Inventing Reality Editing Service

Build a website to promote your new book

When an editor or marketing expert tells you to get a website for promoting your book, you probably have one of two reactions: 1) “I can’t afford that” or 2) “I haven’t a clue how to do that; I wouldn’t know who to contact, and I can’t build one myself because I don’t understand anything about web page design or this html code I vaguely recall is needed to construct a website.”

This editor is here to tell you that there’s no need to worry. For very little money, you easily can build a website with just limited knowledge of how they’re constructed or how they work.

How do you do that, you ask? Let’s get started.

First, you need to find someone to “host” your website. A host keeps your web pages on a computer that is always turned on and that people can access at any time via the Internet. Finding this host is fairly easy to locate: Just type “website host provider” into a search engine and begin comparing prices and services offered. A number of reviews of these providers also are available online. It’s best to stay away from the “free” offers and pay a little for hosting a website (typically the lowest priced hosting package is sufficient, and this can range from a couple of dollars a month to a two-year contract that runs a couple of hundred dollars). The “free” option usually means that the host provider will saturate your page with ads, and sometimes they aren’t for items you’d like to see sold on your site.

Look for host providers that allow you to build a website using tools they provide. These turnkey websites are easy to construct and maintain, with many hosting companies providing online tutorials that take you step-by-step through the process. Use one of the hosting company’s templates to build your pages. Often you can pay to have a unique template built for you, but it probably isn’t necessary unless you’re promoting a series of books that you’ve written.

Next, you’ll need to plan your website. What pages will it have? What text and photos will appear on each page? Keep the pages simple – and you can have attractive, compelling pages that are simple – or in frustration you’ll end up paying someone to build them for you. During the pages ahead, we’ll discuss what these pages might be and what should appear on each one. This plan that you develop is called “site architecture.”

Finally, there is the question of whether or not you need a domain name. This is a unique for your website, such as www.mcdonalds.com (which takes you directly to the website for fast-food chain McDonald’s). This is very useful for branding and can cost less than a hundred dollars a year. You’ll probably want your own domain name if you’ve published a series of books. However, for first-time published writers, a domain name is unnecessary. When you purchase a turnkey website from a host provider, you’ll receive a free domain name, which you can partly create. The downside to such given domain names is that they typically include some element in the web address (also known as the URL) that indicates the host provider, thus making the web address a little long and not so easy to remember.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, or a small town like Boring, Oregon, I can provide that second eye.

Editor reading father/hiking essays in Menomonie

In celebration of Father’s Day, I’ll be reading about hiking and fatherhood on Thursday, June 6, from 5 to 7 p.m. at Bookends on Main in downtown Menomonie, Wis. The readings are of the completed essays in an anthology that I’m penning, Trails and Trials: Journeys of a Father and Son. Among the book’s topics: Fathers’ fears of handling a newborn, traditional vs. nontraditional roles of a father, and fathers being nurturers. Each essay shows how hiking offers the answers to these and other complex issues of being a father. After the reading, I’ll be on hand to answer questions and sign any of my various hiking books, the most current of which is available for purchase at Bookends on Main. It’ll be a great evening to visit Menomonie – the annual Downtown Clean-Up is that evening from 5 to 7 p.m. Bookends on Main is an independently owned and run bookstore, located at 214 E. Main St. in Menomonie.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Daytona Beach, Florida, or a small town like Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, I can provide that second eye.

Cleaner grammar: Bated breath vs. baited breath

One of the downsides of a language is it evolves, so we go through periods in which words become extinct and other ones arise to meet the new cultural climate. Such is the case with the word “bated,” which used to be a fairly common English word meaning “hold back or abate.”

Almost no one uses “bated” anymore. But we do use “baited,” which means to “annoy or taunt.”

So, do we wait with “bated breath,” meaning you’re holding your breath with anticipation, or do we wait with “baited breath,” meaning you’re annoying or taunting your breath with anticipation?

And now, what you’ve been waiting with bated breath (or is it “baited breath”?) for – drum roll please – it’s bated breath.

