary agencies who are “not reading at this time,” and therefore did not even read the cover letter or synopsis, many of these books filter down to the vanity presses. The honest vanity press should tell a writer when a book isn’t good enough to warrant the investment ... and they should be there like a safety net, to catch the good books, which would otherwise be consigned to the desk drawer.

Not all vanity presses are rabid hyenas. Not all books churned out by them are dross, and not all writers get ripped off this way ... but you should be aware that enough people do get conned for the very term “vanity press” to have earned a muddy reputation. No one could recommend that you publish with them -- but on the other hand (and this is rarely mentioned!) no one can guarantee that you’ll be another victim! If you choose an honest vanity publisher, and you've learned your craft, and they market the heck out of your book, and your book is as good as you think it is, you could actually fare better with a reputable vanity press than with a small publisher. (The small press might have too-limited distribution, whereas the vanity press pushed you into online book clubs and so forth.) But no matter which vanity press you choose, the bottom line remains the same: the key word is vanity.

They will charge you ... you will pay for every part of the process; and it won't be cheap.

However, keep in mind one thing: a good vanity press should have a distribution network. If your book is good, and they’re tigers rather than hyenas, there’s no reason for you to be a victim, though the risk remains and this fact is inescapable: when a book fails at market, and it was published by a “real publisher” ... the writer is never asked to pay back any advances. The publisher deems the exercise to have been a tax-writeoff and drives on. But when a book fails at market, and it was published by a vanity press, the company loses nothing. The writer loses everything. Which begs the question, where's the impetus for the press to work marketing miracles?

In fact, the impetus is there, because vanity publishers with great integrity are dying to find the next Wilbur Smith or Greg Bear or Maeve Binchy or J.K. Rowling. They can retire on the discovery! But the downside to all the remains the same -- they can't lose money, no matter if you lose your house!



The joint venture, or subsidy publisher...
...is not a thousand miles from the vanity press, but at least the costs are shared. You put up some of the float, so does the company. The risk is shared and all parties have a vested interest in the project, so, in theory, all parties will get out there and market as hard as they can!

There are no guarantees of sales, and when a book fails, everyone loses. However, a company will carry a four-figure loss a great deal better than the writer. Once again, the words “tax-writeoff” leap to mind! Also, the subsidy publisher can spread his interests around: if he can publish 20 books in a year and only 15 succeed, while the other 5 lose money, he’s doing well. The failures cut his tax bill and five doomed writers had all shared in his investment.

But if you place yourself in the position of one of the failed writers, the picture is no more rosy than it would be for the writer who chose to go with a vanity press: you lost your investment. Subsidy publishing can work for you ... or not. It’s a gamble, and as the saying goes, ‘Only gamble with what you can afford to lose.”


POD -- what is it?
... The acronym stands for publish on demand, or print on demand, which are two very different things.

Print on demand is used by a publisher to minimize risk. It's also called "empty warehouse," because books are physically produced only if, and when, they're ordered. A printrun can be 1,000, 100 or 1. The books have been properly edited, designed and published -- they're just waiting for print orders. Hence -- print.

Publish on demand is used by a writer who is genuinely self-publishing. There's no publisher involved, just the writer, the printshop and the customer. In this case, a printshop like Lulu.com will actually be quoted as the publisher! This is the "iffy and dodgy" end of the POD trade. When absolute rubbish finds its way into publication, this is usually where, and how, it happens, because no one at a printshop (like Lulu.com or CreateSpace.com) is watchdogging the process. Spelling mistakes, bad grammar, hopeless storytelling and all, the book is just "published." (And this, unfortunately, is where POD has earned a bad reputation which is actually far from warranted.)



The Print on Demand (empty warehouse) publisher...
...is a newcomer to the field, and not to be confused with the vanity or subsidy press. The Print on Demand publisher is a real publisher ... in a thimble. And that’s an accolade, not a criticism! The warehouse is empty, if it even exists at all. Every book in the catalog is in software form ... and so is the catalog. The brochure is more than likely a webpage. Readers find the book in which they’re interested either by performing a search with an engine, or via links pages.

Let's say you wanted a book teaching you how to write shorthand. You’d go to Google and type in the search field something like “shorthand tutorial” ... click GO. Everything from tertiary courses to manuals will be offered to you. You can start there and surf online bookstores for the next fifteen minutes. Many of the books they will ship to you will have been mass-published ... many will have come from POD publishers instead.

When a POD publisher gets an order via its webpage, the computer sends a message to another computer in a printshop across the country, even across the world. One copy is send to the laser printer, and then bound, all completely by automatic.

These are top of the line digital systems. The book is finished as it comes off the printer. The whole thing then goes into some form of binding machine (there are numerous kinds; and they fall into the realm of the printer, not the publisher, so we’re not concerned about them here). The book is bound, and guillotined on three open edges, and it’s ready to ship, in an issue of ONE.

Is a POD publisher a “real” publisher? Most certainly. The author was charged nothing to get the book into shape. The publisher marketed the heck out of it (on the Internet, which is where these books are sold in their largest numbers. Which writer could possibly object to where sales are generated, so long as copies are shipped and all parties get paid?) ... and at the end of the day the writer was paid royalties. The risks of publishing were minimized because the big investment in printing was not made. Every copy manufactured was pre-sold.

And these are real books: glossy color covers, top-quality paper, indestructible binding. The only differences between them and bookstore books is, they were laser printed on bond paper, rather than on Bog (newspaper) stock. In twenty years, the laser printed book will not have aged ... the book done on newspaper will be yellow. And of course, the printrun was small.

The main downside to POD publishers is still the price. POD books are expensive because they're printed, bound and shipped one at a time. Whereas a mass-printer would get the price down to $5, the POD printshop will charge $8 - $10 for the same item, which means they're also going to be correspondingly expensive at the checkout.

Also ... and maybe this is important to you! ... you don’t often find those books in stores; you’ll seldom be asked to meet the people, shake hands and sign books. In other words, there's little opportunity for the writer to show off!

The upside is, the risk is minimal for all concerned, so the books happen, and you will get royalties.


The eBook publisher...
...is a little like a POD publisher, but different insofar as no physical books are produced. Any book, from a novel to an encyclopedia, is generated in software, and published to software, and it’s made available to the reader as a download. If it’s too large to be downloaded ... say, 20MB or more ... it can be sold on CD-Rom, but broadband access has made files up to 50MB downloadable. There is no printing process whatsoever -- but the publishing process should be just as stringent as if the book were about to be mass produced by a major New York company.

Today, eBooks are being made in many formats, not all of which suit all readers (in this context, “readers” being the screen device displaying them, not the human doing the reading). The format which still reaches the most people is probably Adobe Acrobat, which can be read on any PC or Mac, desktop or laptop, and a Palm device can be “synchronised” to the main computer (meaning, eBooks can be downloaded from the computer to the Palm handheld device). But the Adobe format is being challenged by Mobipocket, Kindle, Stanza, and many more. The field is expanding fast.

The most important aspect of eBooks is security; writers are naturally concerned about having their works out there, copied willy-nilly and printed out in batches of hundreds, for sale on the other side of the world, without the behest, or even the knowledge of the originating author! This can happen, and there will always be ways to get around a document’s security ... but good encryption settings on the eBook file will handicap thieves.

The eBook is sold via an online point of sale, and royalties are sent back from the publisher to the writer on a regular basis, usually on a "delay 30" or "delay 60" agreement. This means that the writer will be paid at the end of March for books sold the month, or two months, previously.

