Registration is now open. The easiest way to register is by telephone. Call 602-Dial 602-787-7000 and register for English 235, Magazine Article Writing, Section 58235.

Please visit our home page for detailed information.

Related posts:

• How do you get published?
• Setting your freelance fees

This was pretty easy to do, since we had been wrestling with a particularly difficult book compiled by a group of authors for publication through a print-on-demand house. The book was to be used adjunct to their business, and so it was to their advantage to self-publish rather than to go through a traditional press. Just as well: no one who wasn’t being paid to publish the thing would have accepted it.

The copy epitomized six major traits of amateurishly prepared material. It was filled with authorly misdeeds that create unnecessary headaches for editors and layout artists. These matters ultimately cost the authors a great deal more money than anyone needs to pay for production of a book: many of our sixty-dollar hours were consumed needlessly in untangling messes the authors could have and should have done right from the outset.

So, let us discuss. Let us discuss serially, starting today with Installment 1.

1. When working with a coauthor…

Please work together with your coauthor!

Apparently these authors rarely spoke to each other. After I’d plodded through the first few chapters, I opened chapter 4 to find three introductory paragraphs identical, word for word, with the first few paragraphs of chapter 2. As it that weren’t enough, the same thing happened in two other chapters. Hello? Is anyone there?

Use the same style manual!

A “style manual” is a publication guide that codifies such things as the way citation and documentation should be done, whether numbers should be spelled out or set as numerals, how tables are set up, and the like. Here are some examples:

The University of Chicago Press. The Chicago Manual of Style. 15^th edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Joseph Gibaldi. MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing. 3rd edition. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2008.

Joseph Gibaldi. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 7^th edition. New York: Modern Language Association of America, forthcoming in 2009.

Norm Goldstein. The Associated Press Stylebook. 43^rd edition. New York: Basic Books, 2009.

American Psychological Association. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. 5^th edition. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2001.

Council of Science Editors. Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers. 7^th edition. Reston, Va.: Council of Science Editors and Rockefeller University Press, 2006.

American Medical Association: The American Medical Association Manual of Style. 9^th edition. Baltimore: Wilkins & Wilkins, 1998.

The Chicago Manual is the standard of the book publishing industry.  If you want to write books, you should own a copy.  There are some other, more specialized style manuals. Consult with your publisher for advice on which one to use. Whichever is selected, please read it and follow it closely! When coauthors are working together, each author must follow the agreed-upon manual’s style. Otherwise, a confusing jumble results.

If you’re self-publishing, please let your editor know which manual you think you’re using.

Please use the same style sheet.

A style sheet is an informal list of the individual quirks in a manuscript. It ensures regularity in such matters as unusual spelling or hyphenation, use of numbers vs. numerals, and the way you type your heads and subheads.

Coauthors should agree an how heads and subheads will look (boldface caps and lower-case flush left? boldface italic caps and lower-case centered? italic caps and lower-case run-in?). Subheadings come in several levels: level A, level B, level C, and so on.

The level-A heading is usually a chapter title, like this:

9. The Key to the Pacific Coast Order of Flying Ground Squirrels

Your level-B heading then would be a subhead:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Mauris dapibus. Phasellus facilisis neque quis eros. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

This Is a Level-B Subhead

Donec semper nunc a nisl. Vivamus porta pulvinar felis. Cras lacus. Vivamus tincidunt egestas ipsum. Vivamus erat nisl, condimentum eget, gravida a, pulvinar at, tellus.

The next level of subhead should be typographically distinct from the higher level of subheads. Think levels in a topic outline: the sub-subhead would be a subtopic if you outlined your manuscript.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Mauris dapibus. Phasellus facilisis neque quis eros. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

This Is a Level-C Subhead

Donec semper nunc a nisl. Vivamus porta pulvinar felis. Cras lacus. Vivamus tincidunt egestas ipsum. Vivamus erat nisl, condimentum eget, gravida a, pulvinar at, tellus.

It’s best to avoid complicated sub-sub-subheads, but if you need to use them, the next level should look different from either of the higher levels.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Mauris dapibus. Phasellus facilisis neque quis eros. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

This Is a Level-D Subhead. Donec semper nunc a nisl. Vivamus porta pulvinar felis. Cras lacus. Vivamus tincidunt egestas ipsum. Vivamus erat nisl, condimentum eget, gravida a, pulvinar at, tellus.

