Tag: Chickity check it!

Here is part 3. It is a little longer but I cannot emphasize the part in yellow enough! Thank so much!!!

Spelling and Grammar Matter

Thanks to the internet more people than ever are writing on a daily basis – they are blogging, Twittering, Facebooking, IMing, emailing, texting, etc. etc. However, all this writing has lead to a decline in basic grammar and spelling. This may be fine for everyday communications but that does not make it fine for books. Spell check will find words which are spelled incorrectly but it will not differentiate between there/their/they’re, point out words that are used incorrectly, correct punctuation, etc. There are also grammatical conventions for constructing things such as dialog that should be followed if you want your published work to look professional.

Authors who are not open to having their manuscripts proofed, edited, and critiqued should really consider whether they are serious about publishing. Professionals in the publishing business tell me that if an author resists editing and making changes they cannot work with them and will terminate the contract. While it is perfectly reasonable to resist significant content changes to a book (one of my agents wanted me to rewrite The Old Mermaid’s Tale for the Young Adult market — I refused), writers have to comply with standard grammar, punctuation, structure, etc. if they want to be taken seriously.

COMMIT TO QUALITY

Please remember this: when you publish a badly written, badly proofed,

badly edited book, you don’t just make yourself look bad,

you make all self-published authors look bad.

Readers are becoming increasingly sensitive to self-publishing and have no reticence

to give very bad reviews to badly constructed books.

As a self-publisher commit to the highest standards possible.

Preparing Files: Print Publishing vs. ePublishing

Remember: printed material is made of ink, electronic material is made of light.

Continued at: http://parlezmoiblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/part-3-before-you-go-to-press.html

What is INDEPENDENT PUBLISHING & how is it different from subsidy publishing?

Unlike subsidy publishing, independent publishing is entirely controlled by the author. Most of the prominent writers who have self-published have done so independently so that they could publish under their own imprint. What this means is that they take control of the entire process which includes selecting a name for their publishing company (I use Parlez-Moi Press) and purchasing their ISBNs under that imprint so their books are published by their own imprint. Sometimes 3 or 4 authors work together to form a small press, one local example is Back Shore Press which was formed by Peter Anastas, Schuyler Hoffman, and Peter Tuttle to publish and promote their books.

This is how an independent publisher publishes:

1. Editing and Proofing: No matter how skillful you are and no matter how much effort you put into your work it will need proofing. Mistakes occur even in books by major publishers.

Continued at http://parlezmoiblog.blogspot.com/p/publishing-your-book-today.html

I keep telling Kat she should write is “How To Publish/Or Not Publish For Dummies”

EVERYBODY has a story to tell.  EVERYBODY thinks they are interesting.  Hardly anyone knows the ins and outs of the industry like Kat does.

Kat Writes-

Subsidy Publishing vs. Independent Publishing

For many people the words “self-published” bear a stigma and the suggestion that self-publishing is the only option the author had to get a book in to print. This is not true. Some authors who have self-published are Mark Twain, John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Deepak Chopra, Virginia Woolf, and Margaret Atwood. Among the most famous of self-published books are Huckleberry Finn, the Chicken Soup for the Soul books, and that most ubiquitous cookbook, The Joy of Cooking. Authors self publish for a variety of reasons.

Today publishing has been complicated by the addition of e-publishing. In this post I’m going to discuss the different types of print publishing, and include information on how e-books are handled by each. Since we already talked about traditional publishing I won’t delve much further in to that but bear these things in mind as you decide how much time and effort you wish to spend pursuing a contract with a traditional publisher:

Continued at: http://parlezmoiblog.blogspot.com/p/publishing-your-book-today.html