Or, the eBook can easily be hosted on the writer’s own website, and the writer then receives the money directly via an “e-commerce solution.” However, the key to selling eBooks is the same as the keys to selling any other kind of books: marketing. It’s very possible to have a glorious website which attracts no visitors at all. You have to market hard, but if you have a website, you at least have something to market; and since eBooks involve no physical printing, your investment is almost all about time, not money.

Do get a reputable website designer to build your website. They know tricks of the trade you couldn’t possibly know. (How will your site look in other browsers, such as Opera, Firefox and Netscape? What’s stopping your Javascript from working? Why are some people “whitescreening” on your pages? Some visitors can’t download things at all, what’s going on? You set out to be a writer, not a programmer! Stick to your job.)

If you intend to self-publish eBooks, do your homework. Learn how to do it properly -- don't just throw the project together. You'll need a beautiful cover for catalog pictures, proper interior design, and bookmarking. In short, you'll need to know your DTP program inside and out, even if you don't intend to print anything.

DTP for book design is a whole 'nother topic, and one we'll get to very soon! Be on the mailing list and keep up with this blog; we'll keep you posted when new items go online.

Turn page to:
Self publishing: where do you begin?

Writing syle ... exactly what is it?

Your writing style is your unique writer's voice -- and flaws here are the hardest things of all to find and correct, because these are most often "spoken language" traits, "habits of speech." They pass over into the written word, where they don't belong, and where they glare off the page sounding clumsy, awkward, or just plain weird.

There is no five-minute fix for this point of copy editing, but many years ago a slim little book was written, Elements of Style. In 1918, William Strunk Jr., an English professor, attempted to touch down on every essential element and explain it with examples. In the following 90 years, the work has been revised several times; it was released into the public domain in 1995, and at the time of this writing you can buy it on paper (Macmillan, New York), or download it as an ebook.

Stay on this page, and a little further down, we'll lift the cover and take a peek into Strunk's slim volume.

Some errors of style are colloquialisms, or regionalisms — slang terms from a geographical area which don't mean much, a hundred miles away. For instance:

A "buttie" and a "sarnie" are the same thing. A sandwich. But only in the UK. "Miffed" means annoyed, so long as you're in the US. "Chuntering" is a cross between grumbling and chattering ... in the UK. "Chooks and snags and keks" are chickens and sausages and eggs ... so long as you're in Australia. "Pollies" could be parrots or politicians, depending on where you are. "Singlets and beanies" are undershirts and woollen hats ... in Australia. "Sourdoughs and Cheechakos" are terms making perfect sense, in Alaska! "Pootling" is a verb meaning "to drive slowly" or wander about at leisure ... in London.

So, watch out for colloquialisms and regionalisms in your narrative. You can use them in dialog, where they're important in the development of your character's unique voice. So long as the meaning is either contextually clear, or you make it clear, this is the place to use colloquialisms. It's when they escape into the narrative that the problem begins!

However, most errors of style that come out at the copy editing stage are speech patterns which don't work on paper. A good example of this is the passive voice. In speech, you can get away with using the passive voice; it sounds absolutely normal: "Insufficient time is being spent on the problem," is perfectly normal in speech.

However, agents, editors and publishers want the active voice, virtually to the exclusion of all else. In the active voice you would say, "The problem is being neglected."

Look at these examples of active and passive; sort them out and see the way to navigate through these rapids:

Passive:
The river was being progressively polluted by farming along both banks.
Active:
Farmer along both banks of the river were progressively polluting it.

Passive:
The little boy was brought to school by his father.
Active:
The man brought his little boy to school.

Passive:
The book had been read by a thousand students.
Active:
A thousand students had read the book.

Passive:
The intruder was mauled by three guard dogs.
Active:
Three guard dogs mauled the intruder.

Passive:
Maureen was made a fool of by Uncle Arthur.
Active:
Uncle Arthur made a fool of Maureen.

Here's the trick: look for the verb. (Above, the verbs are bring read, maul, make, and "progressively pollute.") Look for who performs the verb. Reword the sentence to make sure that the subject is actually performing the verb:

Passive: The cat was rescued by two young girls.
Verb: rescue.
The girls performed the rescue, not the cat!
The verb was performed ON the cat -- he was rescued!
Therefore,
Active: Two young girls rescued the cat.

Editors are quite strict about this point. It's usually active voice or the rejection pile.

Watch out particularly for catch phrases. For instance, "A fine performance was given by all concerned," sounds fine in your ear, but on paper, editors want to see the active voice: "All concerned delivered fine performances."

Copy editing is the time to be thorough, and meticulous ... and to know the rules.

Another excellent example of an error of style is to overindulge in "wordiness." When we're speaking, our speech patterns govern how we talk, describe things, relate other conversations, and, again, we can get away with almost anything. However, in text, wordiness soon becomes apparent. Your copy editing will be an interesting experience for some time, as you discover how to weed passages like this:

I was told by one of the teachers that Roger is a much better than average student with a fairly good attitude toward the other children in the class, and, in reality, the only area in which his behavior is below-par would have to be his hobby, which — it would be absolutely accurate to say — is inclined to make rather a mess.

Try this:

Roger's teacher says he is a good student who responds well to classmates, though his hobby makes a mess.

The simplest rule is: never use five words to say what you can say in three! (Editors and agents can spot this at a glance, and they will know (or think) your work is padded out to make a short story much longer. Some magazines pay by the word, and even though its only 3c or 5c per word, if you can sprawl the story out over an extra thousand words, you just picked up another fifty dollars! Expect strict editing from magazines that pay by the word, for obvious reasons.)

Literally hundreds of bad speech habits shadow every word we speak aloud, and none of them matters because the spoken word vanishes into the ether. The trouble starts when they're written down. They come back to haunt us. For this reason, political speeches are written long ahead of time, by professional speech writers!

Having said all this, it is also very important to find your own unique "voice" as a writer, and hang onto it. If 250 different writers were to obey every rule of the little book Elements of Style, they would sound almost identical.

This might be fine for academic writing -- but not for fiction, where it's a writer's unique treatment of words, sentences, dialog, narrative, discription, that go together to make successful fiction happen. We don't want or need romances, westerns, historicals and science fiction to all sound alike!

Copy editing is a process in which you must use your judgement. Don't get so wordy that editors and agents constantly reject you ... at the same time, don't let adherence to the Elements of Style strangle out either your voice or your creativity.

At times in this area of copy editing, it will be as if you're walking on a tightrope. When you begin to feel overwhelmed, STOP. Instead of editing yourself to death, or rewriting for the tenth time, go for a walk. Put on some music. Make coffee (apple tea will also get your brain going). Put your feet up. Pick up a couple of dozen books by other writers, in your genre, if you're writing in a niche. READ. See how other writers express themselves by flipping through the books and touching down on a paragraph here and there. You're not looking at the story or the character development, or the descriptive narrative. You're looking at the flow of words.

And some of the time, you're going to see thoroughly sloppy writing. Best-selling writers are allowed to break the rules. When you're breaking into the industry at the bottom, you have to know what the rules are, and play by them. However, if you pick up a dozen books and read a few pages here and there, you'll see some extremely good writing, as well as dross.

Be analytical. Try to key, or focus, on what these writers are doing that works, and works well. See if you can get into the habit of writing concisely. If not, fall back on copy editing to prune, or weed, sentences which are too wordy. The more you do this, the easier it will become. Eventually, you'll be able to do it without even thinking about it.

Errors in style ... the Elements of Style ... is an absolutely vast subject. An in-depth study would take a whole book, and indeed, entire books have been devoted to this topic. Copy editing, as a job, involves knowing most of the rules and making personal judgements: where do you conform to the rulebook? Where do you diverge, to protect your unique writing style?