The choice of fonts and faces is not cast in stone. However, they must be consistent. An editor can’t read your mind, and a layout artist won’t even try to read your mind. When you’re working with one or more coauthors, you should be sure everyone on the writing team knows and will use the desired format for heads and subheads.

Avoid redundancy. Please don’t repeat each other!

One member of the authorial team should accept the job of reading all the copy, from beginning to end. With the agreed-upon style sheet in hand, this person should be sure

a. that everything the team intended to say in the book is included;
b. that the format for everything is consistent (heads and subheads, documentation and citation, tables, figures, paragraphing style, spelling, numbers & numerals, etc.); and
c.  that no passages or concepts have been repeated.

Attention to these few simple matters can save a great deal of time when you reach a stage where time is money. That stage begins the minute a manuscript is handed over to an editor or a graphic artist.

Related posts:

• Manuscripts: Saving Time and Money 3
• Manuscripts: Saving Time and Money, 2
• Preparing your manuscript for submission to a publisher

In general, you won’t find the most professional or experienced editorial professionals on Elance.com [or on other sites like it, such as Guru.com], because the way Elance is set up encourages freelancers to outbid one another, to the point of lowballing. Those rates may seem reasonable to you, but they’re starvation pay for freelancers. With the rates that most projects go for on Elance, you’ll often wind up with the inexperienced newbies and the less-talented freelancers whom few other people will hire. You’ll be paying Walmart prices and expecting to get Saks Fifth Avenue work, but guess what you’ll often get instead.

Most writers and editors underestimate the value of their time and skills. It takes real talent to write well. And a editor gets to be good through broad and deep education. Each of these characteristics—talent and education—are worth a great deal, and when they’re combined in one package, they’re worth even more. No one should work for less than a living wage (the federal minimum wage, which is not a living wage, is now pegged at $7.25 an hour).

I’d like to address two facets of this issue: first, how to estimate what you need to earn; and second, how to get it from clients who in fact do think they should pay Walmart prices for Saks Fifth Avenue work.

Valuing Your Time

The first order of business for a freelancer in any business is to figure out how much she or he needs to earn, per hour, to cover living expenses and overhead. To begin, you need to estimate how much net income you will need to keep a roof over your head and food on your table. Elsewhere, I have figured that I would need to net a bare minimum of about $27,800 to maintain a crimped version of my present lifestyle, were I laid off (my current net from a middle-income salary is a little over $39,570).

Starting from your projected net, you need to add the following expenses:

· Taxes (state and federal income taxes; property taxes; vehicle registration fees, etc.)
· Health insurance
· Retirement savings
· Membership in professional and trade organizations
· Computer equipment
· High-speed computer connection
· Office supplies
· Increased utility bills resulting from working at home
· Unreimbursed work-related travel
· Incorporation and other legal and accounting fees

The largest of these will be health insurance and taxes, and unfortunately, they are the two items you can’t omit from your calculations.

For me to net $27,800, I would have to gross about $34,760.

Once you have an idea of how much you want to gross, you need to translate that to a rough hourly rate.

Let’s suppose I put in 40 billable hours a week, 50 weeks a year. Forty hours times 50 weeks gives me 2,000 billable hours; dividing 2,000 hours into $34,760 gives me a rate of $17.38 an hour.

O.K. Now let’s get real: to get a freelance business going and keep it running, you need to sell, sell, sell. A good 40% of your time will be spent on marketing and networking. A far more likely figure for billable hours is something like 20 hours a week, or 1,000 hours a year. That is, to earn $34,760, you’ll need to charge $34.76 an hour.

That represents a very modest income. If you live in a big American city, it will buy a lifestyle best described as “ascetic.” You probably will have to reside in a small town to live comfortably on such an income, especially since you will experience periods when no work comes in. This means that realistically you need to charge a much higher per-hour rate.

I aim for $60 an hour, and I’ve had clients suggest that is too low. Others suggest it’s too high, often by fainting dead away when they hear it.

At $60 an hour, if I worked 20 hours a week and gave myself a two-week vacation, I would earn $60,00 a year. My freelance activities earn nothing of the sort, of course, largely because I don’t work anything like that many hours.

