In August, it was my pleasure to chat all things brand voice with Nicola Moors. Nicola is a launch strategist and copywriter known for dunking her clients' copy in a bucketload of their personality and writing copy that sounds like them. She's even written in the voice of a dominatrix. She has worked with some of the best in the online world, including Jordan Gill—who brought us together!—[...]
In June, I had the pleasure of interviewing Laura Lopuch of lauralopuch.com to talk all things cold emailing. What does cold emailing have to do with brand books? Most of you are entrepreneurs, so you already know the power of cold outreach. When you become an author, you'll continue to sharpen your cold outreach skills as you seek strategic partnerships to market and distribute your new brand bo[...]
Since my humble beginnings as a proofreader, my business has evolved every year and now includes a full suite of editing services plus book coaching. These changes were informed largely by my clients, whose needs were diverse on the surface, but they all boiled down to one core desire: the courage to publish. At first, as a proofreader, I trumpeted the elimination of manuscript errors as a veh[...]
Confession: I’m an editor who sometimes doesn’t want to own the term “editor.” “Editor” doesn’t mean much out of context. It could refer to the editor of a magazine, a video editor, or a wordsmith like me. The problem is, even when people understand what kind of editor I am, they don’t always know what I do or the transformation I provide for a manuscript. Let me back up[...]
Have you written a book but don't know how to get your manuscript ready for publishing? Does the thought of showing your work to someone else intimidate you? Many first-time authors know how hard it was to write their book. The editing process seems daunting too, and you might be tempted to rush through it so you can just publish the dang thing already! I sat down for a heartfelt chat with[...]
Last month I wrote about goal setting for authors to help you actually finish the manuscript for your awesome book idea. Today I’d like to talk about an important task for writers: getting your book copyrighted. Did you know that you don’t even have to be finished with your manuscript in order to start the copyrighting process? That’s right! So don’t wait. Whether your book is still in[...]
Do you want to self-publish a book, but you think you can’t? Is the task of writing an entire manuscript too overwhelming? I was there too. I’d written long-form creative fiction before, but I thought I’d never be able to write nonfiction longer than your garden variety 1,000-word blog post. Well, I’m almost done writing my first nonfiction book, and I’m now at 21,000 words—and[...]
Why should you hire a proofreader? I’ve already written an article all about why you should hire a copyeditor. Do you really need to hire a proofreader as well? The answer is yes! Proofreading is an essential step in the editing process. Don’t skip it! The good news is, the same person can copyedit and proofread for you (hello), so you don’t have to hire two different people. But keep[...]
So you’ve decided to write an ebook! Congrats—it has never been easier to write and self-publish an ebook. But you need to know how to conduct proper market research so that you can find a profitable ebook topic. You might be jazzed about your idea for your ebook, but how do you know it won’t flop? How sure are you that people are going to be interested in what you have to say? Do n[...]
Are you writing a book and considering using a standard style guide? Maybe you are deliberating between using the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) and the Associated Press Stylebook (AP), but you don’t know which one is better suited to your writing. Truly, both of these are awesome style guides! They are different in some respects, and today we are going to have a look at the basics of AP Style[...]