Общополезности

[Кал]

Content editing, line editing, copy editing, proofreading: finally some clarity

Content edits are at the story level, not the line or word level. A content edit is substantive. It will focus on the big stuff — plot confusion, pacing issues, story structure, information flow, weak characterization or character arcs, unclear motivation, lack of setting, etc.. (...)

Line edits will focus less on the story and more on the prose (...):

• Strengthening weak prose, including fixing awkward sentences, addressing weak verb forms, making better word choices, killing adverbs, etc.
  Varying sentence structure and improving the rhythm of the prose
  Changing paragraph breaks
  Replacing repeated words in close proximity
  Correcting grammatical and spelling errors
  Reducing use of unnecessary speech attributions
  Strengthening dialog
  Eliminating clichés
  Changing to conform to the house style

Copy editing will be a final check for all the small stuff: typos, spelling, house styles, missing or repeated words, punctuation, etc..

Proofreading (...) is an editing step that will fall on you as the author. If you’re dealing with a professional market, you should expect to receive a copy of the page proofs–a copy of how your story will look in the actual publication where your story will appear. This is typically sent to you as a PDF these days. It’s your responsibility to review these page proofs to catch any remaining minor problems that need to be fixed.

[Кал]

Courtesy of Douglas Smith:

Kristine Kathryn Rusch: Editorial Revisions (novels)

Introduces Acquiring Editors, Content Editors, Line Editors, Copy Editors, Proofreaders (who become more mysterious by the essay :/) and various other beasties.

[Кал]

Handling Edits: the Douglas Smith way

• Read the suggested edits without making any decisions. Just read looking for patterns and issues that the editor has found.
  Set the edited version aside for at least a day.
  Go through the story again, doing a triage on the suggested edits: ones that are easy to say yes to, ones that you will not bend on, and ones that you’re not sure about.
  Go though the story one more time, ensuring that you’re serious about your “No’s” — serious, meaning that you’d pull the story before you’d agree to those changes.
  Next, deal with the edits that you weren’t sure about, moving them to the Yes or the No category.
  Do a count of your Yes’s and No’s. If you’re declining more edits than you’re accepting, you’re making a mistake. Fix that.
  Accept the edits you agree with, and reject the others, explaining why you’re saying no, either in the manuscript or in your cover email back to the editor.

[Кал]

Douglas Smith: Foreign (Non-English) Markets List

[Кал]

And justice for all--or translators, at least

Solaris, a long running and award winning Québec magazine, also publishes in French but unlike Ténèbres, it only accepts stories written in French. But I now had a French version of my Heroka stories. Benoît provided the translated versions to me, and I submitted these to Solaris, who bought two of them. (A related point: if you sell a translated story, the typical approach is that you will split the payment 50/50 with the original translator.)

[Кал]

Wannabe self-indie publishers: check out Doug's word to the wise

For his indie publishing needs, Doug finds helpful: Lucky Bat Books

[Кал]

Jim C. Hines: First Novel Survey Results

(It's from 2010, though--and in 3 years of ebooks, a lot can change ... anyone knows a more recent resource?)

[Кал]

Thesaurus.com

For instance, I'm looking for synonyms of "at first."

Check out the Relevance and Complexity meters.

[Кал]

How to: Make Sure the Timing Is Right

6 months before publication
• Update your author profile. Make sure you have a current author profile picture and that your bio is complete.
• Review the titles attributed to you. If you see books on the list that you didn’t write, email us and we’ll fix it.
• Review the information on each of your book pages, and email us if anything needs to be corrected.
• Start or import your blog. Keep the content fresh and relevant to cultivate your personal brand.
• Optional: Do a cover reveal for your upcoming title.

4 months before publication
• Shelve some books. Log books you’ve read in the past—including the ones in your physical bookshelves!—so that readers can get a sense of who you are based on what you read. Some other ideas:
- Create a bookshelf of the books that you used for researching your book.
- Browse the list of best books of the 20th Century and add the ones you’ve read.
- Suggest books for “Further Reading” about the topics in your book.
• Join groups that interest you. Start reading the conversations, and feel free to chime in. Begin to build relationships with the people you meet.
• Upload an excerpt from your new title to the book page. Give readers a taste of what’s to come! You can also use your blog or writing section for this.

