dan gookin

DON’T UPLOAD THAT BOOK TO KDP UNTIL YOU CHECK THESE👇👇 Before uploading your book to KDP, ensure these five things are in check to avoid complications. First, review your manuscript carefully for any formatting issues. Check the layout, font consistency, and margins to make sure everything looks professional. Pay special attention to headings, paragraphs, and page breaks, as these small details can make a big difference in readability. Next, double-check your metadata. This includes the book title, subtitle, and author name. Ensure they’re correctly spelled and formatted to match your branding. Don’t forget to craft a compelling book description; it’s your chance to sell your book, so make it engaging and clear about what readers can expect. Lastly, confirm your cover design meets Amazon’s guidelines. The image should be high-quality and eye-catching, reflecting the content of your book. The file size and dimensions need to be correct to avoid any issues during the upload process. Ensuring these details are perfect will help your book stand out on Amazon’s marketplace.

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Monday Muddle: backlist, backlog backlist: (noun) an author's or publisher's list of older titles that are still available; books that are not new releases backlog: (noun) (general) an accumulation of unfinished tasks or unfilled orders; (project management) list of what needs to be done to complete a project #MonMud

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Not Simon & Schuster: Deconstructing an Impersonation Scam – Written By Victoria Strauss For Writer Beware For writers chasing a traditional publishing contract, an email from Big 5 publisher Simon & Schuster inviting submission might seem like a dream come true. Just one problem: major publishers like S&S, which acquire mainly via reputable literary agents and expect manuscripts to come to them rather than the other way around, don’t email random authors out of the blue. Also, impersonation scams are extremely common these days, with fraudsters posing as publishers, literary agents, film production companies, even editors (see…...

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AI offers opportunities for smaller and specialized publishing houses – but not in the way you might think, since it's got nothing to do with workflow.

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Parallelism is something editors obsess about and writers barely notice. But when it's off, readers feel it—even if they can't name why. This post breaks down the two types of parallelism, shows when to use each, and explains when skipping parallelism actually makes your writing stronger. https://zurl.co/3kg84 #WritingTips #GrammarTips #AmEditing

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FWIW re: hyphens, en and em dashes and their appearance in human and AI writing: here's the entry from the punctuation section of the current Associated Press style guide. Yes, humans use em or en dashes in their writing. Yes, they can be a telltale artifact of AI "writing." Punctuation is akin to musical notation to guide note duration and pauses. In design, punctuation is the analogue to white space, leading (the vertical space between lines of type) and kerning (spacing between letter pairs). Think of it this way: One can separate a series of thoughts and ideas without commas. One might also indicate a series of concepts, notions or details using a comma series (with or without the serial, or Oxford, comma). In the end – and style aside, preference often dictates usage – punctuation directs the reader to pause at the writer and/or editor's desire. A sentence is a sentence. A sentence joined with a quick related detail might incorporate a semicolon, which is a pause of duration somewhere between the period and comma; one learns these phrasings with time. But in the end, edit for logic and clarity. When in doubt, recast a troublesome sentence. Run your content through a readability app to gauge the level of audience with whom it aligns. Or ... wait for community standards to evolve into the next acceptable practice. #dash #hyphen #punctuation #emdash #endash #comma #semicolon #grammarnerd #stylenerd

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How to Tell the Difference Between a Hook and Inciting Incident via Writers Helping Writers #amwriting #writetip #nanowrimo #pubtip https://lnkd.in/ebu_Tjiv

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Peter #Drucker Tuesday thought: "Information is what holds an organization together and information is what makes individual knowledge workers effective." #quote

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How much of plain language is about word choices? The committee I chair for the International Plain Language Federation analyzed the ISO plain language standard to see how much of it was about words. We used two measurements: word count and idea count. Both measurements came up with the same amount: just 7%. Edited to add: plain language is about readers' needs. Things like this: is it the right information, is it in the right order, is it presented in the right way? The ISO standard shows that these kind of things make up more of "plain language" than the words you choose to use. https://lnkd.in/eR8GBRix

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Imagine: Collaboration by design rather than death by a thousand edits and phone. Josh Bernoff inspires at every level. Approaching the collaborative process from a design standpoint is a beautiful idea, not a constraining one. Saul Bass said, “Design is thinking made visual.” Is collaboration design thinking made practical?

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Mystic Ink Publishing Voices of the Masters Series - Santa Barbara Writers Conference 2024 - Demystifying Publishing Options Demystifying Publishing Options with Patricia Marshall, Rick Shaw, and Holly Kammier. This session offers a working understanding of the range of publishing options, a useful checklist as to what you’ll need in any route to publication, and how to decide if self-publishing a good choice for you. https://lnkd.in/gnkZMDWN

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