Writers and Editors

including essays and academic (scholarly) publishing. See also Narrative Nonfiction (a/​k/​a creative or literary nonfiction) and Memoir, Biography, and Corporate History.
• Academic publishing
• Books on the craft of nonfiction writing
• Personal essays
• Essays on modern love (the wonderful Times series)
• Essay markets

Academic publishing

• Academic Publishing: An Overview (Charles Henry Editing). This is as helpful a description of academic publishing (both books and journals) as anything I've seen. Here are only a couple of many points the author makes; s/​he also points out the implications of some of the changes going on, and points up some of the problems in this field--among them that three firms collect most of the profits from academic publishing, provide very little added value, and rely heavily on two virtually free inputs: the articles and the peer review process. Journal prices keep going up, library budgets keep going down, teachers depend on academic publishing to achieve tenure, and the peer review process is definitely not foolproof.
~The part of academic written output that is not formally published but merely printed up or posted on the Internet is often called the “grey literature." Most scientific and scholarly journals, and many academic and scholarly books, though not all, are based on some form of peer review or editorial refereeing to qualify texts for publication. Peer review quality and selectivity standards vary greatly from journal to journal, publisher to publisher, and field to field."
~"Currently, an important trend, particularly with respect to scholarly journals, is open access via the Internet. There are two main forms of open access: open access publishing, in which a whole journal (or book) or individual articles are made available free for all on the web by the publisher at the time of publication (sometimes, but not always, for an extra publication fee paid by the author or the author’s institution or funder); and open access self-archiving, in which authors themselves make a copy of their published articles available free for all on the web.
• Text and Academic Authors Association (TAA)
• What Editors Want: An Author's Guide to Scientific Journal Publishing by Philippa J. Benson and Susan C. Silver (University of Chicago Press)
• Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success especially for humanities and social science journals, by by Wendy Laura Belcher (University of Chicago Press)
• Beall’s List: Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers (maintained by academic librarian Jeffrey Beall. On Facebook: Beall's List of Predatory Open-Access Publishers
• BibMe(a free online site for searching for bibliographic information, creating a custom bibliography, and downloading it in MLA, APA, Chicago, or Turabian format), dependent on Amazon's database (which might limit scholarly uses)
• Editage Insights . Dr. Eddy explains the basics of publishing in English language journals, sharing knowledge he has built over years of experience as a researcher. Each week, he writes about important aspects of journal publication.
• From Academia to Amazon: Is a bestseller hiding in your academic papers? (Alan Rinzler, The Book Deal,3-23-10)
• Publish and Prosper Editage blog, with tips for researchers whose first language is not English but who submit their papers to journals published in English. Touches on writing (spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, and style) and everything else relevant to publishing research papers that journal editors wish their authors knew.
• Virtual Private Library (Marcus Zillman's annotated links to competent academic and scholarly search engines and sources)
• Writing History in the Digital Age (a born-digital, open-peer-reviewed volume edited by Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki, available online here and forthcoming in print and open-access digital formats from the University of Michigan Press for the Digital Humanities Series of its digitalculturebooks imprint)[Back to Top]

American Society of Journalists & Authors (ASJA), professional association of freelance/​independent journalists and nonfiction book writers, who share info about markets, writing rates, contracts, editors, agents, etc. Members have access to samples of successful query letters and book proposals, among other resources. Non-members may attend the annual conference; there is also a more advanced day for members only.

Books on the craft of nonfiction writing

• The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism , ed. Kevin Kerrane and Ben Yagoda
• The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present, edited with an excellent introduction by Phillip Lopate
• The Elements of Story: Field Notes on Nonfiction Writing, by Francis Flaherty
• Follow the Story: How to Write Successful Nonfiction by James Stewart
• Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft, by Janet Burroway
• Intimate Journalism: The Art and Craft of Reporting Everyday Life, ed. Walt Harrington
• The Making of a Story: A Norton Guide to Creative Writing, ed. Alice LaPlante (how writers create -- for serious writing students and teachers)
• The Passionate, Accurate Story: Making Your Heart's Truth into Literature, by Carol Bly (excellent -- you'll have to buy used copies as it's out of print)
• Writing the Personal Essay, an excellent quick guide to structuring a narrative essay, by Adair Lara (writer, teacher, writing coach, and author of Naked, Drunk, and Writing: Shed Your Inhibitions and Craft a Compelling Memoir or Personal Essay)
• The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative by Vivian Gornick
• Story Building: Narrative Techniques for News and Feature Writers by Ndaeyo Uko
• Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers' Guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, ed. Mark Kramer, Wendy Call (an excellent guide)
• Writing a Book That Makes a Difference, by Philip Gerard
• Writing Nonfiction: Turning Thoughts into Books, by Dan Poynter (his guide to self-publishing, repackaged)
Books on the craft of narrative nonfiction. [Back to Top]

