Blog posts on Writers and Editors website
Indexed (by category)
Addictive TV and cable shows (plus video)
Amazon, Google, and other dominating forces on the Internet
Archiving and history
Book publishing
Book, video, and multimedia production
Collaboration and ghostwriting
Copyright and open access
Diversity and inclusion (racism and gender)
Ebook publishing
Editors and editing
Freelancing and independent contracting
Index of blog posts
Journalism and journalists
Marketing and social networking
Memoirs, personal histories, and life story writing
Miscellaneous blog posts
Money matters
Rights, contracts, fair deals, insurance, and legal problems
Self-publishing and print-on-demand (POD)
Storytelling and narrative
The writing life
Tools for writers, editors, and readers
Truth, accuracy, and fact-checking
Videos or art featuring Pat McNees
DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
• An anti-racism reading and resource list
• Celebrating diversity in children's books
• Critical race theory: What is it and why is everyone arguing about it?
EDITORS AND EDITING
• Kinds of editors and levels of edit
• Deciding what level of editing to assign to a piece
• Editing checklists
• Editing: a craft or a business?
• When and whether to hire an editor or book doctor
• Finding an editor
• Online Tutorials on Proofing and Copy Editing (3-2-13)
• All you need to know about indexes and indexing (5-12-12)
• Even Jane Austen needed an editor
TRUTH, ACCURACY, AND FACT-CHECKING
• The Lifespan of a Fact (truth, fact-checking, and art)
• 30+ sites for fact-checking political debates and other occasions for lies, rumors, hoaxes, misinformation, and inaccuracy
• Fact-checking the Democrats and the Republicans (8-30-12)
• Retracting Mike Daisey (on fabricated stories, 3-27-12)
On Pat’s website:
• How to spot and identify fake news
• Fake news and media literacy (a round-up of articles on the subject--including how to make readers savvier)
• Key fact-checking sites
• Where to check out hoaxes, urban legends, email scams, and chain letters
COLLABORATION AND GHOSTWRITING
• The Art and Economics of Ghostwriting Books
• Debating the ethics of medical ghostwriting (10-19-10)
MEMOIRS, PERSONAL HISTORIES, AND LIFE STORY WRITING
• A short history of the Association of Personal Historians
• Twenty-one frequently asked questions about personal histories and personal historians
• Why I love teaching Guided Autobiography (by Lisa Smith-Youngs)
• Writing workshops as group therapy
• Voice in memoir. See also Voice, persona, and point of view in memoir
• How reliable are our memories? How close to the truth?
• Memoir, biography, and personal histories (how-to resources)
• Collaborating on memoirs (J.R. Moehringer and Andre Agassi)
• Arlene Friedman Shepherd: The Life She Loved (In memoriam, 2012)
• A memoir writer's dream come true
• Whose Truth? The ethics of memoir writing
• Photos and memoir writing
• Personal history videos (video by Peter Savigny of his mother, Remembering Renee)
• Ben Patton on interviewing military veterans (video, interviewed by RJ McHatton)
• Memoirs of war and conflict: A reading list
• Memoirs of coping with chronic, rare, or invisible diseases, including mental health problems
• Personal historians love their work
• Is it still a great time to become a personal historian?
• Coming-of-age memoirs make great gifts
• Mark Twain on writing autobiography
• Soundtrack of your life (engaging students with music, to write about a pivotal moment in their life)
ARCHIVING AND HISTORY
• Preserving original documents (by archivist Taylor Whitney)
• Scanning many letters to get a searchable digital archive (Joella Werlin and Elisabeth Pozzi-Thanner, 7-24-17)
• A Historian's Code (by Richard W. Stewart)
• History in and for a digital age
RIGHTS, CONTRACTS, INSURANCE, LEGAL PROBLEMS, AND FAIR DEALS
• The Authors Guild Fair Contract Initiative (the main issues in book contracts, once over lightly)
• Authors Guild vs. Authors Alliance (Writing for a living vs. the broadest possible sharing of one's work)
• Authors' wills, trusts, and estates
• Estate planning: Your literary Estate)
• RIGHTS 101: What Writers Should Know About All-Rights and Work-Made-For-Hire Contracts (2003 position paper from ASJA, posted 10-2012)
• How to Deal with Warranty and Indemnification Clauses (8-13-12)
• Author alert: Reclaim rights on books pubbed 1978 and after (1-10-12)
• The interviewee's right to "edit" a transcript or story
• Who owns an interview? Who controls the right to use it?