Making Your Charge Palatable to Clients

Few people will pay an English major $60 to an hour, not even one with a Ph.D. The first thing that pops into their minds is that they can’t afford it. Second thing they think is that your highest and best use is teaching high-school or grade-school English for around $24,000 a year, an amount that would net you something like $9.60 an hour on a gross of $12 an hour (figured on a 12-month basis, which is how long you have to make that nine-month pay last). They think, my dears, that you have got your nerve to ask for a living wage.

So, what you  need to do is present your fee in a way that does not readily make your hourly rate clear. How? Translate it to a per-page rate.

How to Calculate a Per-Page Rate

a. For writers

To achieve that and do it fairly for you and for your client, you need to know how long it will take you accomplish one page of work. As an editor, how long will it take you to edit a page of copy? Or, if you’re a writer, how long will it take to write a page?

Obviously, this varies according to the kind of assignment you’re presented with and according to experience and expertise.

I can write and revise a 1,600-word feature article for a magazine or newspaper in two to four hours. But the writing is the easy part: to gather the material to compose such an article, I have to do a lot of research and interview a half-dozen sources. Each of those sources has to be reached on the phone or in person; this generally requires getting past a gatekeeper and then waiting for the person to return a call. It may require going to the person and spending upwards of an hour in a face-to-face interview. Assuming, optimistically, that I spend about 40  minutes tracking down and interviewing each of six subjects, that’s another 4 hours of work time right there…before I locate printed material and read it. Let’s add another 4 hours, then, for reading articles, books, and online materials. A four-hour project has now morphed into a 12-hour project, and that’s a pretty modest estimate. In fact, it’s likely to take much longer.

All of which is to say a simple magazine assignment can be expected, conservatively, to take a day and a half of work time. At $60 an hour, I should get no less than $720. Sixteen hundred words amounts to about 6.4 pages of typed copy. So, dividing 1,600 words by 6.4 pages, I should get $112.50 a page for a simple, straightforward magazine article.

Now, here’s something many beginning writers don’t know: $720 is cheap for a professionally written magazine article. I wouldn’t touch a feature assignment for less than $1,000. It’s just not worth my time to do it for less. Believe me: it will take more than 12 hours to complete.

Why don’t beginning writers know that? Because editors charge what they think they can get away with, and what they can get away with is outrageous!

Why can editors get away with taking outrageous advantage of freelance writers? Because writers don’t know what their time is worth! And because you are competing with people who write for ego gratification, not to make a living. Editors know they can find people who will do the job for the sheer joy of seeing their byline in print, and who will think a $300 fee for a $1,000 job is just pure gravy.

This is why, if you simply must try to be a freelance journalist, you should join an organization such as the American Society of Journalists and Authors, where you can learn from other writers how much they are being paid and what is considered a reasonable rate for a professional job.

It is better, IMHO, to write for businesses, where the custom of paying for value received is more widely  honored than in journalism.

Writing is hard work. That is why my rate for ghost-writing or cowriting a book-length work is $60 a typed, double-spaced page or, for writers who already have a contract, 100% of the author’s advance (minimum $20,000) plus 50% of royalties. This is based on a track record that includes four books published with prominent national presses, one of which was a best-seller. Less experienced writers might charge less, but anything below $30 a page may not pay you for your time. You should get between $10,000 and $20,000 to ghostwrite a book; at $20 a page, a 350-page manuscript would gross a mere $7,000…for what could easily be six months to a year’s worth of full-time work.

In any event, rather than citing a per-hour rate that may scare a client off, consider the nature of the assignment, estimate how long it will take to perform the assignment, multiply that amount of time by your targeted hourly wage, and add 25 to 50 percent for Murphy’s Law. This figure is the amount you should ask the client to pay for a proposed project.

Don’t ever agree to do a writing project on spec. And remember: “pay on publication” often means “pay never.”

b. For Editors

Editing is less difficult, although to do it well requires broad experience and a good education. If anything, the skills required to edit copy are more complex than those needed to write copy, especially if the copy consists of workaday newspaper, magazine, or website content. However, because one usually doesn’t have to spend hours in research and interviews, the immediate job feels less challenging.