3 months before publication
• Schedule a giveaway for galleys. The more that books are circulating, the more likely you’ll get reviews, and the sooner you do this, the better. Galleys don’t need to be typeset or have the final cover, but the content should not change.
• Actively participate in groups. Join the ones that genuinely interest you and participate in the conversations. Don’t just talk about your own book!
• Create an editorial calendar if you plan to maintain a blog, or post an “evergreen” message to make use of the space on your profile. (Check out Khaled Hosseini’s profile for an example of such a blog post.)

1 month before publication
• Schedule another giveaway for advance reader copies. These should have the final cover. Read some tips for running a giveaway on Goodreads.
• Turn on Ask the Author. Don’t expect too many questions yet, but decide when you’ll answer questions. Here are five tips for using Ask the Author.
• Create events for both in-person and online events. Tip: Answering questions on a particular date via Ask the Author—that’s event worthy!
• Schedule an ad campaign to start on your publication date. Create several ads in the campaign, each uniquely creative.

Publication week
• Schedule a giveaway for your signed, finished copies to start the day after your publication date.
• Answer pending questions via Ask the Author.
• Enjoy your publication day! The sky is just a little bluer today…

1 month after publication
• Review ad campaign stats. Edit ads if needed.
• Continue to participate in group activities, answer Ask the Author questions, and shelve books that you’re reading.
• Share some special content, like an alternate point-of-view story or a recorded video message, to delight fans looking for more.

[Кал]

Ideas for Goodreads events

Some suggestions for events:

▪ Ask the Author. Enable this feature from your author dashboard, and set a specific date and time to answer questions “live.” Manage readers’ expectations by stating when this will take place in the message that appears on your profile as well.

▪ Cover Reveal. You can provide details of your cover reveal on this page, and keep it updated as the reveal gets unlocked.

▪ Book Signing. Help your readers keep track of where they can snag an autograph.

▪ Book Release Date. This is an important day for you–tell people about it and celebrate.

▪ Media Appearance. Invite people to tune in to a radio show, podcast, or TV appearance.

▪ Festival Appearances. Appeal to an even larger audience by being associated with a festival.

[Кал]

What do you call a young elephant?

Names of Males, Females, Babies, and Groups of Animals

[Люба]

Spoiler

Тази тема според мен е изцяло заформена като Общополезности: за публикуване на книги и чуждоезикови удивителни (като това над моя пост).
Ако основният принос-ител се съгласи, може би е редно да се преименува?

[Кал]

Spoiler

Любе, това е подфорум „Фантазийска преводаческа школа“. За какво друго биха могли да се отнасят Общополезностите в него?

(Нали обръщате внимание в кой подфорум се намирате? Възможно е в различни подфоруми да има теми, кръстени еднакво: разликата в съдържанието им зависи от мястото, на което се намират.)

[Люба]

Spoiler

Факт, не обърнах. Тоз път просто влязох от линка в непрочетени. Извинения. Но и ... може би това мое подхлъзване е повод да се помисли дали е добре да има еднакви заглавия на темите в отделните големи теми? Можеш да ни изтриеш след като ме прочетеш, Калински

[Кал]

Spoiler

Аз съм бивш програмист. Там правилото на трите R гласи Reuse, reuse, reuse. Защо ще мисля нови заглавия на теми, като съм открил някакви работещи?

Сега сериозно: Това не е въпрос на мисловна леност, а на организация на пространството. Може да обясня някой път на живо как работи. Важният урок за объркващите се е да гледат къде се намират. Свиквайте със структурата на тия форуми – тя увеличава полезността им поне толкова, колкото конкретните заглавия на темите.

Нека си седят тия размисли – може да са полезни за още народ.

[Люба]

Spoiler

Последно откъм полезност тогава - тези размисли в 1 изречение според мен е добре да са в "Пътеводител за Фантазия" - като NB! oт какво да се пази новодошлият/негрАмотен участник, който броди и се губи, губи се и броди ...?

[Кал]

Onomatopoeia Dictionary

Found it while trying to nail down the sound of a drop plunging into a pool.

[Кал]

Playing the Short Game: How to Sell Your Short Fiction: a 32-part series by Douglas Smith

Doug has collected and expanded his advice in a book called, surprisingly, Playing the Short Game: How to Market & Sell Short Fiction.

