Ten Missing Pages

Have you included these in your book’s manuscript?

When authors send me a manuscript to edit, I often find they’ve forgotten several key pages. Writers concentrate so much on the body of their book, they can overlook these.

They don’t take much work to create. But without them, a manuscript’s not ready to be typeset (or formatted as an e-book).

Think of these as … Continue reading

First Impressions

Easy ways to sabotage your submission.

Want a quick way to make a poor first impression with an agent or editor? Send a manuscript that’s not professionally formatted.

Consider the sample pages for a YA novel an author sent this morning. A quick glance suggested he wasn’t yet ready for prime time. Before I read … Continue reading

Fast Format Fixes

These shortcuts will quickly put your manuscript into shape.

A recent social media discussion got some writers worried. They hadn’t known that to indent the start of each paragraph, they shouldn’t use the Tab key. Instead, editors expect them to format their document so each paragraph indents automatically.

Now you tell me … … Continue reading