Category Archive

editing

Onward, Offbeat Resilience: the book that became Shitshow

A couple months back, I mentioned I was working away on trying to sell my second book, ONWARD. The first draft of the book was completed, but a series of literary agents and publishers all had the same feedback: you can’t sell this particular book, in this particular format.

So I hired a familiar face to help me rework it into a better format…

Let’s talk about clickbait

I think of clickbait as manipulative and forcing your hand (ie “This bride got left at the altar — YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT SHE DID NEXT”), but the truth of publishing is that a huge portion of a publisher’s job is what’s known as content marketing.

How do you make sure that people who are interested in your content A) see it and B) are interested enough in it to click through to read it? People do NOT want to leave Facebook, so it’s a significant challenge.

Is it a “swatch of color” or a “swath of color”? Neither: it’s a fart

Each week, my editors write, produce, and edit the posts for the following week. Thursday evening, our Copyeditor Caroline comes in with her linguistic riding crop and works her magic, and then Friday morning I come in with my Scary Big Red Editorial Pen Of Doom and give the final revisions and publication sign-offs. Last week, we had a little editorial disagreement…

FIX TYPO: How to report errors on Offbeat Empire websites

Did you know you can submit corrections to typos and other errors you may find on the Offbeat Empire’s websites? Here’s how!