Adams Press BookBlog

Something as small and seemingly insignificant as a comma assumes overwhelming constitutional importance when it takes center stage in legal arguments. Take, for example, the placement of three commas (or were there originally four? or two?) in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; that’s the one that deals with the hot button issue of gun control. Here’s the sentence: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Adam Freedman, in a New York Times op ed piece titled Clause and Effect, says proponents of the pro-gun lobby hold that the second comma divides the statement into “prefatory” and “operative” clauses and that the wording is all about granting individuals the right to own guns. Those who advocate limited gun ownership see it differently, that “the amendment is really about protecting militias,” not rights of individuals. Read the arguments.

This is the kind of stuff that keeps lawyers in business and grammarians scratching their heads.

At the next party you attend, ask your friends how they would punctuate this sentence:

Woman without her man is nothing.

Should it read . . .

Woman, without her, man is nothing.

. . . or . . .

Woman, without her man, is nothing. JK

JK :: Dec.17.2007 :: words and phrases, writing :: 1 Comment »

The San Jose Mercury News reports that the Texas Board of Education in November was concerned to find that elementary math textbooks the state selected for use in its schools next year contain 109, 263 errors. Seventy-nine percent–86,000!–of those errors occurred in books produced by Houghton Mifflin, one of the country’s leading manufacturers of educational materials. Bob Craig, R-Lubbock, drew laughter from his fellow board members when he asked, “How can you make 86,000 errors in your textbooks? How do you do that?”

The publishers vowed to correct the mistakes by spring–well before school begins next fall. They’d better. The state has warned them they’ll impose fines of as much as $5,000 apiece for errors that make it through to finished books. JK

JK :: Dec.15.2007 :: literacy / right to read, book publishing :: No Comments »

So says Dana Gioia, National Endowment for the Arts chairperson. She adds, “Electronic media, such as television and computers, are threatening the printed word . . . As more and more competing media are introduced into kids’ lives, adults’ lives, these things make it more difficult to find the time to read.”

According to Bloomberg.com, quoting a study completed by the NEA, “Americans aged 15 to 24 on average spend two hours a day watching TV and only seven minutes on leisure reading, reducing their chances for high-paying jobs and community service’”

So there you have it: The time you, your child, or your grandchild spends reading translates directly into greater earning power. JK

JK :: Nov.20.2007 :: literacy / right to read :: No Comments »

Newsweek asks, “Does handwriting have a practical use today? Many educators say yes. Handwriting is important because research shows that when children are taught how to do it, they are also being taught how to learn and how to express themselves.” more…

JK :: Nov.05.2007 :: writing :: No Comments »

First you’re an unknown, then you write one book and you move up to obscurity.

–Martin Myers

JK :: Oct.29.2007 :: odds and ends :: No Comments »

This has been around for awhile on You Tube, but it’s always good for another laugh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xmTTzCAALc

JK :: Oct.23.2007 :: odds and ends, book publishing :: No Comments »

Publishing a book can produce direct and indirect income for the author. Direct income results from sales of the book itself: retail sales; course adoptions; subsidiary rights (book clubs; movie, television, stage, and audio adaptations; serializations; premiums; translations; large type books; international reprints); as well as from back-of-the-room sales at in-person presentations.

Indirect income might come from the increased business that the writing of a book produces. This is what I have done on occasion when I have pitched my services as a writer to a potential client: After the meeting’s opening pleasantries and a brief discussion with the client about what the assignment entails, I have reached into my briefcase and pulled out a book that I wrote and laid it before the client.

Human nature is such that the client will inevitably pick up the book and begin leafing through it. That’s when I mention a few characteristics about the book––its content, the circumstances that led to its creation, any recognitions it has received––and then I allow a few moments for questions or comments before leading the conversation back to the client’s need. I limit this presentation to only a couple of minutes of the client’s time. I have nearly always received the assignment. That book has power!