• "How Can Creators Get a Fair Deal in the Digital World?" (6-10-10)
• Bad Behavior: Rights bandits on the Wild Web
• Consent the best defense against invasion of privacy lawsuits
• New iBook software's greedy grab for exclusive rights (2-1-12, thanks to Robin Rowlands)
• Media perils and liability insurance 101
• Health insurance, freelancers, and the Affordable Care Act (8-22-13, so not up-to-date but lists resources)
COPYRIGHT and OPEN ACCESS
• How long does copyright last?
• Revolution in academia: Copyright and open access
• The Hubbub About Sci-Hub: Who's the real pirate?
• Righthaven, the "copyright troll"
JOURNALISTS AND JOURNALISM
•Covering the Covid-19 pandemic: Resources for journalists
• Where journalists get their medical news (an important search and reading list)
• Will journalism survive? In what form?
• Fake news and media literacy
• Reporting on controversial scientific and medical topics
• Should political reporters be more than stenographers? (1-15-12)
STORYTELLING AND NARRATIVE
• Storytelling (the secrets of professional storytellers)
• How to shape a book (on story structure)
• The danger of a single story (video, Chimamanda Adichie's Ted Talk)
• Narrative Medicine and Medical Narrative (12-2-11)
BOOK PUBLISHING
• Margaret Atwood on The Publishing Pie (3-5-11 and still delightful and right on)
• The truth about book sales and authors' income
• Book Publishing: After the blockbuster, the niche
• Agents as publishers--a new conflict of interest (5-17-11)
• Mike Shatzkin on bookselling's past, present, and future (6-7-11)
• Authors' options in the changing book publishing game
SELF PUBLISHING AND PRINT-ON-DEMAND (POD)
• Who gets the ISBN for your self-published book and why?
• Tom Benjey's run with print-on-demand self-publishing (by Tom Benjey, 2-17-12)
• CreateSpace, Lightning Source, and Lulu: One self-publisher's experience (by Tom Benjey)
• Does the world want a flood of crummy self-published books?
• The frontier world of self-published e-books (6-6-11)
• Self-publishing trailblazer Amanda Hocking shifts gears (3-30-11)
• Tutorials from the Self-Publishing Trenches (4-11-11)
• Essentials of self-publishing
EBOOK PUBLISHING
• Readers: you can't actually buy an ebook
• How to price ebooks (as of 2013)
• Nathan Bransford explains the e-book price wars (3-11-11)
• Will the e-book revolution have the same effect the paperback revolution did? (report on Mike Shatzkin's post, 3-14-11)
• Librarians feel gobsmacked by HarperCollins restriction on e-book loans (3-15-11)
• EBook basics for authors (part 1: formatting) (report from May 2011, updated 2013)
• EBook basics for authors (part 2: DRM, or copy protection) (5-13-11)
• eBook basics for authors (part 3, trends and questions) (5-13-11)
• Amazon, E-books, and the Future of Publishing (updated 11-2012)
• How to price ebooks (as of 2013)
• What's up with publishers not selling ebooks to libraries? (3-19-12)
• Amazon, E-books, and the Future of Publishing (updated 11-2012)
BOOK, VIDEO, and MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION
• Audio-recording equipment, software, tools and tutorials (1-3-12)
• Scanning many letters to get a searchable digital archive (Joella Werlin and Elisabeth Pozzi-Thanner, 7-24-17)
• Guides to scanning, digitizing, and editing for video and multimedia (6-21-11)
• Scanning photos: what resolution is best?
