The Most Essential Help You Can Get for Your Career

If you’re about ready to publish your book, check to be sure your frontmatter, backmatter, index, and style choices are similar to what the big publishers would do. It’s easy. Just use Chicago Manual of Style. (You really need to have one to refer to all the time for all kinds of things like when to use the relative pronoun “that” and when not to, anyway!). You have to pay for it to use it online (they know what they have!), so why not buy your copy so you have it on hand even after your yearly subscription runs out!

Here’s a starter tip: If you write fiction, you do not have a Table of Contents. If you write nonfiction, you do. But you don’t call it a Table of Contents. You call it Contents. Think about the redundancy in the former term.

This book is more essential than my The Frugal Editor or my The Frugal Book Promoter, though the three of them will give you about everything you need to assure a successful book.

 

The above is a tip from my SharingwithWriters newsletter. Coming up in the next issue: A tip on free resources for art for your bookcover--real art. Great art! Subscribe and get a freebie, too, at http://howtodoitfrugally.com. You'll find a subscription form on ever page in the upper right corner.  

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson edits, consults. and speaks on issues of publishing. Find her The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success (How To Do It Frugally series of book for writers). Learn more about her other authors' aids at www.howtodoitfrugally.com/writers_books.htm , where writers will find lists and other helps including Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips on the Resources for Writers page. She blogs on all things publishing (not just editing!) at her Sharing with Writers blog. She tweets writers' resources at www.twitter.com/frugalbookpromo . Please tweet this post to your followers. We all need a little help with editing. (-: