D. J. Herda

I ran across this question on a forum the other day. Will a book editor comment on a good book when he sees one? I wasn't surprised at the large number of misleading and outright wrong responses the author received. Here's what I know about the subject.

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If, by the phrase "book editor," you mean a conventional book publisher's acquisitions editor to whom you submit your book for publication and not someone you hire to clean it up, the answer is far more simple than your other respondents indicate. Those respondents include the person with a self-published eBook on Amazon and another who, in forty years, has never heard of an editor saying a story is good. The truth to your question is obvious.

Of course he will! That's what a book editor's job is—to find and publish quality, marketable books. Remember?

Now, you didn't ask about a book editor providing a detailed criticism or offering an unpaid assessment or any of the other ridiculous things to which some respondents replied. The reality is that, if a book is any good and fits an editor's list, he or she will tell you so and offer a contract. Even if it's not something upon which he can make an offer (wrong genre, wrong subject, bad timing, not a large enough potential audience), if he's an intelligent and thoughtful editor, he'll let you know you're on the right track. Read More 

I place little credence in someone who claims that chapter names aren't necessary anymore, as a few writers do. Quite the contrary: They can be of great importance both to the writer as he's working on developing a book and to the reader as he peruses the TOC page to decide whether or not to buy it on the spot or order it online.

Of my ninety published books, About Writing Right, a nonfiction how-to, features chapter names. So does my nonfiction bio, Wilma Mankiller. On the other hand, my novel, The Last Wild Orchid, has only title numbers and no names. But my short-story collection, Chi-Town Blues, does. For me, it all depends upon what feels "right" for that particular book. There is no universal preference.

As for your question, I have the consummate answer to how to come up with good chapter names. Brainstorm! Put something down, jot down a few alternatives that come to mind, and then decide which one works best for you. Rinse, dry, and repeat. It can take even the most creative writer nearly forever to come up with a single name that checks all the boxes. Read More 

I ran across a question from someone online the other day. He just completed his first novel, feels it needs some help, and is confused by all the conflicting suggestions from readers for whose opinions he asked. Knowing there'd be no lack of suggestions from respondents who don't have a clue as to what they're talking about, I set about setting him straight.

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Well, first off, ignore the advice given by the Queen of Wrong. It's absolutely absurd. You have already received plenty of grammar, punctuation, and spelling suggestions. Considering that only five percent of all readers are proficient in their understanding of grammar and even fewer of punctuation and spelling, chances are you'll get a ton of bad advice. Should you take it? What do you think? I'm afraid Queenie missed the mark again.

In truth, you can't possibly know which advice to take and which to reject without knowing what makes for good writing, which is why you're having trouble distinguishing between the two. The solution is not to envision the story in your head like a movie and then write an outline. That might help you address one part of your problem (story development), but it does nothing to address the second part of your problem, which is the mechanics of writing.

So, how do you learn your craft well enough to distinguish between good and bad writing? The most obvious answer is to enroll in some highly ranked writing and English courses. Then, in two or three years, you should be qualified to tackle your problem.

Two or three years? Read More 

Have you read Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms? If so, did you love it ... or hate it? One author read a copy as an eBook and found it so lacking in substance and quality of writing that he questioned whether or not it was a bad translation from a foreign language. Then, he asked my opinion, to which I responded.

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That's something of a silly question, isn't it, considering you indicated no source for your eBook or shared any of its contents? That reduces anybody's answer to your question to little more than an educated guess.

With that said, I have studied Hemingway's history and works for decades, and I wrote about him (both fiction and nonfiction) on several occasions. Like everyone else in the universe, I have a distinct impression of the caliber of his writing. It's great.

It's great, that is, for a journalist seeking to become a novelist.

For a novelist seeking to be stylishly relevant, poetic, imaginative, and grammatically accurate, it's not so great.
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When someone online asked my opinion regarding using Grammarly rather than hiring an editor to clean up his book, I couldn't resist responding. Here's what I said.

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I can't understand all the divergent responses and comments to respondent Michelle's reply, which was right on target: If you can't afford an editor, you're not ready to publish. To elaborate on her response, here are a couple more points.

First, Grammarly is marginally effective software that is often more damaging in the hands of the uneducated than it is an effective editing tool. I'm a grammarian who has taught analytic grammar at the college level for more than fifty years. I have also conventionally published more than ninety books in all genres, along with tens of thousands of articles and short stories. I've used Grammarly as an adjunct to MS Word's Spell Check to help me catch obvious mistakes, such as misspellings, for years. I ignore seventy-five percent of Grammarly's suggestions because they're incorrect. I mean, they're grammatically incorrect and often take perfectly acceptable syntax and turn it into unreadable gibberish. So, unless you don't need Grammarly except to see if you omitted a word here or there or have an unnecessarily long phrase or a misspelling, don't use it. It is no substitute for a qualified editor. Let me repeat: Grammarly is no substitute for a professional editor—not even close. Read More 

When a writer asked this online the other day, he received some horrible responses. Here's how I answered.

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First, I would suggest that you not be misled by the response from someone who claims that practicing only one specific form or type of writing will benefit that writing. That is complete nonsense, especially from someone who purports to know enough to teach other writers to improve their literary skills. It is an appalling response.

The accurate answer from someone not shooting from the lip is this: Absolutely, poetry can increase your writing skills. Not only poetry but also business letters, romance fiction, how-to books, biographies, diaries, and whatever else you can think of to write. All writing is intertwined as far as essential writing skillsets are concerned. While writing poetry won't increase your skills in another genre or format immediately, it will do so over time. Read More 

Someonee asked me the other day how authors find publishers who are willing to support first-time authors in their quest to write their books. My response? You might have guessed.

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They don't. Pure and simple. I'm not sure what fantasies you've been reading to give you the notion that they do, but let me set you straight. Publishers couldn't give a damn about first-time authors and their quest to write a book. We're not talking King Arthur and the Holy Grail, here. We're talking reality. And reality comes in two flavors.

On one side, we have one flavor called publishing. Publishing is a business. It's comprised of corporate entities, most of which have shareholders who meet once a year to elect their boards of directors, discuss their profits and losses, and moan about the lackluster performance of their stocks on the market. Read More 

Let's assume for a moment that a novel thought just struck you (excuse the pun). It's a sure-fire way to get your foot in the door at a major publishing house such as Simon and Schuster or Penguin Putnam and on your way to having your book not only read but also published. And it can't miss.

Sound far-fetched? I don't know. I had that very same thought shortly after I began pitching my books to publishers and getting stock rejection slips in return. The thought occured to me, even as a writer still in his teens, that if I could only meet with an editor face-to-face to tell him how great my book is, I could convince him to take a look at a copy. Once he read it, of course, I'd be on Easy Street.

It all seemed so simple that I wondered why no one had ever thought of it before. The only question I had was how to go about doing it. Whom should I pitch? What should I ask for? A lunch meeting? An office tete-te? An afternoon in the Park?

If that thought ever occured to you, you're probably still asking yourself how to go about doing it. My answer?

You can't.

Huh?

Let me repeat. You can't. Here's why. Read More 

A newbie author recently asked if it really takes 3 - 6 months to hear back from an editor after furnishing him with sample chapters and a synopsis for a book. Naturally, Queenie jumped in with her usual inaccurate response, detailing the life of an unsolicited manuscript ending up in the ubiquitous "slush pile." Here's the reality of the situation.

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Not to question the integrity of the reply from the Queen of Wrong, but, no, not all publishers take 3 - 6 months to respond after receiving sample chapters and a synopsis. I imagine that if she had taken the time to read your question more carefully instead of shooting from the lip, she would have seen the critical elements to your question: "receiving the sample chapters and synopsis."

For a writer to have gotten far enough into correspondence with a publisher for an editor to ask to see sample chapters and a synopsis of a book submission, the author already queried that publisher and met with a positive reaction. Acquisitions editors who request chapters and synopses don't throw them in the slush pile. Ever. They tag them for reading and additional consideration as soon as practical. Read More 

The question came in the other day: How many books should I write before I publish one? The answers, almost to a one, were ridiculous. One response from a spotlight-grabbing literary wannabe stated outright: one million words. Not very grounded in reality. Here's how I corrected the narrative.

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The Queen of Wrong strikes again. There is no magic number, not "in general" or otherwise. The truth is that you can self-publish the very first novel you write and be happy with it or self-publish your tenth and hate it. Just understand that, in either case, no one else is likely to see it, let alone read and enjoy it, unless you happen to be a marketing guru. But, that's the foible of self-publishing.

As for conventionally publishing a book, here's a reality check: You have nothing to say about when you "publish one." That, my confused newbie friend, is totally up to the marketplace. You can "try" to have a book published by submitting it to a conventional, advance-paying publisher, but whether or not it's accepted isn't up to you; it's up to the publisher. It's a competitive market out there, and all conventional publishers know it. I estimate that more than ninety-nine percent of all submissions to conventional publishers are rejected out of hand. Read More 

A curious beginning writer recently asked on a forum if it's time-consuming to publish books. I could have played along with the masses and gone off the deep end. Instead, here's what I thought was the best way to handle the question.

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No. Publishing books is neither an overtly lengthy nor an intrinsically "time-consuming" process, whatever that means. Contrary to what most other respondents have advised you, publishing books itself may eat up no more time than shopping for a new car or closing a loan on your house, and it could be lickety-split, depending upon your definition and several unknown entities missing from your question.

Here's what I mean.