William Strunk Jr.'s Elements of Style is the skinny volume we recommend. In the space of around 110pp, he looks are every imaginable awkward use of the language and, through the means of examples, smooths out the wrinkles.

Here's an example:

Keep related words together.

The position of the words in a sentence is the principal means of showing their relationship. The writer must therefore, so far as possible, bring together the words, and groups of words, that are related in thought, and keep apart those which are not so related.

The subject of a sentence and the principal verb should not, as a rule, be separated by a phrase or clause that can be transferred to the beginning.

Poor
Wordsworth, in the fifth book of The Excursion, gives a minute description of this church.

Better
In the fifth book of The Excursion, Wordsworth gives a minute description of this church.

Poor
Cast iron, when treated in a Bessemer converter, is changed into steel.

Better
By treatment in a Bessemer converter, cast iron is changed into steel.

The objection is that the interposed phrase or clause needlessly interrupts the natural order of the main clause. This objection, however, does not usually hold when the order is interrupted only by a relative clause or by an expression in apposition. Nor does it hold in periodic sentences in which the interruption is a deliberately used means of creating suspense (see examples under Rule 18).

The relative pronoun should come, as a rule, immediately after its antecedent.

Poor
There was a look in his eye that boded mischief.

Better
In his eye was a look that boded mischief.

Poor
He wrote three articles about his adventures in Spain, which were published in Harper's Magazine.

Better
He published in Harper's Magazine three articles about his adventures in Spain.

Poor
This is a portrait of Benjamin Harrison, grandson of William Henry Harrison, who became President in 1889.

Better
This is a portrait of Benjamin Harrison, grandson of William Henry Harrison. He became President in 1889.

If the antecedent consists of a group of words, the relative comes at the end of the group, unless this would cause ambiguity.

Poor
A proposal to amend the Sherman Act, which has been variously judged

Better
A proposal, which has been variously judged, to amend the Sherman Act

Poor
The grandson of William Henry Harrison, who

Better
William Henry Harrison's grandson, Benjamin Harrison, who

Modifiers should come, if possible next to the word they modify. If several expressions modify the same word, they should be so arranged that no wrong relation is suggested.

Poor
All the members were not present.

Better
Not all the members were present.

Poor
He only found two mistakes.

Better
He found only two mistakes.

Poor
Major R. E. Joyce will give a lecture on Tuesday evening in Bailey Hall, to which the public is invited, on "My Experiences in Mesopotamia" at eight P. M.

Better
On Tuesday evening at eight P. M., Major R. E. Joyce will give in Bailey Hall a lecture on "My Experiences in Mesopotamia." The public is invited.

...and so on! The book is very "dense," meaning Strunk doesn't waffle on. He jumps directly from one sin to another, deals with each in a minimum of words and proceeds to the next. The book is invaluable if you're still in the stage where you're learning to analyze the language ... perhaps trying to figure our which combination of words is actually correct. If you're "playing by ear," this is the book for you.

You can actually download it: Click here to do just that! However, a book is so nice to have on the shelf, and you can also order it from Amazon.com, using the button to your left.

If Elements of Style sounds too dense -- too hard -- then by all means stay on this blog and check out a number of other posts. We're covering the same ground, but we're doing it with a coffee in one hand and a cookie in the other...!

Here are some more posts which will help you work out what Style is all about, and get it under control:

Being wordy: how much is too much?!

Is B following A, and Z following Y ...?! Are you sure?!

Is there an echo in here?!

Writing with consistency

Writing with absolute clarity

Be on our mailing list and keep up with new posts!

Manuscript formatting:get it down pat!

The instant an agent or editor takes your materiel out of the envelope, s/he gets whapped in the face by one feature which is so highly visible, its impossible to miss. Not your cover letter, nor the SASE. The first hurdle you must get over is right here, in the two or three seconds after your pages see daylight.

It's the manuscript formatting. The simple formatting of the page itself -- including the paper size, the font, the lot. Some editors and agents are so overworked, they'll reject right here, if you make one mistake. You could have written Harry Potter, and an editor wouldn't care. Mistakes at this stage are so visually obvious, you can be slapped onto the "rejects and returns" pile without a single word being read.

Which makes this a delicate and crucial subject ... read on!

All publishers have their own quirks and special requirements, but they all agree on the majority of points regarding how a manuscript ought to be formatted. There are so many different formats into which the same piece of text can be fed (the book, the webpage, the catalog, the magazine extract), and your job is to make sure the plain, ordinary body text supplied by you fits the bill. You can't afford to get fancy at all. Period. Don't insert any formatting, as neat as it might look on your own computer. For all you know, you might be trying to make square pegs fit into round holes.

Publishers, editors and agents should always be specific about what the want. The real chore of editing, at this point, is to ensure compliance. Every house will have a handout, a requirements guide. You can usually download it from the publisher's website these days.

Here are some of the things you'll be looking out for:

Most publishers still demand paper. (This is changing to accommodate email, but at the time of this writing it's still much more normal to send paper when submitting to a mainstream, and major, publishing house.

The paper American publishers want to see is US Letter size, which is 8.5" x 11.0" ... and some of them won't accept A4, though it's the normal paper size for the UK and Commonwealth. You'll need to get some larger paper (A3) specially guillotined to US Letter size.

Set a 1" (2cm) margin all around the page. If by any remotest chance you're typing on a typewriter, don't let your margins get too narrow; you're not fooling anyone by squishing in those extra words per page. Editors were up to these tricks decades ago! And, if typing, always adhere to one fixed "hard" margin on the left, never let the margin "wander in."

Format the text in a specific font. This is probably Times Roman 12pt, or 10 point courier. Do not set type in fonts other than the publisher specifies, not even the title on the cover sheet! There are excellent reasons for this. Editors might have to speed-read (or scan) 1,000 pages per day to sort wheat from chaff. (The chaff gets chucked back, fast.) The easier the page is to read, the more likely it will be to be read. It doesn't have to be pretty, just clear and easy on the eyes.

Never justify the right hand margin of the text. Editors swear up and down that justification makes reading harder. (Go figure.)

Use underlines to indicate where italicized words should be. (Because italics are harder to read. Same reason for using Times or Courier as the font.)

Indent the paragraphs to exactly .5"/1cm on the left only. Do not double-space block paragraphs. (Block paragraphs are paragraphs without any indent. This is the norm on webpages -- like this one -- but it won't pass muster on a manuscript intended for paper publishing.)

Never use more than one (two at most) spaces between sentences within the same paragraph. Huge gaps between sentences irritate the eye. Also, if your work is accepted and you're asked to send a disk, or an email attachment, with the work in electronic form, these extra spaces will have to be removed before typesetting ... and you're the one who's going to spend hours taking them out! Better not to put them in, in the first place, right?

If you're word processing on a computer, never use spacebar strikes to indent paragraphs. In fact, the "proper" way to do it is to use the tab-set rule at the top of the word processor page:

Click on this image to see it at full-size. Notice the rule at the top of the page; notice the two "teeth" or guides ... notice that the bottom one sets the left hand margin (it's aligned with the extreme left side of the text). Now, see the top 'tooth." Wherever you pull that little guy to, sets the paragraph indent. Now, all you have to do is hit ENTER (carriage return) at the end of a paragraph, and there you are. Auto paragraph indents ... which you can change at whim by adjusting the tab-set "tooth" there.

In keying-in, make sure you use the correct kind of quote (speech) marks for the country of your submission. In the US this means double quotes ("/"); in the UK, single quotes ('/') .

