Hmm, I wonder if there are any stats on how applying the book’s advice affects a) acceptance rate and b) popularity. a) is hard to measure, but b) should be easy: take a few bestsellers vs a few random published books and see how severely the advice is violated and whether the bestsellers are better at compliance.
Presumably a) could be measured via the same techniques by comparing a sample of a publishing house’s published books with a sample of their rejected manuscripts.
Currently reading this one, it’s pretty good: http://www.amazon.com/Self-Editing-Fiction-Writers-Second-ebook/dp/B003JBI2YI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1378421718&sr=8-2&keywords=self-editing+for+fiction
It’s not a basic book for new writers, though, as one might guess; I like it because it has some very low-level advice not contained in other books.
Hmm, I wonder if there are any stats on how applying the book’s advice affects a) acceptance rate and b) popularity. a) is hard to measure, but b) should be easy: take a few bestsellers vs a few random published books and see how severely the advice is violated and whether the bestsellers are better at compliance.
Presumably a) could be measured via the same techniques by comparing a sample of a publishing house’s published books with a sample of their rejected manuscripts.
RIght, if the latter were easily accessible. Besides, most of the rejects are probably terrible in other ways, masking the issue.
That looks really interesting! I’d been thinking of Strunk and White and the like when I wrote my comment.