For starters, you didn't ask about writing books for publication. You asked about publishing books. The time it takes for that varies with conventional versus POD or self-publishing. While conventionally published books may take from ten months to two years or more, depending upon a large number of variables, they may also take only a few weeks. That's if a particular book's subject matter is timely; if the book is time-sensitive, and if the market is chomping at the bit to read about what the book's author has to say. The first tell-all book on the life and death of Princess Diana, for example, appeared within weeks of her demise. She was killed in a car crash on August 31, 1997, and a book by Simon and Schuster hit the streets that same year. Several more publishers released books not long after.
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The other day, I stumbled across a forum writer who wanted to know how to tell when his book is good enough to submit to an agent or a publisher. Despite some solid, thoughtful responses, he received a lot of misinformation. Here's how I handled the situation.

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You have received some pretty good responses here, except for the nonsense the Queen of Wrong sent you. The truth is you can revise the heck out of your book, have it edited and critiqued, and revise it some more. That still doesn't mean it's as "ready as it's ever going to be" for publication. No. Sometimes waiting a few days, weeks, or months between editing sessions can help you approach your work with a fresh set of eyes and turn it from a turn-down into an acceptance.

Also, if you hire an editor or critic and happen to hire the wrong ones (much easier to do than finding the right ones, sadly), they'll be absolutely no help to you at all and may actually harm you in your quest for publication. Surprise, surprise.

And, sending out queries is not the only way to find out if your book is ready for the "Show." In fact, it's the poorest and least reliable way. Editors and agents often turn down books that are, in fact, fully "ready" but simply not to their liking or not something the recipients believe is marketable. They may also feel the book is too short or too long or written in a genre or even a point-of-view that the publishers/agents aren't looking to acquire. If you submit your book for publication, assuming the proof is in the pudding, you're likely to be discouraged for all the wrong reasons. Read More 

Someone asked online the other day about whether or not a beginning author needs copyright insurance for any sort of liability. He received some ridiculous and potentially harmful answers. Hopefully, my response set him straight.

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There have been some horrible answers here. Possibly because the phrase "copyright insurance" is meaningless in English. There is no insurance for copyright of which I'm aware because it's unnecessary. If, however, you're asking about author's liability insurance against copyright-infringement actions, then I get it. No one else did, including the respondent who advised you that you won't need liability insurance as long as you write fiction or tell the truth in your nonfiction writing. That respondent is way off base. Here's why.

Anyone can sue anyone else for virtually anything in the United States. Whether or not that plaintiff's action will prevail in a court of law is another matter. So, with that understood, it all boils down to a question of likelihood. Just as with any type of insurance coverage, you have to ask yourself about the chances of your needing it before buying it. As a writer, in other words, you won't actually need liability insurance until you actually need liability insurance. Read More 

That's not exactly a unique feeling in the literary world today, particularly when it comes to newbie authors. One such writer wrote me recently, saying he'd sent his book out to tons of agents without any positive results. Here's what our exchange looked like.

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Okay, here's what I think. First, if you sent your manuscript to 500 agents as you say, you sent to roughly half of all literary agents currently working in the United States and not three-quarters, as someone misinformed you. Still, that's a lot. That means you shot-gunned them. Instead of looking at each agent's requirements for genres, submissions procedures, and the like, you mass-mailed them. That's going to get you a lot of rejections from the start because agents can smell a mass-mailing from a mile away.

Second, if even ten percent of those agents didn't mind or didn't catch on to your mass-mailing technique and still turned you down, your product isn't any good. By that, I mean your book isn't marketable. At least, it's not to those agents.

Third, you say your "beta readers" love your book. But, in the real world, beta readers amount to zilch when it comes to an objective and realistic appraisal of a property's worth in a publisher's eyes. Most beta readers I've seen are in it for the free reads or the thrill of having a title. (You know, Beta Reader First Class.) While there may be a few exceptions, you're not likely to find worthwhile voluntary readers for your project, and even if you did, no beta reader is familiar with all literary agents' "wish lists" and requirements. In the end, that means you may find someone who knows what he likes, but you're unlikely to find anyone who knows what the marketplace will like or what changes you need to make to the book to make it marketable (i.e., publishable). Read More 

Someone asked this on a forum the other day, and the responses were horrible. Here's what I had to say.

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Well, considering the source, the first answer you received is predictably dead wrong. Not even close. I suggest you make a point of ignoring such responses from people who are only guessing at what they believe to be correct or possibly have an even more insidious reason for making snap judgments and responding with false answers or, just as bad, those that don't come close to responding to what you asked.