Since “bated” is going the way of the dodo bird, expect to see “baited breath” more frequently, even though that spelling is a bit nonsensical.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Oakland, California, or a small town like Goobertown, Arkansas, I can provide that second eye.

Delete redundancies for tighter manuscript

Among the most common mistakes I see when editing novice writers’ manuscripts is the use of redundant words. A redundancy exists when the modifying words aren’t needed because they say exactly what the word being modified implies. For example, “rich heiress” is redundant as an heiress by definition is rich.

Writer Samuel Delaney recommends a simple test to see if you’ve got a redundancy in your writing. First, replace the modifier with its antonym. So if you had the phrase “rich heiress,” you’d replace “rich” with “poor” to get “poor heiress.” If this new phrase is contradictory or ridiculous sounding, you probably have a redundancy.

Of course, there is an outside chance that given the context of your story, you might write “poor heiress” – for example, you could be writing tongue-in-cheek that the young woman has inherited a bankrupt estate. But more often than not, this isn’t the case.

Fortunately, redundancies are easy to fix. Simply delete the modifier. Just write “heiress.”

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like San Jose, California, or a small town like Boar Tush, Alabama, I can provide that second eye.

Wisconsin Outdoors Fun features editor’s book

Wisconsin Outdoors Fun featured my recent book Headin’ to the Cabin: DayHiking Trails of Northwest Wisconsin, in Friday’s edition. Headin’ to the Cabin describes more than a 100 day hiking trails in Ashland, Barron, Bayfield, Burnett, Douglas, Polk, St. Croix, Sawyer and Washburn counties, including more than two dozen in the Spooner area. Wisconsin Outdoors Fun is distributed across central and eastern Wisconsin, including Green Bay, Appleton, Sheboygan and Wausau.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Des Moines, Iowa, or a small town like Whynot, Mississippi, I can provide that second eye.

Draft rarely perfect after first go-round

After you’ve brainstormed some ideas and made an outline of how you might organize those thoughts into a story or nonfiction piece, the next step is get busy “drafting.”

A draft is the placement of your thoughts into complete sentences and paragraphs. This might be done in longhand on paper or typed using a word processing program.

When drafting, your goal is to shape the story or article into the perfect piece that you envision it to be. Don’t worry too much if the first time you try to do this that the piece rambles or is in some way deficient.

That’s because you always will complete a “first draft” of anything you write. With each new draft you write, you’ll cross out sections that don’t work, rewrite sentences or whole paragraphs, perhaps add entirely new ones, select better words to use, put in missing commas, fix typos, rearrange sections, and probably more. But we’ll go into that in a future blog entry that examines revising.

In addition, don’t presume that you can simply proofread or edit your first draft and be done! You might get away with that if you’re an exceptionally gifted writer (or are writing a simple and formulaic piece, such as a news brief, on deadline). While you probably are at least an above average writer, almost all of us need to go through several drafts before arriving at a final product.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like San Francisco, California, or a small town like Nimrod, Oregon, I can provide that second eye.

Five great quotations about revising

“I can’t write five words but that I change seven.” – Dorothy Parker

“To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again, and once more, and over and over...” – John Hersey

“Half my life is an act of revision.” – John Irving

“Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.” – Colette

“Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It's like passing around samples of sputum.” – Vladimir Nabokov

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Arlington, Texas, or a small town like Chicken, Alaska, I can provide that second eye.

Why some media ignored your press release

So you’ve written a press release and after spending hours looking for the right reporter/editor to address it to and tailoring the piece to them, you’ve sent a batch of them out. Good work! You’re on your way to getting some press coverage.

But don’t fret or get angry when some media ignores your press release. In fact, you should expect that your press release will be passed over.

Just because you write a press release doesn’t mean it’ll get published. It may have gotten lost in the shuffle (editors receive dozens of press releases a day), it may not be deemed newsworthy enough, you may have sent it to the wrong editor, they may not have received it in time enough to be used, or maybe they’re holding it to be used in a related story in the days ahead.

Of course, your press release may get published word for word. Or it may be shortened. Or it may be rewritten. Once you send the release, the media may do any of this with your release, and they’re all within their rights to do so.