Always start a new person's dialog on a new line.

Always start a new sentence with a capital letter: no exceptions!

Always end a sentence with a period (.), ellipsis (...) or emrule (—), never comma or colon;

Always use curved "brackets" (/) for contextual parenthesis, never square brackets [/];

Print out in double-space lines (see the picture above). Never use single-spacing or even 1.5 spacing. Editors have tired eyes ... also, they like to scribble "corrections" on manuscripts, and you have to leave them plenty of scribbling space.

Never double-space paragraphs. You're already double-spacing the lines. If you double-space the paragraphs as well, your manuscript will blow out hugely. It could end up at 600pp for a fairly small novel, and the thickness of the stack of printout paper will be an off-putter before anyone looks at page 1. (It'll also cost a fortune to mail!)

Never use bold or bold-italic in the text; use underline only. Do not use capitalization or asterisks to indicate italics. Always use underline.

Make sure every page is numbered, on a manuscript. You know what offices are like. Someone turns on the a/c and the whole stack goes flying. It's gathered together, but it's out of order ... rejection. Instantly.

Place the author's name in the header on every page, and place the title of the work in the header on every page ... for the exact same reason as you're using page numbering!

Never use footers, only headers.

Never type in, or print out, colored fonts. They're just tough to read.

Where you want blank lines left to indicate a new line, use a hash mark (#) on that line. Indicate the end of the document with three hash marks (###).

These can be boring and aggravating rules. You ask yourself why you ever bothered to get a computer, since you just had to configure the machine to behave like a typewriter ... copy editing isn't always easy, or fun!

Remember, however: this is how the manuscript will be formatted for submission. Once an editor has approved it, and you're expecting a contract ... then, they'll need the whole file on a disk or jumpdrive. They'll take the absolutely plain file, as supplied by you, and they'll format it to suit their own typesetting.

The best thing you can do at this stage of copy editing is to meet them halfway, supply exactly what they want. If you can do this, you'll stand the very best chance of having your work read.

Tired eyes need big, plain fonts, and double-spaced printouts. And every publisher, editor and agent has a different way of working. Some might not notice footers, therefore footers are useless. Others might want only the author's byline in the header, not the whole book title. You won't know till you inquire, and get the "cheat sheet."

Always do some research before you call your copy editing finished and print out the manuscript. Find out exactly what your target publisher wants and needs. Do your best to meet their requirements.

Remember, a wrongly-formatted manuscript will be tossed back unread! One glance at it, and the editor opening the parcels knows instantly, you never bothered to find out what the company wanted. This certainly won't endear the editor to you, and if s/he is inundated with work, and tired, and annoyed, your SASE will be used at once!

Do a little extra work at the preparatory stage ... a little judicious copy editing right now, right here, it can pay dividends later.

Writing with absolute clarity

One of the first things an editor or publisher will be looking for in your submission is clarity of writing style.

Conversely ... one of the first things that'll win you a rejection slip is ambiguity!

If your readers have no idea what the heck you mean in a certain passage, you're being ambiguous. When you're editing for yourself, correcting these passages is the toughest of copy editing jobs, because it stands to reason that you always know what you mean. This is where friends and beta readers are indispensable. Ask them to tell you when they just, plain lost the thread of what you were saying. Change the wording so they do understand.

If you're using the right words; and if you've got a lasso on the "killer pronouns" (covered in the basic grammar series of post); and if your sentences are not long and rambling, and hard to follow (covered in the same post-series), you should be pretty darned readable.

It can be difficult to figure out why someone just can't understand what you meant. Have them tell you what they think you meant, and work backwards from there. Copy editing, in this instance, is like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. You become a detective, tracking down the reason something makes no sense.

For instance, you might have used a word the reader doesn't understand. You can look upon them contemptuously for not having a good vocabulary ... but this was a potential customer. If your friend or relative who's beta reading for you doesn't known what dystopian and existential and punctilious mean, it's a safe bet that a significant percentage of the readers in the bookshop don't know, either. The trick is to write with flair and style -- not strangling your style or suffocating your formidable vocabulary -- but at the same time remembering that if you hope to earn royalties, readers have to 1) buy the book, 2) understand and enjoy it, and 3) be eager to buy your next book.

If you're not writing for readers, go ahead and be as clever as you like. If you're writing for academia, you can safely assume they know what you're talking about! Of you're writing for the general marketplace, remember that the average reader of the English language is only reading at something like a Grade 8 or 9 level:

Literacy in America
On average, Americans have about 12.5 years of education. However, people read several grades lower than their highest educational achievement, so the average reading level for adult Americans is actually somewhere around eighth or ninth grade. Literacy skills vary widely, so you cannot assume that materials that work in one place or situation will be acceptable in another. They also vary by age and socioeconomic status: people in Medicaid programs tend to read at the fifth grade level or lower and literacy skills for those 65 and older are substantially lower than those for the population as a whole.

In the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS), which reports functional literacy in five levels, nearly half of the adults scored in the lowest two levels of literacy. However, 44 percent of people 65 and older scored in the lowest level, and over two thirds of welfare recipients scored in the lowest two levels. According to researchers, the materials in quality reports typically require literacy skills at Level 5.

Select for information on the findings of the National Adult Literacy Survey.
From http://www.talkingquality.gov/docs/section3/3_4.htm

If you're hoping to give up the day job and live on your royalties by writing for a niche or genre, it's a good idea to get to know who's reading your work. Also, read your competition! Don't "write down" to the reader, but without a doubt, you must write to be understood. If the reader can't understand you, they'll count the financial investment in your first book as a waste, will dump it at the nearest book-swap, and won't buy your next one.

Another area when you can be difficult to understand is in delicate subject matter, where you're trying to use euphemisms. Too many euphemistic terms, too many poetic, flowery sentences used to get around some sizzling (or gross) scenes, and anyone's writing can jump off the tracks. If the material is so gross, or so sizzling ... does it belong on the page? Credit your readers with imagination, and use the copy editing experience to make the final decisions on what "makes the cut" and what doesn't. Also, bear in mind, no one actually needs to have the physical act of love spelled out in every last detail; we've all known how it goes since about the age of seven! If you're uncomfortable with the material, do what writers used to do in the days before steamy fiction was acceptable. Leave two blank lines and cut to the next scene! Every reader knows exactly what happened during those blank lines, and you can duck the subject neatly, and hence avoid being so foggy and vague, readers were confused. Copy editing is the time to make this artistic decision.

Similarly, you must decide what level of violence you want to include. being realistic is one thing, but violence can go way over the top, and again, you're wading knee-deep in euphemisms. Same story: use your copy editing process to decide what's going to land on the page and what gets cut.

Occasionally, you'll discover (all writers do!) that when you come back to something you wrote six months ago, and read it back, YOU have no idea, none at all, what you meant in a particular passage. It's the strangest feeling, to be reading your own novel and lose the thread. If you were knitting, they would say you had dropped a stitch. Now, you can only look at the material directly before the problem, and directly after, see if you can infer the meaning ... and if you can't, put a line through the paragraph that went wool-gathering. You might need to construct bridging material to close the narrative back up. You can also discover perfect flow, with the woolly paragraph(s) deleted. You're doing the copy editing here ... you're in charge!

Correct punctuation? Are you serious?!

Correct punctuation gives you a head start!

Sorry guys -- we're deadly serious here. If there's one thing that will jump out of your manuscript in the five seconds after an editor first looks at it, that thing is bad punctuation. Three errors on page one, and page two won't even be glanced at.

