Writers and Editors

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

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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

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COLLABORATION AND GHOSTWRITING

• The Art and Economics of Ghostwriting Books
• Debating the ethics of medical ghostwriting (10-19-10)

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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)

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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

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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)

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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"

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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)

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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)

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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

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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

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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)

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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

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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)

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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)

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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

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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)

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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?

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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

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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

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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)

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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 

Joella Werlin and Elisabeth Pozzi-Thanner (via Pat McNees)
When Joella Werlin used a small wireless scanner to scan a multitude of letters for a major project, she praised it to a group of personal historians, one of whom asked if it did two-sided scanning. With her permission and Elisabeth Pozzi-Thanner's, I post here what both of them wrote:

Joella writes: Elisabeth Pozzi-Thanner convinced me to buy ScanSnap iX500 (Fujitsu's wireless desktop scanner). To answer your question, yes it scans a two-sided doc in a flash! When it creates files, it eliminates blank pages. Settings enable you to control how you set up files. At Elisabeth’s suggestion, I also have hired  Read More 

by Pat McNees (updated 10-29-2020)

"Most men would rather have you hear their story than grant their wish." ~Old saying

Since 1990 I've been helping people and organizations tell their life stories. If you're nosy (curious), love to do interviews, like shaping them into a compelling narrative, and either know how to produce and independently publish a book or are willing to learn and/or subcontract some stages of the process, this kind of gig is a great variation on being a conventional writer, editor, or publisher. People enter this new field from many different previous careers (some unexpected -- for example, funeral celebrant). Some personal historians have been (and still are) book designers, some oral historians, some therapists, some editors from book publishing (who now get credit for all the work they do), some are journalists (who have seen the writing on that particular wall), some are video documentarians. The list of previous careers is a long one.

The point is, personal historians take advantage of the trend toward private publishing and public sharing.

Personal histories come in print, audio, and video formats, among others. Video biographies are great fun, especially to show at family gatherings, and sometimes a family just wants you to capture an elder's stories in his or her own voice -- so all you need to produce is edited audio interviews with transcripts.

Some of us are also memoir coaches. My favorite activity is teaching life story writing (at the Writer's Center in Bethesda and in Montgomery County libraries). In a course I call "My Life, One Story at a Time," I share tips and writing prompts with some really interesting adults, who write a story from their life each week and come in and read it aloud. It's fascinating and they get the writing done, because they have a deadline, an interested audience, and a little targeted encouragement. (Reading your story aloud is a wonderful way to "find your voice." Reading aloud with others is a great way to get your creative juices flowing and to hear what works and what doesn't. Your storytelling improves almost by osmosis.)

If you want to make a living helping others tell their life (or family) stories, start by picking up a copy of a useful book called Start & Run a Personal History Business: Get Paid to Research Family Ancestry and Write Memoirs by Jennifer Campbell. Jennifer was active in the Association of Personal Historians (of which, let me say up front, I am a former president). Alas, the group disbanded formally in May 2017, owing to severe financial difficulties. (One problem is that new people kept joining the organization but after a while the experienced members dropped out. Many people love the idea of doing personal histories but don't know how to find clients.)

APH produced a few special toolkits for personal historians (on getting your business up and running; doing the interview; developing products and services that suit your skills and the market you want to reach; and marketing (ideas that have worked for various members of APH). In this business, talking shop covers a LOT of ground. You learn not only about memoirs but about specialized products, such as ethical wills (or legacy letters).

When APH was holding its annual conferences, there was much cross-pollinating, so to speak. If you were a designer, you could still learn about how to do an interview from an oral historian. If you were a journalist, you could learn from a book packager how to go about finding the right designer and printer. The workshops were helpful, but even more so, in the corridors between workshops you could look at each other's products and get ideas that would work in the niche you settled on (mine was and is books -- including several histories of organizations -- and I co-produced one video). This is more of a sharing culture than most: personal historians love what they do and want others to love it too.

I was co-editor, with Paula Stallings Yost, of My Words Are Gonna Linger: The Art of Personal History, with a foreword by Rick Bragg--a great gift for someone whose life stories should be captured, preserved, and shared but who keeps saying, "Who cares what happened in my life?" I hope that it will remain in print, available from Amazon, but chances are it will disappear because of bankruptcy--but watch for it as a "used book"!  It contains backstories about the process of getting the stories into print, which are helpful if you want to help others tell their life stories.

 

"At last, a collection that shows the 'why, what, and how' behind memoir as legacy." ~ Susan Wittig Albert, author of Writing from Life and founder of Story Circle Network.

For more information and helpful links in this field, check out
---21 frequently asked questions about personal histories and personal historians
---A short history of the Association of Personal Historians
---The Business of Personal History (a blog post on my Writers site).
---Memoirs, personal histories, and life stry writing
---More About Personal and Family Histories and Legacy Memoirs (stories, explanations, and examples--print and multimedia)
---Why I love teaching Guided Autobiography (guest post by Lisa Smith-Youngs) I love it too, though my version is called "My Life, One Story at a Time"
---Writing an ethical will or legacy letter (on my comfortdying.com site)
---The art and craft of interviewing (Pat McNees site)
---Video biographies, tributes, and documentaries
---Doing oral histories and video interviews
---Telling Your Story, a semi-encyclopedic page of resources on my Pat McNees (personal) site.
---Books to help you get started writing your own or someone else's life story

 

 

Sadly, you can no longer join APH (the national organization). Maybe another organization will rise to take its place. Meanwhile, local chapters are forming and if you are lucky and one forms near where you live, ask if you can join or visit to share information about new technologies, new techniques, new markets, and new approaches to that old idea that used to be the province mostly of the rich and famous: leaving a legacy (memoir as book, video, or audiotapes) for the next generation. So far you can find local personal historian groups here:
---Life Story Professionals of the Greater Washington Area (DC, Maryland, and Virginia).
---Personal Historians (a Facebook group)
---Personal Historians Northeast Network (in the Boston area)
---Personal Historians NW (in the Pacific Northwest)
---Life Stories Australia (personal historians, biographers, editors, etc.)
---NYC Personal Historians (a Meetup group).
     

Good luck in your endeavors

      ~Pat McNees

Originally published 3-22-2011 as "It's a great time to become a personal historian." Updated when APH filed for bankruptcy (after 20 fruitful years) and the Association of Personal Historians closed its virtual doors. APH never did have a physical home. Plenty of personal historians are still doing business -- indeed, some have been busier than ever during the pandemic, although sometimes working via Zoom or Skype, etc.

See also Secrets of successful book covers and titles

Developing a 'selling' book title

Book blurbs, celebrity endorsements, and "advance praise"

 

 

Updated 6-5-24

What about the best book covers makes us look at the book? We can see them from afar as well as in thumbnails. They ask a question rather than provide the answer. They elicit an emotional response.They're not too cluttered with copy and information and backstory. They make clear what genre the book  Read More