Love Your Copyeditor

Writer Nick Bellardes has published a picture of his copyedited manuscript for a book coming out later this year.

What’s in RED is the work of the copyeditor.

Now go look.

I’ve railed about the dying dinosaurs of print and other such things, but I will never, ever say anything bad about copyeditors (though I almost did).

A copyeditor will turn the kind of stream-of-madness dreck I write here into something sensible (well, OK, my stream-of-madness fiction — this stuff is really beyond help!).

Every writer needs a copyeditor. Amateurs don’t see the need.

As I was finishing this post, Nick tweeted me: “I hope you say that’s the blood of the saints on those pages …”

Yes. Copyeditors are saints! Aptly put.

Another eBook Sleeper Awakens

Apple Needs to Sell eBooks.

So, what I think is that there’s a need for another party (Apple) to step in and take control over the state of e-book affairs. Right now its like the wild wild west. There’s tons of different stores selling almost 10 different e-book formats. There’s no real standard for pricing, there’s no expectations for customer purchase experience and there’s no rules for what a reader should be able to do. Amazon is THE ONLY player who has the entire thing down to a science, but they’re only one experience and a costly one at that.

People hear the term “eBooks” and they know they exist.

But it’s not until their money is on the line that they devote the time to researching what they’ve gotten — or will be getting — into.

And, like Brandon above, the initial and lasting impression is that the entire eBook landscape is screwed-up, broken, and almost more trouble than it’s worth.

I’ve raged over and over for Apple to do eBooks.

I still think, deep down, Apple does have a plan. And the reason why this plan has not come to pass is because, Apple being Apple, they don’t intend to do a half-assed job of it. Doing eBooks correctly would also involve adding code to their existing applications. Maybe even OS X itself.

And right now, Apple is making a ton of money with the iPhone, is busy thinking up new APIs and things to add to it to fend off the Palm Pre, and also working on that chimerical Apple Tablet.

It’s bloody All Hands On Deck over there.

Plus add in whatever distractions Steve Jobs’ health create.

I am, however, convinced that Apple could enter eBooks and, despite all the current players, dominate it.

I have my own plan for how Apple could do that.

I hope Apple has one of its own too.