• Working with Offset Printers (by designer Robin Brooks)
• Editing checklists
• Metadata, explained, with Tweeted examples
GOOD VIDEO, TV, CABLE, and PODCASTS
• ****Addictive and wonderful TV and cable shows (for when you're looking for something good to watch)
• Great podcasts to listen to as you exercise, drive, iron, file, cook, clean, ride or walk
• A Hairstyle of My Own (Bill Erwin's funny video about Pat McNees's hair history)
• Seniors Today interview about personal histories (video: Austin Heyman interviews Debbie Brodsky and Pat McNees)
• Personal history videos (video by Peter Savigny of his mother, Remembering Renee)
• Bill Wurtz's fabulous speedy history of Japan (video)
• Grandfather's journal (video)
• Gratitude (video, Louie Schwartzberg's inspirational TED talk)
VIDEOS FEATURING PAT
• A Hairstyle of My Own (Bill Erwin's funny video about Pat McNees's hair history)
• Seniors Today interview about personal histories (video: Austin Heyman interviews Debbie Brodsky and Pat McNees)
THE WRITING LIFE
• Ten reasons why it's better to be a docent than a writer (Kathryn Lance's delightful piece)
• The care and treatment of authors
MONEY MATTERS
• Pay the Writer (video, Harlan Ellison's classic rant)
• Authors' wills, trusts, and estates
• Estate planning: Your literary Estate)
• How to set your prices as a freelancer or consultant (4-1-12)
• Unpaid internships under fire
• Who wins and loses from DoJ's suit against Big Publishers and Apple? (5-5-12)
• The Panama Papers: Exposing the rogue offshore money maze (Politicians, Criminals, and the Rogue Industry That Hides Their Cash)
MARKETING AND SOCIAL NETWORKING
• How to do a virtual book launch (especially during the pandemic)
• Your elevator speech
• Social networking for book readers
• Library Thing, GoodReads, Shelfari -- and other social networking for bookworms
• Great covers sell books, but what makes for a great cover?
• Do blurbs help sell books?
• Can negative book reviews help sales? (3-24-11)
• Author websites that pull you--in different ways
• New fellowship in Jewish fiction writing and scholarship (Dec. 2012)
• PEN Literary Awards offer generous, prestigious honors (Jan. 2013)
FREELANCING AND INDEPENDENT CONTRACTING
• Independent writers object to laws that reclassify freelance writers as employees (ASJA)
• Freelancers Suffer Unintended Consequences of Independent Contractor Law (6-30-10)
• Should I work for free?
TOOLS FOR WRITERS, EDITORS, AND READERS
• Tools for Writers and Editors
• Evernote (Productivity Tools for Writers and Editors)
• What's an iPad good for? (by David Dantzler, 4-23-12)
• Reading devices and back pain
AMAZON, GOOGLE, AND OTHER DOMINATING FORCES ON THE INTERNET
• Amazon vs Book Publishers (Do Writers Win or Lose?)
• Amazon.com (Gorilla) and the Future of Book Publishing (part 1) (2-1-12)
• Amazon.com and the Future of Book Publishing (part 2)
• Social media superpowers under the microscope (Manipulation, copyright violation, clickbait, blockchains, and other issues with the Internet monopolies: Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, YouTube, and Twitter)
• Amazon, E-books, and the Future of Publishing (updated 11-2012)
• Settlement on Google book search lawsuit
MISCELLANEOUS BLOG POSTS
• Artificial intelligence (AI)--what the heck is it? What problems does it bring?
• Ever wondered about those TED talks and conferences?
• Hans Rosling, animating global health data
• 20 great resources for aspiring writers of children's books (12-29-11)
• Connecting the dots: Steve Jobs' wisdom
• Net Neutrality: What is it and where do things stand? (a roundup of links to important explanations, arguments)
• Channeling rage to produce change (quoting Terry Tempest Williams)
BACKUP FROM EARLIER:
by category
Amazon, Google, and other dominating forces
Archiving and history
Book publishing
Book, video, and multimedia production
Collaboration and ghostwriting
Copyright and open access
Ebook publishing
Editors and editing
Freelancing and independent contracting
Good video, TV, and cable
Index of blog posts
Journalism and journalists
Marketing and social networking
Memoirs, personal histories, and life story writing
Miscellaneous blog posts
Money matters
Rights, contracts, fair deals, insurance, and legal problems
Self-publishing and print-on-demand (POD)
Storytelling and narrative
The writing life
Tools for writers, editors, and readers
Truth, accuracy, and fact-checking
Videos featuring Pat McNees
Index of blog posts
EDITORS AND EDITING
• Kinds of editors and levels of edit
Read More