Also understand that sometimes what is newsworthy to one news organization is entirely uninteresting to another. A lot of this is based on the amount of news generated in a community and how hard-hitting that news outlet might be. For example, I had no trouble getting an article and picture in a daily newspaper for a small New Mexico town of 10,000 where I taught for a mere two school years two decades before my book came out. But the daily newspaper serving a community of half a million residents where I worked as the editorial page editor only five years before made no mention of my book whatsoever.

Regardless of all the frustration that may come from having your press release ignored, if you don’t write a press release, you’re virtually condemning yourself to no press coverage whatsoever. The goal is to get some kind of mention of your book in the newspaper, on the radio, on a blog, on a website. The more mentions made, the greater the chance that they will generate additional interest in and mentions of your book. That in turn probably means interviews and invitations to write articles. And all of that will lead to additional book sales.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you live in a big city like San Francisco or a small town like Seabrook, Massachusett, I can provide that second eye.

Value of creating your own publishing company

When you decide to self-publish your book, you face two choices: Either you can allow the on-demand printing house to be your publisher or you can be your own publisher and essentially contract the on-demand company to be your printer and distributor.

Either approach is fine, but depending on your long-term writing goals, you may want to give serious consideration to creating your own publishing company. That’s right – you, too, soon may be a CEO and company president (and to think, you just wanted to write a book about vampires)!

Advantages of creating your own publishing company include:
• Avoiding the appearance of being a self-published book - You do this purely for publicity purposes. Many mainstream media will not give your book any attention if it’s self-published, and they can tell it is when “CreateSpace” and “Lulu.com” appear on the book cover. But how are they to know that “Spring Valley Publishing Inc.” or “Dream Achieved Publishing Co.” is really just a front for your self-published book?
• Improved marketing – Having all of your writings in a single catalog at one publishing company can make promoting and selling you books easier. Says Norman Stevens, founder and owner of Storey County Publishing Company, “It's really just a way to promote my books through a publishing company rather than setting up a new website for every book I write.”
• Creating future earning opportunities – If you write a series of books around a single topic or theme, especially if its nonfiction, you’re creating a franchise that then can be sold … and why not sell your rights to the series concept “How to Fix (fill in blank) with a Hammer” for hundreds of thousands (maybe millions!) of dollars once it becomes successful? You always can move on to a series of books about “How to Invest Your Wealth." 
• Greater control of your writings – Since you’re both the publisher and the writer, you can do whatever you like with your works and potentially garner higher royalties. That’s why successful songwriters and filmmakers often create their own publishing companies.

Still, creating your own publishing company does come with some disadvantages:
• Cost of creating a business – At least at first, you’re going to spend all of your book royalties (and money from your day job) covering a variety of expenses that come with establishing your own business, specifically state/local licensing and registration as well as state and federal taxes. You’re also going to at least need some accounting software and probably some classes on starting and running a business (Where you’ll discuss such issues as whether or not to be a sole proprietor, LLC, or a corporation.).
• Time of creating a business – If you start your own publishing company, you’ve become an entrepreneur. This likely means a lot of extra work for no long-term gain or benefit (especially if just publishing a single volume), and that’s a distraction from your writing. After all, the reason you’re self-publishing is to become a published writer, not the next Donald Trump.

Should you decided to create your own publishing company, you likely will still use an on-demand publisher to print your book. You get to list your publishing company’s name on the title page and book cover, though.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Rochester, New York, or a small town like Beech Bottom, West Virginia,I can provide that second eye.

Second ‘Hittin’ the trail’ guidebook released

The second ebook in my Hittin’ the Trail series went on sale today. Hittin’ the Trail: Day Hiking Grand Canyon National Park offers the only complete list of day hiking trails in one of the nation’s favorite national parks. In addition, with one tap of the screen, you can:
• Plan days of fun family-friendly activities
• Reserve a campsite or lodging
• Receive a list of the parks’ current programs
• Learn about special kid programs
• Find directions, entrance fees, parking lots and more!

The book is available on Kindle, Nook/Kobo, iBook/iPad and other ereaders.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Madison, Wisconsin, or a small town like Possum Grape, Arkansas, I can provide that second eye.