The Final Touch

This, from a prod­uct descrip­tion cur­rently posted online by Writer’s Digest — you read that right: Writer’s Digest:

“Write Short to Break Out! Build a bio that will get you noticed: Write and seel arti­cles, essays, short sto­ries and more.” My first thought was, “Shouldn’t that be ‘seal’?” My sec­ond thought was, “What does it mean to write and seal arti­cles, essays, etc.? Seal them in an enve­lope? [A bit old-fashioned.] Seal the deal??” Finally, it dawned on me that it was sup­posed to say “Write and sell arti­cles, essays, etc.” Easy enough to type two e’s instead of two l’s.

Then, this from the Feb. 8, 2010, issue of Time mag­a­zine:

“Writ­ing about Pres­i­dent Obama’s recent strug­gles in the Lon­don Times.” Um, did the Pres­i­dent actu­ally strug­gle inwrit­ing, not the strug­gle, that was in the Lon­don Times. So, this head­line should read: “Writ­ing in the Lon­don Times about Pres­i­dent Obama’s recent strug­gles.” the Lon­don Times some­how? In their build­ing? In writ­ten form in an opin­ion piece? Well, no. We prob­a­bly all “get” that it was the

I won’t point the above links pre­cisely to the pages with the errors because it’s not my way to air other people’s “dirty laun­dry” (no mat­ter how minor) in pub­lic. Also, please under­stand, I’m nei­ther pass­ing judg­ment nor pok­ing fun. I’m con­fi­dent these pieces were writ­ten by highly skilled writ­ers and proofed by highly skilled edi­tors. My point is sim­ply this: Even the best writ­ers and edi­tors miss things — I do, too. We espe­cially tend to miss errors in some­thing we’ve writ­ten our­selves. There is just some rea­son why errors we would eas­ily spot in some­one else’s work don’t pop out at us from our own. But if even Writer’s Digest and Time mag­a­zine go to press with errors like these, think how much more you and I, who don’t have a multi-level staff of edi­tors, copy­ed­i­tors, and proof­read­ers, need at least a sec­ond, if not a third or fourth, set of eyes perus­ing our work before it goes public!

(By the way, if as you read my blog, you spy an error, please email me [see the “Con­tact Final Touch Proof­read­ing & Edit­ing” page of this blog] and draw it to my atten­tion; I’d be grate­ful. Please put “Blog Typo” in the sub­ject line. Thanks in advance.)

Nel­son Tan, of Inter­net Mas­tery Cen­ter, pro­vides mul­ti­ple prac­ti­cal steps toward get­ting your e-book pub­lished! Check out his arti­cle at Blogz​.org, a web­site I just dis­cov­ered when “they” (there’s always a “they” behind a web­site!) started fol­low­ing me on Twit­ter. What a for­tu­nate con­nec­tion to have dropped into my lap!

First, a word about Blogz​.org: As I explore the site, I dis­cover high-quality writ­ing (a huge plus to this good-writing fanatic!) on a wide vari­ety of top­ics. Vis­i­tors are invited to read, write, and sim­ply enjoy! In the left-hand col­umn list­ing recent arti­cles, my eyes glommed onto the one by Tan. So… for my writ­ing friends and col­leagues, I point you in that direc­tion with a sam­pling of his “11 Steps to Pub­lish­ing Suc­cess”:

“1) Start research­ing in your sub­ject. Read a lot.
…
4) Start writ­ing…
5) Know when to stop writ­ing and start editing.

…  [Please par­don the mis­placed smi­ley that fol­lows. It’s not vis­i­ble in my edit­ing pane and, no mat­ter what I try, refuses to be deleted! I guess a lit­tle ran­dom hap­pi­ness never hurt any­one! –HM]

Get exter­nal reviews or find cre­ative ways to get tes­ti­monies…
9) Pre­pare a sales copy and set up a site pro­mot­ing your e-book.
…
11) Write arti­cles related to your sub­ject and sub­mit them to major arti­cle direc­to­ries. Your resource box points back to your sales page.”

Actu­ally, even Tan’s com­plete list only scratches the sur­face of what his full arti­cle seeks to teach. Obvi­ously, no “step-by-step” is a guar­an­tee to high sales or instant pop­u­lar­ity, his sug­ges­tions cer­tainly seem like a great place to start. Check it out for yourself!