By Kenney Myers If you are writing your first book, you might be nervous about sending your manuscript off to an editor for the first time. First off, that is completely normal and healthy. You can take a couple of approaches to this and neither of them are wrong. You can either make sure you have the story as you want it and then leave all of the editing up to your editor … [Read more...] about Guest Post: A Handful of Software Tools That Could Make Your Editor’s Life Easier
Editing
Indie Authors: Editing Tips to Attract Readers and Save Money
No first draft is perfect. That's why editing is such an important step in the writing and publishing process. There are a few types of editing: Developmental editing Line editing Proofreading In a nutshell, developmental editing looks at the big picture of a story, and makes sure the tone is consistent and things make sense. Line editing is more granular, and … [Read more...] about Indie Authors: Editing Tips to Attract Readers and Save Money
Indie Authors: Self-Editing Before Getting Your Manuscript Edited
Editing is an important step to publishing, both indie and traditional. A book that is poorly edited can be a big turn off to readers. Bridget McKenna gives an example in her post, "Why I Didn't Keep Reading Your Book, Part 2": Your opening sentence demonstrated that you don’t know the difference between “number,” which is used to describe things that can be counted, such as … [Read more...] about Indie Authors: Self-Editing Before Getting Your Manuscript Edited
Tools and Resources for Editing Your Manuscript
We all know that after writing comes editing. It's good to work with professional editors, but there are tips and tricks and tools that you can use before working with an editor that can help you save a bit of time and money. Here are a few. Etherpad: "A highly customizable Open Source online editor providing collaborative editing in really real-time." Grammarly: … [Read more...] about Tools and Resources for Editing Your Manuscript
Editing in the Writing Process
Editing is an important part of the writing process. But sometimes, it's easy to get so excited about having a first draft, it's hard to take things to the next level. Publisher's Weekly has a post about how every writer needs an editor, even if the writer is an editor. In brief, it takes a lot of courage and perseverance. These worries can go both ways. The Write Life also … [Read more...] about Editing in the Writing Process
Editing Tips and Resources for Authors
When it comes to editing your book, authors have a lot of options. The first step is to self-edit. This can help cut down on costs later when you start working with a professional editor (which I highly recommend doing). Jane Friedman has a great post on how to write a book in three drafts. There's the messy draft, which is a first draft and often unorganized. Then there's … [Read more...] about Editing Tips and Resources for Authors
Guest Post: Pro Tips for Editing Your Book Efficiently and Effectively
By Mariah You've finally written that book, and you are so proud of your efforts. It may have been very long in the making, and you are ecstatic to be so close to the finish line. There is still some work that needs to be done on it; it needs to be checked for grammatical errors and may need to be refined a bit. There are steps you can take to help you do just that, and they … [Read more...] about Guest Post: Pro Tips for Editing Your Book Efficiently and Effectively
Guest Post: 4 Powerful Revision Tips to Strengthen Your Craft
By Michelle Dutcher How does revising make your material more useful and valuable to your readers? It is impossible to make a ‘perfect article’ out of your first draft. Every writer must continually provide tweaks on his or her initial draft, which includes adding relevant details, correcting grammar, and enhancing structures. Through revisions, you get to provide the … [Read more...] about Guest Post: 4 Powerful Revision Tips to Strengthen Your Craft
Guest Post: 6 Questions (and Answers!) about Editing Contracts You’ll Want to Know
Editor's note: For more information on what to include in an editing contract, see Megan's "8 Must-Haves for Freelance Editing Contracts." By Megan Harris If your book is complete, or in the process of being completed, you may start to think about the next steps involving your book–namely, hiring an editor to help you polish your work. Before you send your manuscript off to … [Read more...] about Guest Post: 6 Questions (and Answers!) about Editing Contracts You’ll Want to Know
Indie Authors: Working with Beta Readers
Beta readers are amazing. They can help find plot holes, grammar mistakes, and other issues with manuscripts. They help save you time and money with editing. And they are part of your fan base, and a great first marketing step for a book. According to Belinda Williams, it’s important to find the right kind of beta readers in order to get the most out of their feedback. She … [Read more...] about Indie Authors: Working with Beta Readers
Poetica, A New Editing Tool
Very recently, a new tool for editing called Poetica (that I've been waiting on for nearly two years, since I first heard about it at Books in Browsers) launched. Poetica was created to bring the elegance and trust of paper editing to the digital world. As you can see in the image above, editors can add annotations, comments, and more in different colors. The interface is … [Read more...] about Poetica, A New Editing Tool
Why You Need an Editor (And How to Save Money Finding One)
After writing a book, the next big step is to edit it. Editing is incredibly important because it helps to make a book the best it can be, by keeping the story flow, making sure all the events are consistent, developing the characters, and even correcting grammatical and spelling errors, among many other things. It can be embarrassing when a book has not been thoroughly … [Read more...] about Why You Need an Editor (And How to Save Money Finding One)
Widbook Guest Post: Don’t Overwrite On
By Mary Ann Lombardo – Widbook blog This post was originally featured at the Widbook blog and written by Mary Ann Lombardo. Widbook is a global community for people who love to share stories. Writers can publish their work in an ebook format and readers meet content and everyone get connected! For the last three weeks Widbook has been my guest. See the other two guest posts, … [Read more...] about Widbook Guest Post: Don’t Overwrite On
Indie Authors: Finding an Editor
J E Henderson, author of the Credara series, has kindly agreed to let me publish an email exchange we had, which provides some insight into why it's important for indie authors to work with editors and how to find the right one. Henderson's editor is Lynette M. Smith of All My Best Copyediting. "I found my editor by a referral," he said. "If you notice, her website says … [Read more...] about Indie Authors: Finding an Editor
A Guide to Grammarly, The World’s Best Grammar Checker
SPONSORED POST I was lucky enough to recently be granted access to Grammarly, to check out all its features. And boy, are there a lot of features. But, first a little background. Grammarly is an automated proofreader, which checks for over 250 types of grammatical errors. This includes parallelism, misplaced modifiers, comma splices, subject-verb agreement, etc., and is … [Read more...] about A Guide to Grammarly, The World’s Best Grammar Checker