Correct punctuation has not always been a tool writers had at their fingertips. For the first several thousand years after writing was invented, nobody bothered to even separate words with spaces! If you've seen an example of ancient Greek, you might wonder how anybody ever read it:

LEFT: a page from a Bible dating from around Year Zero. They were written in ancient Greek in those days; the original Hebrew texts are much older ... and you don't want to know how hard it is to read those! RIGHT: the Ancient Greek language, like any written language, gets even 'worse' when it's scrawled by hand! You would wonder how anyone made sense of this.

As you can see at a glance, correct punctuation starts with ... nothing. An empty space. Specifically, the spaces we insert between words. If not for a pinch of punctuation (that is, if we were still writing like the Ancient Greek scholars) this paragraph would look like this:

There's a reason people invented punctuation. There's a reason we still use it! And good writers accept the challenge of learning correct punctuation, for extremely sound reasons.

You want people to understand your writing. You don't want to be misread, misquoted ... or not read at all, because some people don't understand a word you're saying and others take one look at your work, see the absence of correct punctuation (put another way: too much wrong punctuation, or none at all!) and don't buy your book.

And if your ambition is to not only get paid to write but to actually write for a living, it's all about selling your work. You can always park your stories in website archives, invite people to come in and read, and bask in the knowledge that you're being read, and some people send nice emails. It's true, many writers never go any further than this; they have no professional aspirations. But if you want to write professionally ... give up the day job and earn a living by writing, you must write well. Sorry: there's no other way but to learn.

Fortunately, correct punctuation is easy to learn. Once you know the rules of punctuation, and the rules of grammar, you'll have such a head start over 90% of your competitors, you're already halfway through the literary agency's door.

So let's look at the rules of good ... correct! ... punctuation. Let's get some simple ground rules down. Once you have this foundation installed, you can build the mansion on top.


Turn page to Punctuation made simple!

Grammar? Who in the heck needs it, anyway?

Grammar...without it, the language unravels!

Grammar. What in the world is it? You certainly can't see it, touch, smell or taste it. But you hear it, and the worse it is, the more of it you seem to hear! Bad grammar is at the root of a lot of jokes. When spoken language goes ridiculously wrong, humor of the unintentional kind won't be far behind.

On the other hand, good grammar is one of a small handful of factors which have, for centuries, set the aristocracy apart from the rest of mankind. Not long ago, only the sons of rich men could go to school. Many were taught by monks ... girls were rarely taught at all. Literacy was the privilege of the wealthy and scholarly. Grammar — being the framework on which every word we speak is hung — was one of the qualities peculiar to ladies and gentlemen, because only they were given the opportunity to learn it.

Like anything else that is rare, proper language, good grammar, soon became a status symbol. You could be shabby, not own a horse, much less a piece of land, but so long as you spoke well, the classes of the nobility would accept you into their ranks. You were 'people like us,' or PLU. It was an elite club, where the entry card was your ability to use the language properly. And it all begins with grammar.

In movies, we get a big laugh out of the "local yokel." In the street, face to face with friends and acquaintances, we tend to overlook lapses in grammar. The spoken word is gone in a heartbeat; who remembers? But what a writer commits to paper achieves a kind of immortality...

In other words, your booboos will come back to haunt you! As an aspiring writer, you have one big goal: to impress the heck out of editors, agents and publishers. If you can impress them enough, they'll publish your work, and you'll earn. Eventually, you'll earn enough to give up the day job and write for a living.

One of the criteria on which you'll be judged — on page one of your submission! — is your grammar. You can't afford to make any, or many mistakes. If your creativity is "off the scale," you'll be forgiven for the odd lapse here and there; an editor will straighten out a few mistakes in grammar. However, if you make too many of these lapses, the editor, agent or publisher won't keep on reading your manuscript for long enough to discover how brilliant your fiction really is.

There is only one solution to this problem. Good grammar. Either learn it yourself, or recruit your friends (if you do conscript friends, make very sure they know what they're doing ... if they don't, the manuscript will simply be full of their errors, instead of yours). The third option is to pay for professional editing, and although you can certainly do this, please do read our caution, on the freelance editing page. Of you haven't yet read it, go there and scan it now ... this page will be here when you come back!

For the purpose of this page, then, we'll assume you've made the commitment to being the consummate professional. It's not a five-minute journey from "wannabe" to "best-seller," but the trip can be a lot of fun. No one ever said any of it had to be boring.

So: you're on this page to get a stranglehold on the gentle art of grammar. Right? Right.

In that case, let's grab the fundamentals and throttle them!

Turn page to
Correct Grammar: a framework to which everything else is pegged

Freelance? Do I have to freelance?

Fiction writing (or anything else!) ... do you have to freelance?
Most writers begin as freelancers for obvious reasons. Fiction writing (or non-fiction, books and articles) is seldom commissioned from unknown authors ... and in the early days, remember, you're going to be absolutely unknown!

If you're good, a day will come come when editors and publishers will offer you a contract before a book has been written. You'll talk to your editor, send a synopsis or an outline of your proposed work. This company specializes in fiction writing, and they 'bite' on your project, sight-unseen, because they know you from several previous sales. You'll sign a contract and get an advance before the work is delivered.

An even better day is on the horizon. The day when an editor asks you for a book. Their list has a gap which needs to be plugged, and they come to you — to you! — for a novel to fill that space! Finally you're known for great fiction, writing is your business. Then, you know you've arrived.

But in the early days you'll be a stranger to the publishing industry; and few people will take a risk on a stranger. It can happen, but if you dig a little, do a little research, you often find the truth. The new writer was a relative or friend of the publisher; or had already won a major fiction writing prize at college level; or was willing to invest cold, hard cash in a joint publishing venture.

If you can get through the door by virtue of your relationship with an editor, or if your skill was recognized in college — frankly, more power to you. Go for it! Take the shortcut and don't look back. Remember, you'll still have to be good: even pro writers with a string of books to their credit can be savaged by the critics. If you don't write an excellent book, it won't sell so well, and you'll almost certainly get some bad reviews. So never offer anything but your best work. Over-deliver, 110%, whenever you do anything.

The rest of us, however, won't have this shortcut. Most writers are long, long past the college stage by the time they decide they have a story that must be told — or the time to invest in climbing the learning curve as a writer, writing enough to be significant, and finding the agent, editor and publisher who make it all come together.

Many people who long to be involved at any level in fiction writing, pro or otherwise, must wait till their kids are grown up, or the mortgage is paid off — and some are in retirement before they can find the opportunity to make a start ... and few of us indeed are related to publishers and editors!

So, above 99% of writers will begin as freelancers — fiction writing, non-fiction, children's books, adult, genre, whatever. It all begins with a piece of work created by you, from your own imagination, or research, and inspiration. A piece of work which is finished, edited, polished, and submitted.

If you're good enough, your hard work should be immediately obvious to an editor. No one thoroughly masters the skills of the writer without making a high degree of commitment. (To put it another way: a concert violinist is born with the skill to play ... and though it will take the best teachers in the world to hone that talent, s/he still needs those teachers!)

So ... jump the queue, take the shortcut if it's available to you — and if you think you're ready. There's a big, deep pitfall right here in front of you. Watch out for this one, because it's so deep, if you find yourself at the bottom, it'll take a lot of work to get out.

Don't jump the queue before you're ready. Your friend, or relative, who made the opportunity available to you is doing you a massive favor, IF you're skilled enough to deliver the goods. Fiction writing, and doing it well, is a complex business. You won't 'fool' critics and discerning readers.