The new points (or reminders) I found particularly useful so far are:

- moral rights: you'd better not give them away

- cover letters: find out the editors' names and actually use them ("Dear first_name last_name" is a good format)

- the "Read Like an Editor" exercise: during a writing workshop, ask everyone where they stopped reading a piece (and why) + Kristine Kathryn Rusch's "three strikes and out" rule (similar to Jefferson Smith's "Immerse or Die")

- getting positive feedback from an editor: send 'em another story right away (or when their next submission window opens; or after the "hold your horses" period they've asked for )

[Кал]

More useful points:

- World Rights and language: if a market requests World Rights without stating a language, always add a clause that makes it explicit: "World Rights in English"

- legal liability: add a clause about costs and expenses that are sustained in a court of law

- why you should NOT self-publish your short fiction:

Most importantly, if you publish your short stories yourself, you will have no measure for knowing whether your fiction is any good or whether your writing is improving. If editors of magazines and anthologies keep rejecting your stories, then your writing isn't good enough yet.

Don't think of those editors as gatekeepers, blocking you from reaching readers. Think of them as your coaches, advisors, and protectors. They are helping you become a better writer and protecting you from exposing your work before it has reached a professional level.

So please, don't damage your career by trying short cuts. If you want to be a professional writer, you must become one by learning your craft and your profession. Selling to professional short fiction markets is the surest way of knowing when your writing has reached that level.

[Кал]

(...) exposure is not a measurable resource. If someone asks you to write for exposure, ask them how much exposure. Like, have them measure it. "Will it be ten picameters of exposure? I usually ask at least seven nanoliters' worth." If they can prove it, fuck yeah, great. But exposure is a hard thing to prove. Let me utter my refrain yet again: Writers, like hikers, can die from exposure.

[Кал]

Как да пресметнете цената на превода си

Направете:

- превод на ~1800 знака, с отчитане на времето
- първа редакция след 24 часа, с отчитане на времето
- втора редакция след още 48 часа, пак с отчитане на времето.

После съберете трите времена – воала, вече имате представа колко ви отнема една страница.

Идеята е да взимате поне 11 лева на стандартна страница за художествен текст към чужд език; или поне 5 лева към български. (Като си сметнете времето, ще видите защо. )

[Mokidi]

Може да съм малко гръмната в момента, но не си ли имал предвид да не взимате?
Щото стандартен надник на ден е 40 лв. ... и "реално" се правят 4-5 страници на ден (с редакциите и всичкото); и по-малко от 40 лв. заработка е подигравка със себе си...

[Кал]

Translation Software Comparison Tool

(Лично аз съм ползвал само Trados, и то само в университета. За художествени преводи, в които няма голяма повтаряемост, не са особено полезни.)

[Кал]

Покрай моите Seven Nights with the Sea възникна въпрос при какви условия можем да цитираме откъси от песни (или въобще чужди произведения) в нашето собствено.

E. Catherine Tobler, редакторката на Shimmer, ми препоръча следния линк:

Lyrics and Poetry in Fiction—Copyright, Drawbacks, and Other Problems

Полека ще изкарам най-интересното от него тук.

[Кал]

Courtesy of Daniel Bensen:

Google N-grams

I still have to fiddle with the options--but it looks like a great tool for exploring collocations and usages.

[Кал]

50 Kickass55 Essential Resources for Indie Authors

I'm familiar with http://www.deanwesleysmith.com, http://www.smashwords.com, http://www.writersdigest.com and of course Goodreads. Any other recommendations you've tried on your own?

[Кал]

Идеи за разгласа на е-книги:

I make my living writing novels. My current top selling book, with a Bookbub ad last December, has 285 reviews on Amazon with a 4.1 average. The sequel, which was released about 8 months ago, has 86 reviews with a 4.5 average. Sales on both always go up after I do a giveaway. My other books also see a rise in sales after a giveaway on any of my books.

My criteria for advertising again with a company is how low of cost per giveaway I can expect. Bookbub is the absolute best, by far, as I end up with less than 1¢ per book given away. I can expect 15 to 20 reviews within a month on 30,000 books given away. On a Librarything giveaway of 100 books, I can expect 2 or 3 reviews, and on a Goodreads paperback giveaway of 5 books (I have done 4 in the last three years) I get one or two reviews. Since the Librarything giveaway is free, it only cost me less than an hour of my time. I don't do the Goodreads giveaways anymore, not enough results for the cost and effort.

