Find and Replace: The Writer’s Best Friend

find and replace for authorsI use the Find and Replace tool in MSWorks a great deal while I’m editing. It works if you discover a consistent spelling mistake. It’s great for fixing names, especially when writing Fantasy, where I can never remember the spelling of my own characters’ names. But it’s good for other things as well, and when you get into formatting for publication, it takes on a whole new meaning.

I don’t pretend to be an expert, but I’ll mention a few of my favourite uses, and maybe our more experienced readers can add to the list in the Comments below. In my version of MSWorks I find this function in the “Edit” dropdown menu. Continue reading “Find and Replace: The Writer’s Best Friend”

And the Publishing Process Survey Says: Part 5

Book Production Process SurveyIn previous posts I covered the parts of the survey that are part of the publishing process, taking your book from initial draft to publication. However, I threw in a few questions not directly related to this process. In this final post I’ll discuss those questions and what, if anything, they might (or might not) tell us.

Reading the disclaimer in the original survey results post before proceeding is highly recommended. Continue reading “And the Publishing Process Survey Says: Part 5”

Publishing Process Survey Says: Part 4

Book Production Process SurveyIn Part 3 of this series, I talked about cover design and content editing, what our recent survey showed about the process used by the IU readership, along with the financial implications of the various choices. This article will continue in the same vein, looking at other pieces of the process until I get up to 125-150% of my word limit. Let’s see how much we cover. Continue reading “Publishing Process Survey Says: Part 4”

Publishing Process Survey Says: Part 3

Book Production Process Survey

In my last post I said I was going to milk this survey for as many posts as I could. Maybe we should start a pool on what that number will be. The first post has some disclaimers, cautioning against reading too much into a survey such as this (click here to refresh your memory). I also discussed the overall costs the respondents reported incurring in the production of their most recent self published book. Using the same method as I discussed then (assuming the actual cost to be the midpoint of the dollar range chosen on the survey), I’ve drilled down on each of the potential production steps to explore the costs using various possible methods. This post will cover two: Content editing and creation of the book cover. Continue reading “Publishing Process Survey Says: Part 3”