Book critics can be tough — they can also be extremely cruel. And discerning readers can tell immature, 'rough' writing at a glance. They probably won't buy your book in the first place ... and if they do, it'll go right to the book exchange, and they won't buy your next book. You need "subsequent sales" from established and loyal readers, to earn your livings as a fiction writer, or journalist, or diarist, in whatever your genre might be. Digging your way out of this pit can take years, hard work, many excellent books, and a good deal of heartache.

The old saying, 'Look before you leap' came to be a cliche by being so wise, it was repeated a thousand times!

There is absolutely nothing wrong with starting out as a freelance in either journalism or fiction writing ... and the freelance beginner has one vast advantage. Professional editors and agents literally won't let you debut until you're ready. You'll be told (kindly, one would hope; but they can be brusque) if your writing is not yet up to the full professional standard. The description used to be, "Unsuitable for publication."

This didn't mean the plot line was bad, or the material was inappropriate. It just meant that the writing style was immature and not (yet) wearing a veneer of professional polish. Years later, you'll come back and take a look at the manuscript which was rejected, and you'll see exactly what that editor meant.

(You might even shudder to see how rough your early work was. There's no harm in submitting, when you think you're ready; but it's vitally important to keep an open mind, take criticism in the spirit it's intended, and never stop striving to become better at your art. This is true of new, aspiring writers at every age, both the teen and the retiree. Fiction writing is a challenge; you'll master it, but not in a month, and not in one book.)

Never be insulted if an editor responds in this vein. It will probably hurt, but they're telling you the truth as they see it, and they have the experience to know these things. Few editors will lie outright to get rid of you; what would they profit from this?

It is true, however, that publishers do use 'professional readers' to screen books before they even get to the chief editors ... and here's the rub. Professional readers specialize in a certain subject, say, fantasy fiction. They read it all the time. Every week. Every day. In fact, they read far too much of it, and like any of us they get tired, jaded, bored. Professional readers can definitely kick back some very good books, because they themselves have reached a point where they're bored even by the best that fiction writing has to offer. The truth is, they should resign the job — but who's going to give up something as easy as reading, when they pay you to do it?!

If this happens, try not to take it to heart. Have faith in your abilities as a fiction writer, or documentarian, or diarist. You can at least know without a shadow of doubt that your work is flawless on a technical level, because you worked hard on grammar, punctuation, format and elements of style, to make sure of this. Having faith in your plot, characters and abilities will carry you through, and if you're right — if the work is as good as you think it is — the odds of you running into the same 'ennui factor' with another reader are slim.

Caveat: if you do get the same response from two or three readers and/or editors, you're looking at a considerable weight of critical opinion stacking up against you. Time to back way off and take another look. Try to see the book through their eyes. If someone was good enough to give you notes on what they perceived as 'wrong' with your story, you can at least start there and see if you can find a place to set up an analysis of the work.

These are the measures taken by inspired freelancers. You can always respond positively to rejection and criticism. Back off and take another look at your book. Recruit some beta readers. If necessary, take a course, participate in a fiction writing workshop. Read several books by writers whose work you admire — and be analytical about them! Take their work apart, see what makes it tick ... pick their brains. Let Greg Bear and Megan Davis and Matthew Reilley be your teachers! Then come back to your own work, and get out the rags and polish.

A book always gets better in the rewriting. In fact, it has been said (and this is perfectly true), great books aren't written, they are rewritten.

As a freelance in journalism, fiction writing, the art of the documentarian, any kind of writing, fields of opportunity open up before you. It may take a while longer to get financial results, but the pitfalls of taking the shortcut won't be strewn before you like a minefield.

Bottom line: take great care in your endeavors; never offer anything but your best work; and hone your skills until you know one thing for sure ... an editor won't be able to pick fault with your work on any technical level. In order words, don't just be good — be the best. If your chosen genre is fiction writing, it has become the area n which you absolutely excel. Then go out and knock 'em dead.

Freelance editing is an invaluable skill

It's never too early to begin the process, and when you're just setting out to work as a freelance editing is a job you probably won't be able to delegate. Professional services abound. You can easily find one ... but they can be very expensive.

A bureau will provide several levels of service. A 'light' edit, followed by various degrees of thoroughness. At the end of the process you should have an error-free manuscript. The downside is, you could easily have paid a couple of thousand dollars to a reputable freelance editing service. As an aspiring professional yourself, you need to think about the investment, weighed against the potential ROI, or 'return on investment' you expect to make. In other words, your royalties.

Every publisher seems to have a different way of figuring out how much to pay for a book. They know their markets; they know how much advertising is going to cost; they should have a good idea of how many copies of your book they can expect to sell. They may have staff to pay and a large office to keep up; they might also have taken a loss on a recent book, where sales were unexpectedly poor. They also might outsource to a freelance editing service, in which case, they pay the fees.

All these, and many more factors are used to work out how much a writer will be paid for a work, as a new freelance. Editing will be done at the publisher's cost, and this also will be factored into the royalties equation. (The more editing you need, the less you'll be paid.)

If you're able to get a contract with a large publishing house, of course you'll be paid correspondingly more than if you make your debut with a small publisher. The more major the publisher, the bigger the 'engine' driving the process of publishing and distribution. And if they have to outsource freelance editing, they can more easily cover the costs.

If you're pretty sure you can get a sale to a major publishing house, paying for editing services might be within your budget; go with a good 'jobbing' freelance editing service, because downtown bureaus can have fee schedules that'll make you blanch.

A point to consider is that you'll probably need a literary agent to make the breakthrough with a major publisher. Your agent's fee will usually be 15%. If your freelance editing service's fee was in the regions of $2000, for an in-depth, meticulously thorough edit of a long (or longish) book, you can cover both of these fees out of a $10,000 income from the book, and come out of it with a tidy sum.

But do be reasonably sure you can make the sale to a major house. Most writers make their professional debut with a small publisher (even writers like James A. Michener, and J.K. Rowling had to 'get in via the backdoor' of small publishers).

The 'problem' of small publishers is, their printruns are small, and your royalties will be lower. If you receive $5,000, the agent's and editor's fees won't leave very much as a gratuity for your efforts. Sure, you can work your way up the ladder to bigger printruns and higher royalties, but it takes time (you progress at your publisher's speed, which can seem glacial at times!), and ... being blunt about this, wouldn't it be nice to earn some money right now? Money saved is money earned. It's a sound idea to become familiar with freelance editing.

If you can master the skills of freelance editing yourself, you have a big advantage. At the very least, you can do four-fifths of the editing work before you have a professional editor look at it. The less work they have to do, the faster they'll be through your manuscript. You might be 'on the clock,' or you might be on a flat, scheduled fee. Either way, the less your freelance editing guru needs to do, the less you'll be out of pocket!

Edit me? No way!

Very new writers can get extremely upset when someone has the temerity to edit their work. If this still describes your own reaction to your editor — it's a symptom of your newness to the trade of the wordsmith. Being proud of your work is good; having faith in yourself is crucial. Without the enthusiasm to write in the first place, plus the artist's pride in achievement, and a solid faith in one's abilities, no book would never be finished; or, if it was, it would certainly never be submitted.

However, many (new) writers take these feelings of pride and faith to such extremes that they take umbrage at editing. The changes made to the work (sometimes called 'corrections' ... which is where a good part of the offence is given, and received!) are seen as unnecessary, and insulting to one's talent.



The professional perspective develops later. Sometimes much later. One realizes that words are not engraved in gold, nor set in stone. Prose is a fluid which, like a stream, has eddies, currents, flow-patterns, and like water it can get deep, murky, muddy — stagnant and difficult to swallow.