Essay markets

(more to come)
I haven't checked the links on these items. I listed them if the titles made sense.
Generally, publications want to see the whole essay -- queries don't make sense because "pulling it off" is more important than the idea for the essay.
• Paying Markets for Personal Essays (Carol Celeste's excellent links, Writing to Heal, Writing to Grow)
• Fifteen Paying Markets for Personal Essays and Life Stories (Chryselle D'Silva Dias, Writing-World.com)
• Paying Personal Essay Markets (Chantal Panozzo, Writer Abroad)

Can we figure out a ‘unified theory of writing’? (Roy Peter Clark, Poynter, 7-6-12). "In a story, it’s Robert McKee’s inciting incident colliding with the safe patterns of daily life; in news, it’s a radical variation from the norm: Man bites dog."

Creating Nonfiction (Rachel Toor, Chronicle of Higher Education, 12-3-07). For more on the subject, see Narrative Nonfiction

Creating Scenes: The Yellow Test (Lee Gutkind, The Opinionator, NY Timnes 8-22-12). "Readers remember information longer — and are more likely to be persuaded by ideas and opinions — when it’s presented to them in scenes. This is why so many TV commercials are narrative."

Dictionaries, clarity, and the Supreme Court:
• Skip The Legalese And Keep It Short, Justices Say (Nina Totenberg, NPR's Morning Edition, 6-13-11, audio and transcript). Worth reading for the concluding anecdote alone.
• Justices Turning More Frequently to Dictionary, and Not Just for Big Words by Adam Liptak (NY Times 6-13-11).

18 strategies for brainstorming a title, an excellent guide to developing great titles, from Developmental Editing: A Handbook for Freelancers, Authors, and Publishers by Scott Norton, posted on Scrib'd

Essays on modern love

(the wonderful Times series) The essays in the New York Times' Modern Love series are usually terrific. Here are some examples.
• The Race Grows Sweeter Near Its Final Lap (Eve Pell, NY Times, 1-24-13)
• A Student of Intimacy, Step by Step (Matthew Parker, 1-23-09). An ex-con learns about love.
• My Husband's New Son: A Choice Not as Easy as It Looked (Lisa Schlesinger, 5-30-13)
• When the Words Don't Fit (Sarah Healy, 10-27-11). On the difference between fantasy love and real love
• Friends Without Benefits (Hannah Selinger, 1-10-13)
• Chubby, Skinny, Accepting (Cole Kazdin, 1-3-13)
• Three Mothers, One Bond (Jennifer Hauseman, 12-27-12)
• After the Affair (Judy Wachs, 11-23-12)
• Labels of Married Life, in a New Light (Margot Page, 1-18-13)
• A Role I Was Born to Play (Evan James, 11-14-12)
• Sleeping with the (Political) Enemy (Sheila Heen, 11-1-12)
• A Sister’s Comfort, if Not a Cure (Tara Ebrahimi, 12-13-12, on helping a brother with mental illness)
• Married, but Dancing by Myself (Teresa Link, 11-30-13, on marrying, but not for love)
• We Found Our Son in the Subway (Peter Mercurio, Townies (not Modern Love, but it belongs there too)< Opinionator, 2-28-13).[Back to Top]

5 Questions to ask before you start to write your non-fiction book (Paul Lima, 5-26-12)

Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction by Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd (also good on the author-editor relationship). See The Special Relationship by Scott Stossel (WSJ book review, 1-17-13). A Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and his longtime editor offer a guide to the craft of nonfiction.