At The Copyeditor’s Desk, our fee schedule is based on the estimated time it takes to edit or proofread a standard double-spaced page depending on the difficulty of the copy. The amounts we quote average out to about $50 an hour, which should net the editor $25 to $30 an hour, leaving $20 to $25 an hour to cover overhead. As a practical matter, if you billed 20 hours a week, that would give you an annual gross income of $50,000, from which you would have to pay the extravagant cost of individual health insurance and self-employed FICA (double the amount of FICA you pay as a salaried employee). For anyone living in an American city, that represents a net that’s just in the middle-income range. Remember: your net is 50 to 60 percent of gross.

With this in mind, when a client approaches us, we ask to see ten to twenty pages of the project from more than one section of the copy. (Writers often will start out gangbusters but fade as they plod toward the end, and so material deeper in the document may be significantly harder to edit than the first few pages.) We then sit down and edit the sample copy, timing the process. From there we can extrapolate how difficult the material is and how long it will take us to read it. The harder the copy and the more time it will consume, the higher our per-page rate.

The Advantage of Charging Per Page or Per Project

Experience shows that when you cite an hourly rate to a client, the client is daunted by the uncertainty of how much the final bill will come to. What, really, does $15, $20, $30, $60 an hour mean? The client is right to worry about this.

Even if you give the person an hourly rate with a cap, you still present an ambiguous proposition. So, the client thinks, this project should cost me $850, but I could end up paying less than that? If this person charges the whole $850, do I know whether she really put in that many hours? Additionally, unless you’re dealing with highly paid professionals or business executives, most people don’t earn $60 an hour. Most people don’t even earn $40 an hour—that would be $80,000 a year. Because they don’t have to pay their own overhead—because their employer is paying for their office, matching their 401(k) contribution, and covering a large share of their health insurance premiums—they don’t recognize that what you’re asking is actually about what a person who earns $40,000 or $50,000 a year costs his or her employer. They register a $50- or $60-an-hour fee as exorbitant.

For that reason, a fee that has a predictable bottom line sounds more reasonable, even if it amounts to more than the person would pay if it were prorated out by the hour. So, when you ask for a per-page or per-project fee, you’re more likely to earn what you’re worth.

Related posts:

• Starting Out as a Freelance Editor
• Contracts: Negotiating an indemnity clause
• An ideal job

Yah, I know: you want to write the Great Novel of the Western World. You want people to read your poetry.

The GNotWW has already been written, and it probably can’t find a publisher. And everyone on the planet wants people to read their poetry…but they don’t want to read anyone else’s.

Publishing is a business. Publishers buy what readers will read. Just now readers are reading nonfiction and genre novels. Precious few genre novels will ever make GNotWW; it’s difficult to get one published (though less so than “mainstream” or literary novels); and when you do, you’ll be lucky if you earn 10 grand on the thing. Ten thousand dollars for a year’s worth of work is not worth the effort. Even if you can crank one in six months, that still gives you a grandiose gross income of $20,000 a year. You can’t live on that. Well, you can, but no one in her right mind would want to.

Nonfiction works have the advantage of being marketable without the aid of an agent. If you have a subject—any subject—that’s useful or interesting to a reasonably large coterie of readers, you can find a publisher on  your own. Or you may be able to self-publish and sell enough of them to make it worth your while. One guy who realized he could write about maintaining his RV discovered he could make a ton of money by marketing a book on that subject through Amazon.com.

Yah, I know: crass. But my dears, business is crass. And publishing is a business.

You can find subjects that make you feel less whorish than some. A friend of mine, for example, a high-school teacher who took up magazine writing as a hobby, wrote a book on how to help your teenager succeed in high school. It was a subject that was right under her  nose: when you write about something related to your job, you are an expert on it. And anything you write that will help people in their lives will sell.

Later she went on to write YA novels. Not GNotWWs, but at least she can say she’s a novelist now.

So, look around you. What do you know, what do you do, what can you share that can make someone else’s life better? There’s your first subject.

My second published book (the first was a rewrite of my dissertation) was a trade book for Columbia, The Essential Feature. It simply described what I did for a living (I was writing for magazines at the time). The target audience was the kind of person who takes community college courses in feature writing out of a desire to become a writer with a capital W. It was not designed for journalism majors, but for people with a laptop on the kitchen table.

You’re listening? Target your book tightly for a specific reader. Tell that person something that matters for him or her.

Visualize the person in your mind and address that reader. Do not write for yourself. Do not write about yourself, except insofar as some experience you’ve had can demonstrably be useful for the reader. Writing is not an ego trip. It’s a business.

