Tips for Authors (Nonfiction)

If you’re an author writing your first book, you’ve probably heard the terms “stylebook” or ‘The Chicago Manual of Style’ and wondered what people were talking about. ‘The Chicago Manual of Style’ is to book editors and publishers what the Bible is to preachers. More about that formidable tome in a moment, but first let’s talk about stylebooks in general …

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You’re almost through writing your novel or nonfiction book, and now you’re thinking about getting some endorsements . . .  those wonderful little plugs for the book that authors display on their book’s back cover. But what should an endorsement say, who is qualified to give it, and how do you get a qualified person to give you one? Who ... Read More

Preface, Foreword, or Introduction—which of these, if any, does your book need, and how are they different from each other? I’ll give you my advice as a substantive/developmental book editor with two decades’ experience editing both fiction and nonfiction. Novels don’t need any of them. Novels may, however, need a Prologue. (See my article ‘Does Your Novel Need a Prologue?’ Fiction authors, you can stop reading here, as the rest of this information is for nonfiction authors only) …

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As a book editor, I’m sometimes asked what the difference is between a developmental edit and a substantive edit. Authors typically use the first term to mean something different than what it originally meant to editors. In so doing, they’ve created a new (popular) meaning for the term. This leads to all sorts of confusion, which hopefully this article will ... Read More

You’re writing the author bio page for your book, and are unsure what should go there and what shouldn't. There’s a right way and wrong way to do this, so let’s take a look. Keep it brief – Your book's author bio page should be short—just two or three brief paragraphs. Make it factual – Give us specific facts about your ... Read More