Out in the real world, $119 buys you a paid advertisement with Kindle Nation Daily + Book Gorilla, one of the biggest players in the market. Actually, for books priced FREE, KND does a $29.99 package and you can give away 3-5,000 books each time (this is in my genre, Fantasy). For a 99c Countdown promo with KND you'd move a good few hundred copies, making your money back if not twice or three times over. On a BB advertisement writers are typically making back 10 x their initial investment, often more.

I spend a lot of time querying both bloggers and top amazon reviewers for reviews and probably I'd say after about 400 queries, I've got ten reviews. So programs like Library Thing's review program where you can get reviews for your books before they come out are absolutely wonderful, because it's free and if you don't get a review, it's still a great way to reach a lot of people all at once. Library Thing is very easy to work with too. They give you the emails and you personally contact each reviewer to send them your book. How cool is that?

I'm not Derek ;) but the link to giveaways is https://www.librarything.com/more/freebooks ; more giveaway details for authors at https://www.librarything.com/wiki/index ... _Giveaways ; and more details on their author program at http://www.librarything.com/about_authors.php ; public statistics at http://www.librarything.com/zeitgeist

(Удебеляванията са мои – места, които бих искал да проуча/-им по-добре.)

[mitseva]

Любим ресурс - Urban Dictionary.
И още един ценен ресурс - Word hippo

[Radiant Dragon]

Уж се канех да приключвам с изследователската дейност на тема книгоиздаване и да минавам към Фаза 2 (същинско издаване, по един или друг начин), обаче Космоса често си знае как да тика полезнотии в ръцете ми.

My experience on having my debut edited by the Big Five

Текста е достатъчно ценен (и пресен! - само на два дни), че да го копирам тук в цялост:

My debut space opera noir novel, Stormblood got picked up last year by Gollancz as the first of a trilogy. And, like any other Trad published book, it goes through the rounds of editing. I'd already edited the book thoroughly, with myself, beta readers, my agent. When it ended up in the hands of my editor Gillian Redfearn (who also edits Brandon Sanderson, Joe Abercrombie and Patrick Rothfuss in the UK) I thought there wouldn't be too much more work to do.

I was very, very wrong.

There's a lot in this industry that isn't always transparent but should be. Many of you may be interested in working with a Big Five editor yourselves one day, so I wanted to provide some insight into the guts and gears of the editing process, the various hoops and cycles a book goes through, and what my personal experience has been in crunching the revisions.

I believe it’s very underestimated how extensive the editing process is when it comes to traditional publishing. We’re not talking about cleaning up typos, chopping away gratuitous sentences and chapters , or even tweaking character arcs. No, we’re talking about digging down into the root canals of the narrative, the bones of what gives a book its identity. Fleshing out the ambiance, the structure, the voice, the style, and using this understanding in context to influence how you approach edits.

It sounds like a mouthful, but it’s necessary to see your work from a different light. And it’s necessary to take that mental stance when editing. It’s so easy to get caught up in the minute, in one chapter, that you don’t take the necessary steps back and look at the book as a whole. That scene has great dialogue, but is it disrupting the pacing? That’s an interesting turn of events, but could it be entirely rewritten to be better? The tricky thing is, it’s not about what’s objectively better. It’s about whether it’s better for your book, your style, your voice. If I wanted to have my book have breakneck pacing from cover to cover, we’d be taking a completely different approach.

So that’s what we did for the first round of edits. In taking a step back and looking at the naked scaffolding of the structure, we realised there needed to be some changes early in the book, in terms of character motivation, relationships and backstory. Which changes the way the entire book, and the main character, comes across. Not in a major way, but significantly enough. And that’s where playing word jenga comes in: because the wrong sentence in the wrong place can get your entire book to come crashing down around your head.

After we agreed to make the change, my editor worked on the first half of the book to reflect this. This meant tweaking characters, shuffling certain flashback scenes. At this point, I don’t touch anything on a sentence-level, any of the prose. This is all big-picture stuff.

I applied the changes, and sent it back to my editor. My editor then re-edited the first-half of the book again, because she’s a pro, and edited the second half in as a consequence of the changes we made in the first half. Because, if she didn’t, we’d be seeing two very different stories. This is what I meant at the start, about looking at the bare bones of your book.

