A helpful, reassuring guide to putting together a publishing team.
Authors who self-publish should hire freelance editors, designers, and consultants to spruce up their books, according to this primer.
Neighbour, a book editor and ghost writer, warns readers that every manuscript requires much specialized effort to turn it into a readable, marketable work and offers expert advice on finding reliable professionals who can do it. These include experienced editors who will use a coldly objective eye to diagnose the inevitable flaws that authors cannot perceive in their own work and fix everything from a manuscript’s overall argument and tone to the placement of commas and dashes; designers who can craft eye-catching, genre-appropriate art and choose fonts for the cover; and interior designers who sweat the myriad tiny but crucial details of page layout, from picking the right margin size to avoiding unsightly “rivers” of space between words. In addition, a writer needs a book shepherd—the author has been called one—who can coordinate all of the above and also oversee a volume’s printing, distribution, and marketing to the “reader persona” who is the likeliest audience. Neighbour packs her slender, no-nonsense manual with lots of useful lore on everything from arcane publishing jargon to professional associations that keep databases of working editors and designers, and she provides a trove of practical tips for vetting prospective freelancers. (Among the questions she suggests for interviewing editors are “Do you offer free editing of sample pages, so I can see how we might work together?” and “How would you handle numbers in my manuscript?”) The author’s brisk, lucid prose is lit by tart humor (a professional cover designer is not “a family member who has never taken a design or composition course”) and, alas, marred by at least one typo that her own editor overlooked (a period missing at the end of the sentence “Self-publishing doesn’t mean you have to do everything on your own”). Authors who are serious about making a mark with their books will find a wealth of information and insights here.
A helpful, reassuring guide to putting together a publishing team.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9962541-5-1
Page Count: 107
Publisher: Upriver, Downriver Books
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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