To answer the question you did ask and not something about which some respondents totally missed the mark. My response to How can a beginning writer learn from rejection if the editor doesn't provide constructive criticism is simple: He can't. But you can. At least, you can learn something from a stock rejection slip, and that's this: Your book may not be ready for publication. At least, it may not be by that publisher. How can you tell for sure? You're going to have to put on your Big Boy Editor's Hat and see for yourself where your book misses the mark. Either that or hire someone more knowledgeable than you to do the job. Read More 

I was thinking back to when I started writing at the ripe old age of fourteen. Back to when words flowed from my cranium like teeth from a drunkard's mouth. Every thing I wrote down was agonizingly painful. By the time I finished whatever tome upon which I'd been working, I was exhausted. And I could only hope my work was long enough to qualify as a novel.

Often, it wasn't.

So, what do you do if you complete your Great American What's-It and find it's only 39,000 words long? Is that long enough to qualify? Before sitting back on your laurels, think about a story my agent once told me about a fledgling writer who once submitted a 45,000-word manuscript to a conventional publisher. The editor sent it back with the note, "This isn't a novel; it's a pamphlet."

Ouch! Painful. Especially since a little bit of inquiring would have prevented that.

If you find yourself in a similar situation, the question becomes, What am I going to do about it? You can't submit your work to a conventional publisher as a novel, and few publishers these days publish novellas, a label that's more in keeping with your work's length. I'm guessing you had your heart set on becoming a published "novelist," anyway, which is difficult to pull off without a novel under your belt.

True, you can publish it yourself and label it anything you want, but you won't be fooling anyone, and you certainly won't be setting yourself up as a successful novelist. So, my guess is that you wouldn't mind expanding the book to sixty or seventy thousand words or more so you can submit it for conventional publication. Am I right?

My next guess is that you don't have a clue as to how to go about doing that since you already poured everything you have into your story—beginning, middle, and end—and don't have much left in the tank. Right again? Read More 

Someone asked me on Quora the other day where he could self-publish a book with an agent. He received a number of inappropiate replies. Here's what I told him.

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Well, welcome to the world of ridiculous answers. I see you don't specify whether your book is fiction or nonfiction, print or eBook, but that didn't stop one perennially notorious misleading respondent from advising you that your "novel" isn't long enough to be publishable, which in itself is inaccurate advice. If you're self-publishing either fiction or nonfiction, there are no rules on length. Nor are there any hard-and-fast dicta on sales and pricing of self-published books.

If you're serious about self-publishing, you should know that not only don't you need an agent but also you won't find an agent willing to take you on as a client. So, you're right on track there! Read More 

People often ask me how I get past writer's block. Usually, I tell them that writer's block is nothing more than a writer's unwillingness to write.

That's what I said: unwillingness.

Oh, sure, I know. You want to write, you're eager to begin, you're desperate to create, but "writer's block" jumps up to stand squarely in the way of you and your creativity.

Bull cookies! Let me explain.

When I was a kid of fourteen, the glamor and allure of becoming a writer were overpowering. I had to write. Often, that meant staying up all night, when everyone else in the household was fast asleep. Writer's block? It was a killer. At times, I'd sit, trying to think of things to say, for hours and still come up empty. Or, I'd throw some rough ideas down on a piece of paper and go back to read them the next day. And, I'd crumple it up and throw it in the trash.

Writer's block existed for me, and I'm a testimonial to its very reality.

As I grew older, I took a position as an assistant editor at a national magazine based out of the Windy City. And, I answered a call for a stringer for a suburban Chicago newspaper chain, working evenings covering school-board and town council meetings. Really exciting, creative stuff. Read More 

When someone you know asks you to review a copy of her new book, and it's awful, what do you do?

Here's what I did when a writer/friend of some years asked me to review a copy of her new book, which was scheduled for POD release a couple months later. Despite the fact that this author had already written and published several psychic romances, including one with a conventional publisher, I soon realized the new book was in trouble. So, I picked out the strong points, built them into a review, and then, in an aside to the author, pointed out some serious typos, grammatical errors, and punctuation problems so that she might review and consider revising them before releasing the book to the public.

I never heard from her again.

Obviously, some people can take creative criticism, and some can't. I assumed I was giving her the best of two worlds—a review she could publish to her benefit and tips on preparing the book for release if she chose to consider them. She apparently didn't see things that way. Read More 

I saw someone ask a question online the other day. It went something like this: "How to Write an Article When You don't Know Anything about It." Here's how I responded.

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Research. Next ridiculous question, please.

I mean, are you kidding? Is this a fake question? Are you getting paid to ask the most ludicrous things you can possibly think of? Did someone put you up to this?

No writer knows everything about the subject he sets out to immortalize. Many writers know nothing. That's what "hitting the books" is all about. In the good old days B.C. (Before Connectivity), if I got an assignment about which I knew little or nothing, I'd have to schlep myself down to the local library, work the card catalog until I was blue in the face, find some reference books or tapes, locate the contact information for some experts in the field, make a few dozen phone calls, conduct an interview or two, and hope everything came out well in the end. Read More