The inescapable fact is that the writer lives and breathes the work while writing. Think of yourself as a lungfish, equally capable of breathing the water as of breathing air. Immersed in the work, filled with its momentum and romancing your characters, you're so close to your writing, the 'boiled frog syndrome' actually does happen!

The 'boiled frog syndrome' is a model for change in any environment; in fact, humans are living in the results of it, with our climatic breakdown. The theory goes that if you put a frog in a pot of cold water and heated the water very slowly, the poor, dumb amphibian would get so used to the gradual increase in temperature, he never would jump out. He'd sit there and cook. You see the results of this all around us on this planet, on a global scale. On a local scale, it also means you can get very, very 'close' to your own work. Too close to 'see the woods for the trees,' to use the old cliche!

Then a fresh pair of eyeballs looks at the work. An editor. The 'fun' begins, and if you're a very new writer you can feel slighted, insulted, angry, especially of the editor is highly experienced and utterly insensitive, and makes every change (correction) at one time, so the manuscript seems to have been scribbled all over with a red pen. You might feel like a kid in a classroom again; if your school years were less than pleasant, you might shudder.

Some editors are insensitive. Some are emotionally dense. Others are ruthless: they actually want to scare off newbies! It's a 'survival of the fittest' environment. If you have what it takes, you'll be back in a few years, a little older and infinitely wiser, with a skill suite that is actually ready to propel you into the professional writing arena.

But you can take a shortcut, skip those years. The trail which diverges in this particular forest entails a shift in your way of thinking. Develop the 'mindset' of the professional now, rather than in ten years' time. Learn to see your work through the eyes of the editor, reader or critic, rather than your own eyes. Even if you dislike being edited, as few of us do, (and if you take a dim view of the editor as a person!) you can still pick his or her brains. Learn from them. Get your revenge by becoming the best.

The process begins with an epiphany on your own part: you must admit you have a lot to learn. The instant you make this confession to yourself, you're moving forward. You could call this 'right thinking,' or 'right attitude.' It's very Buddhist. Lose the ego, become the empty vessel ready to be filled with the wisdom others have spent half a lifetime gathering, and you can zoom forward.

So, why is editing necessary? Who should do it — and when? Click here to learn more about what a professional edit entails, and why it can take some time.)

Copy editing: what the heck is it, anyway?

Copy editing: The nuts-and-bolts end of the business...
or, "Copy Editing 101"

'Copy editing' is a term which raises goose bumps on the arms of many writers, yet these days there is absolutely no need for the reaction. In the old days, heavily correcting a piece of work meant retyping the whole thing ... perhaps 300 - 500 pages of typing, Hence the goose bumps! Since the advent of computers, correcting is done on-screen, and you just hit "print" to get a fresh copy. The old "shiver" reaction to the specter of the copy editor persists, but there's no need for it to. Writing is a cross between art and craft, and if you ask any painter, sculptor, knitter or carpenter, they'll tell you the same golden truth.

There are skills to be learned and rules to be followed. Once you have the pattern (be it a knitting pattern for a sweater or a woodworking pattern for a bookcase), it's very like painting by numbers. You stay with the pattern. If something is wrong, you take it apart and put it back together again, to get a correct fit.

This is copy editing. Trust me. You won't drop dead, or spontaneously burst into flames at a lick of sunlight.

The major difference between copy editing and other crafts is that you're working 'on the fly.' The "pattern" is a list of "ingredients," while the plot is the recipe. As the copy editor, you're the 'taste tester.' You stick your finger in the mixing bowl, try the goop, and correct it when it's not quite right.

You need two things, to excel at this. First, you have to be ready to learn, and accept, copy editing. Very new writers cam get very offended when someone suggests that they need some editing. More experienced writers might have a history of rejections, or they've spent some considerable time polishing their own work, with the help of friends.

During this polishing process, a time comes when errors start to literally jump out of the manuscript and bite you ... and, inevitably, you wonder, "Why didn't I see that a year ago?" You realize, the publishers who looked at the novel last year would have seen the errors (they must have seen them, if you yourself can see them now!), and you think to yourself, "A good editor would have weeded the gaffs out of the manuscript back then."

Someone skilled at copy editing could certainly have weeded the manuscript ... but were you ready, at that point, to admit that you needed the editing/weeding? All writers reach a threshold. On one side, they're amateurs, not-yet-ready to go forward. On the other side, they've experienced The Epiphany. In a flash of insight, they start to see written material (fiction of journalism) as a fluid, constantly changing, endlessly flexible, lending itself to molding and shaping.

Copy editing is like dipping your hand into this fluid, changing the pattern of eddies and currents, to get around rough patches, make things clear, and keep the fluid moving smoothly.

So, the first useful thing I can do is take a look at the 'rules' by which this game is played.

You have to learn the rules before you can score tennis, knit a sweater or fiddle with the car engine. Copy editing is no different ... and nothing to be intimidated about.

I'm going to call this "Copy Editing 101," and it's quite a large subject, so what I'm going to do is break it up into chunks and tackle each chunk in a separate post.

In fact, he entire subject of copy editing is larger than you might think at first glance. It can be overwhelming, if you don't break it up into bite-sized chunks. We'll divide up the pie into nibblets which fit the size of blog posts, and you can choose exactly what you need at this moment, to solve some specific problem which you just diagnosed. (However, be sure to get the "big picture" too, because it's way too easy to be making mistakes you're not even aware of. A professional editor will pick them up at once, and there's another rejection slip for your collection!)

You'll probably want to hit the whole list -- and access it easily! -- so we'll itemize it right here (stay on this post and scroll down). Some of the topics are short series of posts...

First Rules: Put out an APB for bad guys

You have the manuscript on the desk before you, and pens and pencils. You're ready to scribble on the manuscript ... all over it, if necessary! But what are you looking for? Here's a short-list -- topics will turn into links as posts are added to this blog:

Typographical errors, especially in manuscripts which were typed up rather than being "done on a computer," which spellchecked the document prior to printing out.
Spelling errors which got past the computer's spellchecker; all spelling errors, if the manuscript was 'only' typed, using a old-fashioned typewriter.
Grammatical errors
Punctuation errors
Textual formatting errors
Inaccuracy: wrong word used
Repetition and Over-use: repeated word within a sentence or paragraph; term or phrase used too often overall.
Ambiguity: the reader can't tell what the writer means!
Writing with consistency in word usages throughout.
Nonsequiteur: the narrative either contradicts itself or heads off in unconnected directions.
Errors of "style" (harder to pick out; don't worry, we're going there).

Take it from the top! I'll start with a five-minute Q&A covering the physical aspect of the job. What does it look like, how does it work at the fundamental level of the paper and pencils ... then we'll dive into the details....

Click here for A Copy Editing Q&A...

Getting paid to write

When and how does a freelancer get paid to write?

Freelance writers "do it backwards" — you'll be paid to write after you've finished. When you make the sale, you'll be offered a contract for the piece. How much you'll be paid depends on what the work is, and who you're selling it to, plus how well known you are, and just how good your current project is.

Markets for fiction are very broad and tremendously varied. You can sell to conventional (print media) magazines and book publishers ... as a freelance writer you can also sell to electronic publishers, whose magazines appear online; you can get a contract from an ezine publisher; and in the early days of your career, you can submit to semi-professional publishers. More on this below.

Getting paid to write is one thing; getting paid well is a goal to aim for. Like any other art, the more famous you are (which, for a writer, comes down to how many people have read your material, liked it, and will pay good money to read more), and the better you perform, the more compensation you'll be offered.