So I edited the second half again. Tightening characters, adding and removing world-building, checking for continuity, and in some cases, completely re-writing scenes, or the internal mechanics of a scene. This means I change what the characters go about doing in order to complete their goals, whether they accomplish them, what the consequences are. Big-picture stuff that ripples out. As an example, one battle sequence was very run and gun. We retooled it to be about tactics and team co-operation. Another scene had a character try to get information from someone, blowing his cover pretty soon and searching the guy’s place. Instead, I had him remain undercover almost the entire time, slowly up the dread and tension the two characters play verbal cat and mouse, until one breaks.

It’s a hell of a headache, and it’s not easy to take scenes that have written a certain way, been in place, for years, and strip them out and completely retool them, but it’s necessary. And it almost always means a better book.

Then comes my next pass. I make most use of my editor’s comments in this round. Plugging logic gaps, tightening sentences, adding or deleting sentences, making sure all the dialogue is consistent with the characters, chopping away the ugly word clay, fixing up the location of the scene (and moving it, if need be) making adjustments that impact the scene, but nothing else. This is where the book is more or less falling into place. It’s probably the part I enjoy the most, putting the meat on the bone so the plot, story, characters and descriptions read smoothly and consistently.

The next round is where I am now. Fixing up sentence-level structure, word-choice, prose, and descriptions. My editor’s mighty red pen has left it’s mark on every single page, so there’s no getting away from it. It’s tempting to call it purely cosmetics, but my work is first-person, very voice-driven, and the state of the main character absolutely impacts the prose. I don’t care too much about flowery word-choice or elegant descriptions, but I absolutely care about each word sounding like it could come from the protagonist’s mouth. So I make sure my sentences are running smoothly, so a heedlessly complicated word or turn of phrase doesn’t turn into a jolting speed-bump. I ensure the sentences and paragraphs have a nice rhythm and balance to them. I deliberately purge any “flowery” prose, any words that detract from the tone I’m trying to strike, any poorly-timed metaphors. So words like “illuminate” and “sparkle” or any of their relations are chopped out. I’m trying to write sharp, razor-edged prose with a good dose of sarcasm and cynicism when needed. So specific word-choice, and how the words are conveyed, matter. I’m still going through it, and will probably be doing so for the first half of December, if not a little more.

And then, of course, when all’s said and done, there’s copy edits. So there’s a lot of hours and a lot of work poured into editing a book, both by the editor and author. But here’s the thing about print: it lasts forever. So if a sentence, paragraph, chapter, or even character, is lacking, it’ll be lacking forever. And it’s my debut, and you know what they say about getting one chance to make a first impression. . .

Either way, I hope this was insightful or helpful to you all.

Тъй като сред вас има професионални редактори, въпросче - доколко описаният процес от "другата страна на барикадата" ви звучи познато, или това е нещо ново за вас?

Аз лично не знам доколко информацията ще ми повлияе какво решение да взема по въпроса, чиято ограда от известно време ми сече г*за (traditional vs. self publishing), обаче със сигурност вниманието ми беше привлечено.
(Плюс това, мислех си че Gollancz вече бяха спрени като imprint? Huh...)

Считайте този пост за демо-версия (или отделен клон) на парчето, дето съм (само)обещал да ви пиша в скоро време.

ПП. Препоръчвам ви остатъка от thread-а, тъй като има допълнително интересно инфо, пък и ми падна камък от сърцето, като разбрах, че има и други хора като мен, дето не понасят кьопави текстове и публикуват "впечатляващи" (по думите на други) първи чернови...

[Radiant Dragon]

Иииии все пак ето пост, който може и да ме запрати доста по-твърдо към турбулентните океани на самиздата.

My best advice to authors has completely changed

Особено ако този факт е истина:

All big-five publishing contracts are for life-of-copyright (which is 70 years after your death for those who aren’t familiar with such things). Some will say, “But wait, there are reversion clauses that will give those rights back to the authors in those contracts.” Which, respectfully, makes me laugh. My agent is always telling me that I have “one of the best reversion clauses he’s seen” (btw these are on contracts that I signed before coming to him), and he wished he got as good as this for his other authors.

Ето ме на тук, седящ и мислещ си само допреди месец-два, дали мога да съм благосклонен към (хипотетичния) издател и да му дам дори ден повече от максимум 5 години разпространителски права. (Това е личният ми психологически праг.)
А те говорят за ДО ЖИВОТ...
Ако това е истина, аз даже направо съм готов с решението си. (Така де, поне що се отнася до the Big Five.)