The Secret to Success in Three Not-So-Easy Steps

Authors often create characters who are perfectly suited for the story that is being told. The brilliant detective is put to the task of finding out whodunnit, the brilliant surgeon must operate on the life-threatening tumor, the brilliant commando must rescue the hostage. If these characters have suitable antagonists to oppose them, then enough conflict…

If you’re interested in learning how to become a freelance book editor, you’re probably wondering what kind of person thrives in the environment—what kind of skills and aptitudes are needed. Freelance editors have some characteristics in common. For one thing, they’re self-starters: no one is going to be watching over your shoulder to see whether…

You probably landed on Club Ed because you enjoy reading novels and wonder what it would be like to be a book editor. Either that or you already are a book editor, in which case most of what I’m going to say here will be information you already know. (But you might enjoy our intermediate-…

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve broken my list of red flags into two. Here’s the second list: The Disappearing or Disorganized Client Clients who wander off during the early stages of discussing their project are likely to wander off during the part of the project where they’re supposed to do some work…

Fact-Checking in the Editorial Process Fact-checking is verifying that the information included in a ms is accurate: World War I took place in the early twentieth century, production of Hummers stopped in 2010. An author (even a novelist) who gets facts wrong irritates and alienates readers, so one of our roles as dev editor is…

A couple of weeks ago, I turned off notifications for one of my accounts. Then the other day I wondered why I wasn’t getting notifications. Was no one responding? I couldn’t figure it out. Then I investigated and I realized that people were responding, I just wasn’t getting notifications because I had turned the notifications…