In the early days, when you're completely unknown, your name can't be used by a publisher as a 'hook' to sell more copies. As you go on and make several sales, your name will become known. Readers who liked your previous work will be 'hooked' to buy a volume (anthology, magazine, or even a whole novel) in which you appear. You can get paid to write while you develop the name that will earn you the big checks later.

At the outset, however, you're the classic unknown quantity, and a publisher must take a risk on you. He or she is going to pay you money on a guess that readers will like your work. This guess is based on how well the staff at the publisher's office liked it. Did you hold their attention? Make them laugh, or cry? Did your story haunt them for days after they finished reading?

Other factors also come into play when a publisher is deciding whether to accept or reject the work of a freelance writer. How commercial is the piece you're submitting? How relevant is it to the publication? How original is it? And how well is it written?

If a piece is 100% relevant, addresses current, popular subjects, has a good streak of originality and is quite well written, you're in with a chance of achieving your first goal: actually get paid to write! And the first time you get a check (or cheque, depending on which part of the world you come from) is a thrill.

'Quite well written' means the editor will have to do some work on your writing to bring it up to full professional standard. If your material is original enough, relevant and commercial, he or she will happily spend several hours going over your story, with a line-by-line edit. (Several hours?! You echo, dismayed. Why is editing necessary? Who should do it — and when? Click here to learn more about what a professional edit entails, and why it can take some time.)

Naturally, the less editing you need, the less time an editor needs to spend on you prior to publishing ... the more time you save him, the more he'll approve of your material, and the more likely you are to get the sale ... in other words, get paid to write. So it behooves you to write very well! Which is the whole topic of our WRITE! segment.

How much you finally do get paid to write depends on how much of the editor's time you consumed, to get your work up to standard ... how relevant and commercial it is, and if you've made sales before (meaning, do readers know you? Will you attract them, and enhance sales for this publisher. Everyone's bottom line is financial, the publisher's as well as yours).

When you make your first sale, don't expect a vast check. If you're selling to high-end popular magazine, they'll adhere to their industry pay scales, which can be quite generous. But regional magazines, small papers, small(er) publishers, don't make the kind of sales the big boys (and girls) do, and can't pay as much.

Inquire about pay scales at the time you contact the editor, asking if he or she wants to read your work. Some very small magazine publishers might even pay in copies, not cash. Others might pay half a penny per word, or a penny per word, which is a bare fraction of the industry freelance rate. They should be up front about what they intend to pay; if you get the impression something is being hidden — it probably is.

It is practically impossible to put a dollar amount on how much you can expect to be paid to write, because the market is so wide and every publisher is different. For example, if you're submitting to an anthology, you might receive $20 - $500, depending on how long your story runs, how many copies the publisher intends to print, how well known you are, and how well patronized the genre is at this moment.

(For instance, science fiction is a quite popular genre. For a brand-new writer, a major SF publishing house might run 7,000 - 20,000. However, a small SF publishing house would have to 'play it safe' and might run 3,000 - 7,000. Actual dollar amounts for a freelancer's payment are impossible to predict; but you can see the margins you're working inside of.)

Publishers can be reluctant to disclose the size of the printrun, and this is their prerogative. Also, the printrun can be changed, for reasons of economic pressure. Something planned as 6,000 can ultimately be cut to 4,000, not because of the quality of your work, but for multiple other reasons of business. You may never know how exactly many copies were printed.

A small 'literary' publisher might run 3,000 copies of a book. A genre publisher might run five or six thousand for the first printrun, and if it goes well, organize a reprint, in which case, you get paid again ... without having to write a word. (Getting paid to write just got sweeter!) A publisher working in a larger niche might print 10,000 - 25,000. However, if you've been thinking all books are printed and sold in the tens of thousands, and the millions — this is only true of national bestsellers.

Suffice to say, as a freelance, you finish the work and then contact editors and offer it to them. Talk to the big guys first (they pay the best), but be happily surprised if you get a solicitation from them. Remember, everyone goes to them first (because they pay more!) so they're usually buried in queries and submissions. After the submission, and the acceptance, you'll receive a contract and a financial offer. Ah! The 'get paid to write' scenario is happening!

How much money is in the offing is another question. As a freelance, you're not compelled to accept a publisher's offer, but before you turn it down, consider several points. You're a newcomer, an unknown quantity. Your work might genuinely need some editing to get it up to full-professional standard for publication, and editing takes time. (You'll learn about this at firsthand as you read through our EDIT! segment.)

As Benjamin Franklin said, "Time is money," and an editor's time is especially precious. If your editor is willing to accept your work even though it needs to be polished, don't be insulted (much less angered) by the editing. It's actually a compliment. Your originality is being praised. You're being accepted for publication, even though your writing needs a lick of polish.

How much work will an editor do for you, and still publish you? It all depends on how much he or she wants the story! If you're good enough, and original enough, some editors will invest an astonishing amount of effort. (But you'll woo more editors, and get paid to write more often, if your work is already is wearing a shining coat of polish before you submit.)

Still, past a certain point, you could be asked for a rewrite, especially if the editing that's deemed necessary is more to do with 'story editing' than 'copy editing.' What's the difference? We get to the nitty-gritty part in the EDIT! segment.

So judge the offer a publisher makes you on its own merits, your merits, and the publisher's merits, before you turn it down. Are you selling to a small(er) publisher, who will do a small(ish) printrun? Are you still largely unknown? Does the work need some polishing? (The hardest question is, 'Am I good enough to be paid to write?' It's a tough one to answer for oneself.)

If the answers to some or all of these questions is 'yes', then work with your editors, not against them. The sale will get you a modest check and, much more importantly, it'll get you a professional credit. Your 'track record' has begun.

In the early days, it's not about earning a lot of money. Being paid to write is always nice, but the fat checks probably won't materialize until you're well known, and your work is so highly-polished at the time of submission, your editor had better put the cap back on his 'blue pen' before it dries up! (The traditional editor's tool is the blue pen, or pencil.)

Make your name in your genre with some good, solid early sales. These books or stories will be reviewed in the media (online or print; the Internet is equally valuable these days), and if your reviews are good ... they will be if you and your material are up to snuff! ... you can work your way up the freelance ladder surprisingly quickly, getting paid to write more often, and in larger amounts.

Then a day arrives when you find a publisher's letter in your mailbox. They're soliciting for material — actually asking you to send them something! Anything you submit following this letter has crossed the line from a freelance submission to a contractual relationship.

If you've been asked for a book, you can expect to get an advance on royalties. You'll be paid before you write! You might not be getting rich yet, but the pleasure you'll feel will be worth a million bucks. Getting paid to write is the bottom line for all writers. Being asked for a book is a ticket to our seventh heaven. And it happens, if you're good enough — and you will be.

On a closing note, your very earliest submissions might be made to semi-professional publications. Some pay; others don't. If you're drawing a blank elsewhere, can't get a solicitation to make a submission, don't close the door on these publishers. In the opening phases of your career, being paid to write is only half if the equation. You also need to learn, and build your credentials.

Semi-professional editors are often highly-skilled, and they publish for the sheer love of what they do. You can learn a lot, and some of the magazines, ezines and books coming out of these APA (Amateur Press Association) offices can be quite prestigious. You can start building your 'track record' long before you start to earn, and build up both your skills and experience along the way. You may not get paid to write in cold, hard cash, but experience and education are invaluable.

The very best APA publications are often seen by professional editors. An editor spots you in those pages, likes your material. When he or she receives your query letter, you're already a known quantity. You can sneak in through the door right there.