Author Charles Petzold on Deadlines and Letting Go
Author Charles Petzold discussing our forthcoming book, The Annotated Turing:
In an ideal imaginary world, a book is finished only when the author is fully satisfied that every word and comma is perfect. In the real world, that doesn’t work. The only way books ever get finished is with the imposition of a deadline — sometimes [...]
The Problem with Book Outlines - Advice for Authors
I was speaking with a potential author on the phone today who was having trouble with the outline portion of his book proposal. Of course, building the book outline is one of the most important elements in writing winning book proposals, so all new authors stress over getting it right the first time.
You probably [...]
Publishing Contracts - Understanding Reserve for Returns
I had a conversation with an author recently about the Reserve line on his royalty statement, and thought other authors might benefit from a quick primer.
Books sold to most resellers - stores like Barnes and Noble and Borders for example - are returnable. That is, if the book stores don’t sell them all, they can [...]
Google Knol as an Instant Author Platform
Late yesterday, Google made an announcement about an upcoming product called knol, a free platform for creating authoritative articles on any subject. Knol will have a variety of social features and will let readers comment, rank, review and suggest edits.
Earlier this week, we started inviting a selected group of people to try a [...]
The Book Proposal: Tips for Writing a Winning Book Proposal
You will find quite a bit about writing winning book proposals on this site - but you wont find them all in one place. All the posts are tagged book-proposal, but I thought it would be a good idea to group them together. Keep in mind I work in technology publishing, so some [...]