Next: Organize your content efficiently and intelligently. With the reader in mind, present the subject in a way he or she can understand easily and access quickly. Map out a rough table of contents before you start writing. You can always change this as you go, but it will serve as a guideline to keep you going in the right general direction from the outset.

Write tight! Get yourself a copy of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. Read it. Memorize it. Internalize it. Use it!!!!!

When you have a draft, revise and rewrite until you have clean copy that you feel confident actually will work for your target reader.

Edit your  manuscript. Produce clean, grammatically correct, double-spaced copy with correct spelling and consistent style throughout. Follow Chicago style for book manuscripts and Associated Press style for magazine and newspaper copy.

Find a publisher. We’re talking about books here: for periodicals, you must have a contract before you begin writing. Here’s how you find a publisher for a nonfiction book:

1. Go to the library and get a reference worked called Literary Marketplace (LMP). This book, the bible of the American book publishing industry, indexes publishers by the subjects that they publish. It also gives the names and addresses of the relevant editors.

2. Make a list of subject headings and genres relevant to the book you’re writing. For example, if you are writing a book on how to beat alcoholism, look up subjects such as “self-help,” “addiction,” “recovery,” “psychology,” and the like. If you’re writing on how to sew quilts, look up “crafts,” “interior design,” “fabric art,” and such.

3. Look up publishers that say they’re publishing in those subjects and genres. Carefully note down

a. the acquisitions editor’s name (look for titles such as “managing editor,” “nonfiction editor,” or anything that appears relevant to what you’re doing);
b. the person’s correct title;
c. the publisher’s complete address, including the zip code; and
d. the publisher’s telephone number, FAX, website URL, and e-mail address.

4. Double-check to be certain you have spelled all of these things right! The fastest way to put off an editor is to misspell his or her name. The second fastest way is to get the person’s title wrong.

5. Compile a list containing this information for ten or twelve publishers.

6. Write a proposal package (more about which below).

7. Write a cover letter to go with the proposal. Customize it for the first six publishers on your list (i.e., address it to the correct editor and adjust whatever you say in the first paragraph to target that publisher).

8. Mail out a half-dozen proposals at once. (Yah, I know: publishers hate that. Writers hate getting screwed, too.)

9. As each rejection comes in, send another proposal to the next publisher on your list. Always keep your proposal in circulation!

10. In the unlikely event that you go through the whole list without selling your book proposal, go back to the library compile a list of another dozen potential publishers, and repeat the process.

Sooner or later you will find someone who will publish your book. If you don’t, then it’s time to come up with some other subject.

What is a book proposal and how do you write it?

A nonfiction book proposal is simply a description of what you’re writing plus an argument for why it should be published. It consists of these elements:

1. a cover letter stating what the book is about, who will read it and why, what similar works are on the market, and who you are and why you are so eminently qualified to write it;

2. a table of contents;

3. a detailed outline of the book’s contents (i.e., what’s in each chapter); and

4. three sample chapters, or an introduction and two sample chapters.

As you can see, the beauty of this for the wretch who dreams of making a living as a writer is that you need not have completed the book before you present it to publishers. A proposal is just that: a proposal. Once you have a running head start on your  manuscript, you’re ready to start marketing it. If you’re even moderately successful, you should land at least a small advance that will help support you while you’re writing.

Unless you stumble upon a very hot topic, as a beginning writer you can’t expect much in the way of an advance. Once you have a couple of books in print, though, you should be able to command $10,000 or $20,000 for a salable proposal. Maybe.

If you want to earn any more than that—or sell future books to publishers—you’ll need to do most of the marketing yourself. That’s another story.

Just remember: Publishing isn’t art. Publishing is a business.

–vh

Related posts:

• Starting Out as a Freelance Editor
• Five Great Books (+ one) for Wanna-be Authors
• Manuscripts: Saving Time and Money, 1

In this way, an editor, at least a good one, will aid authors in finding their voices. This is done by ensuring consistency, clarity, and an honest opinion of the possibilty of finding an audience for a specific work. An editor thus works hand-in-hand with an author making suggestions and changes as the work evolves.

