Hi Manuscript Workers,
I hope you’re taking time this week to do what brings you joy or peace. The fact that you’ve chosen to open this email? Well, I’ll take that as big compliment and I don’t take for granted that you’ve let me into your inbox this year.
I want to begin with a quick heads up that I’ll be moving this newsletter off of Substack in the next few months. I have a few reasons for this that are partly technical and boring (so I won’t get into them now), but the decision became incredibly easy to make last week when the platform said that Nazis not only deserve the right to be heard but also to generate income based on their views and in turn generate income for Substack. I’ll be handling everything with the transition so you don’t need to do anything if you want to keep receiving this newsletter. I just wanted to share my position in case you had heard about other writers leaving Substack and were curious where I stand.
I had a lot of plans for 2023. As I wrote way back in January, this was going to be a year of investment, in which I worked on long-term projects, pouring time (and money) into things that I hoped would pay off eventually even if I didn’t see immediate results.
One of those projects was my new book about academic developmental editing. I did invest a lot of time in writing a full draft of the manuscript and the peer reviews came back positive this fall (I’m relieved to say). However, the reviewer feedback helped me feel in my gut that I want to substantially reframe the manuscript in order to connect with the readers I most care about reaching. So, while I would have liked to be able to say my new book is already on its way into production, I’m going to be spending more time revising in 2024.
I will tell you all about the new direction and how I communicated about it with my editor (including letting him know that I’d need a lot more time than anticipated to make revisions) in a few months. For now, suffice it to say that this 2023 project did not go as planned. But, I feel so sure about the plan I’ve landed on that it’s ok. The payoff will just happen later. As I’ve said many times in this newsletter, scholarly book publishing is a long game and delays are an inevitable part of the process.
Another thing I said I would do in 2023 was resist the urge to come up with new programs and instead focus on making my tried-and-true resources even more useful and accessible in different formats. I had thought that might take the form of starting a podcast or a YouTube channel. What I did not see coming was a bunch of problems arising with my course platform that made it untenable for me to continue hosting courses and workshops there. I decided that I needed to switch to a new platform for my Book Proposal Shortcut and Book Proposal Accelerator courses, and since I would be rebuilding the courses anyway, I figured it was the best possible time to update the curriculum for an improved course experience all around.
The course updates took waaaaay longer than I anticipated. I felt that a structural reorganization and improved visuals to accompany the lessons would help participants get even more out of the courses, so I rewrote and restructured every lesson and hired a professional designer to make the visual information easier to process and remember. I recorded all new video and audio, and I got everything set up in the new platform. (If you’d like to see the courses on the new platform, you can do that here! And if you end up taking one of them, I’d love to hear how you like the new platform, organization, and visuals.) Ultimately I did end up making my resources for scholarly authors more useful and accessible, it just wasn’t in the form I expected.
My other big intention for 2023 was to set up better systems in my business so that I can spend more time actually helping scholarly authors navigate the publishing process and less time doing admin work behind the scenes. I did make progress on this front, in that I upgraded to a new email service provider and contracted an excellent assistant to help me with admin tasks and client support.
(By the way, say hi to Rebecca Marcum, my new(ish) client support specialist! If you work with me in 2024, you’ll probably be hearing from her or meeting her at a Zoom session. If you need support with something right now, go ahead and email her at support@manuscriptworks.com!)
Of course, when you break your old systems and set up new ones, you realize how many things really need attending to that you’d hoped would just hum along forever. So I will be continuing these efforts well into next year with more upgrades and system improvements.
That means next year will be another one of quiet building for me and Manuscript Works. I won’t have a flashy new book to promote or a new YouTube channel to launch, but I do have a couple ideas banging around that I’m excited to work on and tell you about in the new year. And I hope to share many more new books by clients and readers with you as they come out!
Thanks for reading this post, which is more personal and less practical than I usually write. I’ll be back with more of my typical publishing tips next week.
In the meantime, I’d love to hear your core phrases for 2024 if you have any. I think mine are “quiet building” and “optimizing systems.” You can share yours by leaving a comment on the web version of this newsletter post. Just for fun, I’ll select one commenter to receive a free ebook of The Book Proposal Book. If you’d like to be in the drawing for that, please include your email address in your comment so I can follow up with your access code if you’re selected.
A few timely reminders
The Book Proposal Shortcut for Busy Scholars (my self-paced online course) has been updated for 2024 but you can use coupon code SHORTCUTNEW at checkout to get it for the pre-update price (about ~17% off). This code will expire on January 3rd.
The Book Proposal Accelerator—my six-week cohort-based online course running from January 8th to February 16th)—will open for enrollment on January 1st. I’ll send out another newsletter to announce when enrollment opens officially, so look for that on Monday. Alums of the Accelerator or Shortcut who want to join the new cohort get priority enrollment, so if that’s you, send me an email today to get the private checkout links and register early.
My free webinar, How to Publish a Book from Your Dissertation, is happening on January 3rd. If you’re hoping to land a publisher for your scholarly book in 2024, this webinar will have tips you can use (even if you’re not working from a dissertation). Hope to see you there!
I'm thinking my work phrase/word for the year might simply be "steady" (as in "slow but steady," but not wanting to presuppose that everything will be slow...). I think a feeling of steady work is comforting--not feeling rushed, trusting that there is time to rest as the steady work will continue, etc.
(I'd like to be considered for the draw! I'm y.weima@unibo.it)