A published book equates with believability, trust, and confidence. If you’ve written a book, the perception, if not the reality, is that you are an expert––perhaps the expert––in your field. At the point when you place your book in your client’s hands, you’re no longer selling your services. Your book sells you.

The same phenomenon attaches to books sent to a physician’s patients or the clients of an attorney, accountant, financial adviser, engineer, or any other professional. A salesperson’s customers are especially impressed to learn their representative has written a book.

Corporate or association histories are worth their weight in gold. They can be enormously effective in building goodwill and introducing, renewing, and cementing relations with customers and donors.

Public speakers earn extra points for credibility and helpfulness when they have a book to offer their audience following presentations. Attendees like to have an authoritative book to take away with them. Even a slim volume can enhance the reputation of a speaker or trainer and lead to invitations for more appearances or workshops. JK

JK :: Oct.22.2007 :: marketing, writing :: No Comments »

As you plan how you’re going to write your book, think about maximizing its market value (and your profits!) by structuring it as free-standing chapters, each one of which could become a magazine article. There are several advantages to writing discrete chapters:
• Full exposition. You’re more apt to cover a chapter’s content thoroughly and clearly if you think in terms of beginning, middle, and end––thesis, discussion, and conclusion.
• Logical development. Flaws in continuity and elements that are missing and could weaken your premise are easier to spot and correct.
• Work flow. Focusing on a single topic means that you can wrap up one manageable portion of your book at a time before moving on the next, giving you a comfortable sense of completion at the end of each chapter.
• Flexibility. Publishing chapters in magazines or journals before your manuscript is entirely written allows you to incorporate comments from editors and readers into your book, thereby strengthening its position and timeliness.
• Coherent organization. Preliminary feedback may convince you to take a somewhat different tack, one that is more measured, reasoned, or reader friendly.
• Market value. It is not only possible that you may earn fees for submitting chapters as articles, but you can also request that periodicals identify you as the author the forthcoming book (title) to be published in (date) by (publisher).
• Prepublication promotion. You may want to make copies of a particular article(s) and send them to interested parties along with a note saying your book will soon be available.

Don’t be too concerned about evenness and flow at the time you’re writing your free-standing chapters / articles. Once you have everything done, you can go back over your work, smooth it out with appropriate transitions, and insert chapter-to-chapter cross references. JK

JK :: Oct.22.2007 :: marketing, writing :: No Comments »

When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we’ll be funnier to look at than to read.

–Sinclair Lewis

JK :: Oct.22.2007 :: odds and ends :: No Comments »

Imagine having instant access to 15 million books! That’s the plan once Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo scan entire libraries of books, compile and organize them, and make them available through their Web sites.

The widest possible dissemination of knowledge is always a good thing, right? Or is it?

The New York Times says: “Although Google is making public-domain books readily available to individuals who wish to download them, [Brewster Kahle, founder and director of the Internet Archive,] and others worry about the possible implications of having one company store and distribute so much public-domain content.

“‘Scanning the great libraries is a wonderful idea, but if only one corporation controls access to this digital collection, we’ll have handed too much control to a private entity,’ Mr. Kahle said.

“The Open Content Alliance, he said, ‘is fundamentally different, coming from a community project to build joint collections that can be used by everyone in different ways.’

“Mr. Kahle’s group focuses on out-of-copyright books, mostly those published in 1922 or earlier. Google scans copyrighted works as well, but it does not allow users to read the full text of those books online, and it allows publishers to opt out of the program.”

This is an issue of major importance to authors (royalties, distribution); domestic and foreign researchers (access, security); public and private libraries (costs, collections); publishers (copyright, piracy). My guess is that a lot of lawyers have a lot of work ahead of them. JK

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Watch the short movie at Open Content Alliance to see how books can be accessed through internet storage systems. The film also describes the process for creating a “ten-minute book,” that is, a bound book printed on-site at a library from down-loaded files.

JK :: Oct.22.2007 :: literacy / right to read, book publishing :: No Comments »