A proofreader, on the other hand, is a final set of eyes. A good proofreader is looking more for the ever-present mistakes that happen in the process of transforming an electronic file in to an actual physical object. This process lends to minor errors in spelling, a missed comma here or there, and the typical spacing issues. The proofreader does not communicate with the author (unless a major issue arises), and is employed instead by a publisher that needs a keen, sharp set of eyes.

So, whether you are in need of an editor or proofreader, or are looking to work as an editor or proofreader, be clear that there is a difference. Editing takes a great deal more time and effort, and is thus a more costly service for authors…although we here at The Copyeditor’s Desk believe an editor’s input is worth every penny.

-TM

Related posts:

• Submitting Your Work: Publish, Don't Perish
• Five Things You Can Do for Your Authors
• Manuscripts: Saving Time and Money, 1

Impact has become another mush-word: a sloppy term so overused it has pretty well lost its meaning. This kind of lazy word usage is to be avoided. Decide what you really mean, for hevvinsake, and say it! Here are some real words to choose from:

For the noun impact:

aftereffect
consequence
effect
fruit
importance
impression
influence
manifestation
legacy
outcome
outgrowth
payoff
persuasion
product
reaction
repercussion
result
sequel
significance
spin-off

For the verb to impact:

to affect
to bear on
to cause
to determine
to dominate
to force
to govern
to have the effect of
to imbue
to impress
to induce
to influence
to manifest
to militate
to mitigate
to operate on
to persuade
to seize
to sway
to touch
Garrrrrr! Take the marbles out of your mouth and say what you mean!

Related posts:

• Passively Active, Actively Passive
• I.e. or e.g.?
• Contracts: Negotiating an indemnity clause

Academics the world over flinch in terror at the phrase “publish or perish!” Graduate students must publish to have any chance at finding a suitable position,and once said position is secured, promotion or tenure is awarded only if publishing of one’s work continues. Although there are no simple ways to get your work published, here are a matters to consider when submitting your work to a journal or scholarly press.

1. Is your work right for the journal or publisher you are submitting to?

All journals have mission statements. To get your work published, you must target your work to fit this mission statement. Seems simple. One of the journals I am familiar with,Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering (MBE), notes that

Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering (MBE) is a quarterly international journal focusing on new developments in the fast-growing fields of mathematical biosciences and bioengineering. Areas covered include general mathematical methods and their applications in biology, medical and biomedical sciences and bioengineering with an emphasis on work related to mathematical modeling, nonlinear, and stochastic dynamics. The editorial board of MBE is strongly committed to promoting cutting-edge, integrative and interdisciplinary research bridging mathematics, life sciences and bioengineering.

Authors seeking to publish their work in MBE must ensure that it fits within these parameters. Most of the editor’s rejections happen when authors submit articles that have nothing to do with the biological sciences.

2. Does your work fit the submission guidelines?

In the case of scholarly journals, submission guidelines give authors information on acceptable word counts, formatting, and even the best means of ensuring that submitted material is reached by the editors. Go to the journal’s web site to find submission guidelines. If they don’t appear there, then you should obtain a hard copy of an issue and examine it for an author’s guidelines statement.

3. Do you have the patience for peer review?

Scholarly works are always sent out to be reviewed by two or three experts in the subject matter. This process, although seemingly simple, takes time. Reviewers are seldom compensated for their work and thus fit reviewing in with a number of other duties. It is in an author’s best interest to be persistent, yet patient, when asking for the status of a submission. This does not mean that a publisher should keep your work for years with no reply. It does, however, mean that a decision will not be made in a few weeks.

The bottom line is that editors reviewing submissions will not look at your work unless it fits within a basic framework. The content and format matter: even if your article is brilliant, if it contains too many words, it will be rejected.

-TM

Related posts:

• What Editors Wish Authors Knew
• Welcome to The Copyeditors' Desk

William Strunk and E. B. White, The Elements of Style

Christopher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers and Screenwriters. Revised in 2002 as The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, 3rd Edition, by Christopher Vogler and Michele Montez.

Benton Rain Patterson, Write to Be Read

Beth Luey, Handbook for Academic Authors

Clay Schoenfeld, Effective Feature Writing

And BTW, I believe my own book, The Essential Feature, is one of the best guides to magazine and newspaper writing on the market.

Related posts:

• What Editors Wish Authors Knew
• Five Things You Can Do for Your Authors
• Manuscripts: Saving Time and Money, 1