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Writers and Editors

Writers and Editors (RSS feed)

Health insurance, freelancers, and the Affordable Care Act

August 22, 2013
Tags: affordable care act, Obamacare, authors guild, liability and media perils insurance
(Updated 6-5-18) The following may help freelancers figure out what health insurance freelance writers and editors can get under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) under Trump as well as from various creative freelance and writers organizations. According to the Authors Guild:
• "Assistance for premium costs: For those with incomes under specified thresholds, federal tax credits will be available to help cover the costs of premiums.
• "Choices will vary by states Read More 
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CreateSpace, Lightning Source, and Lulu: One self-publisher's experience

June 30, 2013
Tags: print on demand, CreateSpace, Lightning Source, and Lulu
Guest Post by Tom Benjey, initially for the Washington Biography Group.

Print On Demand (POD) technology allows books to be printed digitally one a time, thus relieving the publisher of the cost of printing a batch of books and having capital tied up in them until they sell. Major publishing houses have been using this technology for some time to keep their backlist titles in print.  Read More 
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Nonfiction--the long and the short of it

May 1, 2013
Tags: ASJA conference, Narrative Nonfiction, e-singles, e-books
The 2013 conference of the American Society of Journalists & Authors was discouraging in most ways, encouraging in some, and offered much to learn. Being a writer-entrepreneur is more important than ever. Some trends, in a nutshell:

• Nobody knows where things are going to shake out in book publishing, things are changing so fast and in so many ways, but self-publishing has definitely  Read More 
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Library Thing, GoodReads, Shelfari -- and other social networking for bookworms

March 16, 2013
Tags: social networking, reader reviews
You'll find a helpful range of reader reviews on these social networking for bookworms sites. Check out LibraryThing, GoodReads, Shelfari, BookCrossing, BookMooch, Book Movement, Read More 
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EBook basics for authors (part 1: formatting)

March 13, 2013
Tags: ebooks, ePub, mobi, Kindle, Formatting
Updated March 13, 2013. Original post appeared May 12, 2011.

Mobi and ePub are the two basic eBook formats
It's not enough to know which book you want to read; now you need to know which devices will read which books, with which features. At a tutorial on eBook basics organized by the Washington (DC) Biography Group, we learned that the main standard formats for eBooks are ePub (for most e-readers) and Mobi (the proprietary format read by Amazon’s Kindle) Read More 
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Online Tutorials on Proofing and Copy Editing

March 2, 2013
Tags: editing, copy editing, copyediting, mark-ups, Adobe Acrobat Reader, trimming flab

Updated 12-24.

You can learn a lot about editing online, sometimes for free. Here are good examples of what's out there:
• Edit a PDF (free trial, Adobe Acrobat)
• Editing in Acrobat — Just don’t go there! Editing is not one of the things Acrobat does well. Worse yet, Adobe periodically changes the interface — as far as I can tell, specifically to annoy us all. (Geoffrey Hart, Tech Talk, An American Editor, 12-6-24)
• PDF Markup Basics for Proofreaders (Adrienne Montgomerie, SciEditor, 9-23) Marking up changes on PDF production proofs uses the Comments tools, NOT the Edit tools. Watch the video to learn to use the tools that proofreaders (and other production pros like editors) need to mark up corrections on a PDF using the free Adobe Acrobat Reader (or Pro). A great way to show the process. Browse the site for more practical tips and information.
• Mark up text with edits (Adobe Acrobat) Scroll down to "More Like This" for helpful links to Sharing PDFs and collaborating, starting or participating in a PDF review, commenting and managing comments on PDFs, and filling and signing a PDF.
• How to use Adobe Acrobat Reader XI to mark up a PDF

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Evernote (Productivity Tools for Writers and Editors)

March 2, 2013
Tags: productivity tools, timesavers, footnotes, endnotes, Archives, organizing notes
"Once you get it, they say, you live and die by Evernote, the five-year-old, everything-in-one-place personal organization application that is hyped by its creators as your 'external brain.'" So writes Rob Walker on Bloomberg BusinessWeek (As Evernote's Cult Grows, the Business Market Beckons , 2-28-13). Read More 
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Bad Behavior: Rights bandits on the Wild Web

January 18, 2013
Tags: copyright, Rights, Buzzfeed
In this space (updated occasionally) I'm posting links to stories about egregious violations of creators' rights (rights of writers, photographers, artists, or other original creators of original works). On this week's Bad Behavior' Roundup:
• BuzzFeed announces $19.3m  Read More 
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PEN Literary Awards offer generous, prestigious honors

January 14, 2013
Tags: PEN, ESPN, literary awards, prizes, honors
February 1 is the deadline for nominations for the fairly lucrative PEN Literary Awards. Each year, with the help of its partners and supporters, PEN confers more than $150,000 to writers in the fields of fiction, science writing, essays, sports writing, biography, children’s literature, translation, drama, or poetry. Full details are here: http://www.pen.org/literary-awards

PEN's several awards are described below:
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Arlene Friedman Shepherd: The Life She Loved

December 28, 2012
Tags: Arlene Friedman, Arlene Shepherd, Harold Shepherd, tributes, The Godfather
Arlene Friedman

Updated 3-15-2020
by Pat McNees

 

My farewell to a long-time good friend, Arlene Friedman Shepherd, appeared in the wonderful annual year-end series in the New York Times Magazine: The Lives They Loved. (Blast! It's no longer online! What happened to the paper of record???) For someone who graduated from a secretarial school and never went to college, Arlene's career in book publishing was astounding. It is shocking to me that the New York Times did not see fit to give her an obituary--but at least there was a nod to her in the magazine. Read More 

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