Hijacking History: SBOE Conservatives Rewrite American History Books (Brian Thevenot, The Texas Tribune, 1-12-10). A fascinating study of political influence shaping Texas social studies textbooks.

A Historian's Code by Richard W. Stewart (10-13-10)

The Historian's Gaze. Blog for the Masters Seminar in History in 2009 at Dalhousie University houses, with entries such as False Memory and Historians' Fallacies.

Interesting Nonfiction for Kids (I.N.K.). Rethinking nonfiction for kids.

Learning to Do Historical Research: A Primer for Environmental Historians and Others . William Cronon surveys essential stages of the research process and different kinds of documents that can offer information and insights about the past

Literati.net (an online community--by invitation only--of published book authors, both fiction and nonfiction)

Playing for Keeps: Intensity and Creativity in the Lyric Essay. Margaret Kimball's notes on a panel discussion at the AWP conference. Panelists: Steven Harvey, Kathryn Winograd, Robert Root (in absentia), Rebecca McClanahan (posted on Brevity's blog)

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. The key elements of a sticky idea, they write, are simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions, and stories. Practical strategies for creating sticky ideas.

Max Holland on Nov. 22, 1963 (Neely Tucker, Wash Post, 7-24-08 on Holland's VERY thorough research on JFK's assassination)

Menand, Louis. Excellent New Yorker essay, The Historical Romance: Edmund Wilson's Adventures with Communism ( 3-24-03), in which Menand writes: "Intuitive knowledge—the sense of what life was like when we were not there to experience it—is precisely the knowledge we seek. It is the true positive of historical work." Read full essay at http:/​/​www.newyorker.com/​archive/​2003/​03/​24/​030324crbo_books1.

Modern Love Rejects ("All the Love That's Not Fit to Print"). Interesting to study the pieces that didn't make the cut for this popular New York Times essay slot.

Personal essays

• The Essayification of Everything (Christy Wampole, Opinionator, NY Times, 5-26-13). "I believe that the essay owes its longevity today mainly to this fact: the genre and its spirit provide an alternative to the dogmatic thinking that dominates much of social and political life in contemporary America."..."When I say 'essay,' I mean short nonfiction prose with a meditative subject at its center and a tendency away from certitude. Much of the writing encountered today that is labeled as 'essay' or 'essay-like' is anything but."
• Writing the Personal Essay (by Adair Lara)
• Essay and Memoir: writing about what changed you (by Adair Lara)
• Crafting The Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Nonfiction (Dinty W. Moore)
• The Wayward Essay (Parul Sehgal, NY Times, 12-28-12).
• The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present, ed. by Phillip Lopate. Two collections of Lopate's essays: Against Joie de Vivre: Personal Essays and Bachelorhood: Tales of the Metropolis. Among notes students of his memoir classes (in this case Roger Martin) have taken: To turn yourself (your “I”) into a character, distance from yourself. To give “I” a meaning requires building the self into a character. People must be knowledgeable enough about themselves, and free-willed enough, to surprise us.
• Writing a Winning Personal Admissions Essay (by Jim Bock, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, Swarthmore College), on PBS)
• A Student's Guide to Writing a Scholarship Essay (StudentScholarshipSearch.com)
• Winning personal essays in 500 words or less (application help, i-studentglobal)
• The Power and Glory of Sportwriting (Nicholas Dawidoff, NY Times 7-28-12). "...for really good writers, sports offer an opportunity to express all the pleasure and passion of life."
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Top 5 Reasons Nonfiction Authors Should Be Speakers, Too (Joel Friedlander, The Book Designer, 11-12-12)

Top Ten Works of Journalism of the Decade, 2000-2009 (NYU Journalism Institute)

When journalists become authors: a few cautionary tips (Peter Ginna for Nieman Storyboard)

When the author isn't a writer: bringing in a ghost (Alan Rinzler, The Book Deal, 8-5-08, on getting experts published). See also section on Book collaboration and ghostwriting.

Will the E-Book Kill the Footnote? (Alexandra Horowitz, NY Times, 10-7-11)

Writing History in the Digital Age (a born-digital, open-peer-reviewed volume edited by Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki, available online here and forthcoming in print and open-access digital formats from the University of Michigan Press for the Digital Humanities Series of its digitalculturebooks imprint)