Category: Writing

Getting scammed

It’s embarrassing to admit, but I got scammed a while ago. I twigged reasonably quickly what was going on, tho, and decided to draw the experience out to see what my scammer was up to and how it would play out. Not sure if my scammer figured out he’d been rumbled, because things just fizzled out around the time they should’ve got juicy, so there’s no big payoff at the end. (I’ll save you the trouble of reading and being disappointed!) Here’s the story and the lessons learned so that someone else might avoid any financial/time losses in future. Continue reading “Getting scammed”

Pandoc

I’m a bit of a junkie for markup languages: I’ve used many, experimented with more, and am always eager to try a new one. Pandoc is a delight of a tool that allows you to convert from one markup language to another. There’s a proper, installable tool you can put on your local machine to handle full files, which will do a whole lot of the work for you, but you’ll still need to do some clean up on the results.
Something I find useful in itself, though, is the Try pandoc online demo. Continue reading “Pandoc”

The Subversive Copy Editor by Carol Fisher Saller

I loved this book. Saller, senior manuscript editor at the University of Chicago Press and editor of The Chicago Manual of Style Online’s Q&A, has assembled a wealth of useful information and observation based on her experiences. Each chapter starts with a Q and ends with the corresponding A. The main body of the chapter is made up of musings, advice, rules and anecdotes relevant to the theme. And it’s peppered with recommendations of other texts, websites and tools that the author has found useful. It’s beautifully written, and a good humoured, gentle, easy read. Continue reading “The Subversive Copy Editor by Carol Fisher Saller”

Leanpub.com

I discovered this nifty site (leanpub.com) when it transpired that someone was writing a textbook on a subject I was researching for a client. Authors can put up and sell work-in-progress and completed books (fact or fiction), and readers can get early access to in-progress texts on new or rapidly evolving topics.

The WIP aspect is interesting, as it means that an author can be funded while completing their text, allowing them to spend more time on it, rather than having to go earn a living elsewhere simultaneously. Additionaly, authors set the price, keep the rights, and earn a decent royalty (90%, minus 50c per sale). It sounds like this should also make writing for a niche audience more practical – and if the topic goes mainstream later on, then the enthusiastic author has a headstart.

Given that the time overhead of traditional publishing (writing, editing, printing, marketing, …), and the need for a sizeable audience and ROI for publishers, too many technology texts either don’t make it to market, or are almost obsolete by the time they do. This site is definitely worth keeping an eye on.