How to cut.

Cold? Enjoy a story of balmier days.

Young Jason Miller is bored because he's missing youth baseball while on a family vacation at Lake Tahoe, California. To make matters worse, he learns that his girlfriend has dumped him. Feeling like the world's biggest loser, he meets pretty fifteen-year-old Stephanie on the shore path and sees an opportunity to make up for being dumped.

Question  from the e-mail: What is the most common problem we get with submissions?

Answer: Usually it's manuscripts that are too long for POD publication. We usually advise that ms need to be 80,000 words or Shorter, but NEVER longer. The reason is that the paper costs for longer books cost more than we can charge for them and ever expect any sales. We usually wish them better luck with someone else, and offer advice on how to cut if they are interested.

About one in 20 will ask for the advice. Today we were pleasantly surprised to hear from someone who not only asked, but actually followed our advice.

An Answer From the e-mail:

Arline, I wanted to thank you for your advice regarding reducing the word count of my book from 92,300 to 80,000 words.  I decided to proceed with the exercise regardless of the publishing method.  I first looked through the story eliminating overt duplication which resulted in a reduction of about 9,000 words.  Then I followed your advice and reviewed the use of prepositions which resulted in a further reduction of 3,200 words. The result was as follows.

·         The story now has 80,100 words.

·         It is a much crisper and enjoyable read.

·         Several awkward sections were completely eliminated without affecting the story in any way as they tended to just re-enforce information or concepts adequately covered elsewhere.

·         The overall pace of the story is now consistent, and does not bog down periodically as it did previously.

·         The 12,000 word reduction had no impact on any of the storylines.

So again, a very big thank you.

And thanks to YOU. Joe. It's wonderful to know that someone actually listens to our advice.