The First Step to a Better Book
Here at Ménage à Typo, we care not only about literary excellence, but indie excellence in particular. In the past few decades, the publishing industry as a whole, traditional publishing included, has seen a steady decline in quality. This includes not only the physical materials of a book, but typos and elements of storytelling as well. Unfortunately, rather than indie authors seeing this decline and rising to the occasion, proving that we can do the job just as well as or better than a traditional publisher, it’s become an excuse to let even more errors slip through.
“Even New York Times Best Sellers have typos,” should not be a sentence which sets the standard, but a critique of what professional publishers see fit to distribute.
Our aim for this podcast is to provide a critical voice by which authors can learn and improve. We have three separate series (Over the Fourth Wall, Edit Like You Mean It, and The Book Medium), two of which are accepting submissions.
Over the Fourth Wall is an indie novel game of Russian roulette. We take books that have done well in the indie sphere and spin the wheel, then read whatever luck demands. As these are published works, we look at them for product quality, writing, and storytelling. It’s for these books that we’re at our most critical, as they’re setting the standards of indie publishing, and the work is marked as “complete.” We still look at these books with an editorial eye, noting what we would have done had we gotten ahold of it before publication, but it’s largely an in-depth analytical critique of the finished work. If you’ve read an indie novel which you did not write and would like to see our analysis of it, you can submit suggestions below.
Edit Like You Mean It is the first of our open submission categories in which we critique first chapters of unpublished novels. The majority of readers will decide whether or not to purchase a novel within the first ten pages, which impresses upon the first chapter of any novel monetary, marketing, and brand value. We examine first chapters with an eye for how readers approach a new book, though much less critically than in our Over the Fourth Wall segment, as the chapter has yet to be finalized for publication, and with a greater emphasis on how to edit the work moving forward.
The Book Medium is our second open submissions category, where authors can submit their full unpublished manuscripts for review. Before we get into this, we would like to allay some fears.
1) We’ll be going over plot points and likely reading a few sentences aloud, but your manuscript will not be physically uploaded anywhere and thus cannot be downloaded without your permission.
2) No one is going to steal your book. It’s a fear that’s commonly voiced, even at in-person critique groups, but it doesn’t happen. The majority of our listeners are likely to be authors who already have their own ideas they’re eager to write. They aren’t itching to write someone else’s story any more than you are. The only guaranteed result of refusing to share your book (be it here or in some other group setting) is that you won’t get any feedback.
3) If someone does “steal” one of your ideas, they’ll end up molding and morphing it in a way that it ceases to be recognizable as yours. Even when people attempt to give developmental suggestions at in-person critique groups, more often than not their own preferences run away with them, straying too far to be applicable for the book at hand.
4) If you’re worried about readers hearing your plot twist early and not getting the thrill of the ride when they actually read your book, don’t. The internet is massive, and we’re not that important. With that, if you’re getting a full developmental edit from us, you can expect another year of rewrites before getting into the weeds of actual publication. By the time your book hits the shelves, the itsy bitsy intersection of people who both read your book and listen to our podcast will either have forgotten about our analysis (highly likely), bought the book specifically to read along with our analysis and judge for themselves (less likely), or been on the lookout for your book because of our analysis (least likely of all). Regardless, you’re in the clear.
With that out of the way, and assuming you’re still interested because you’re still reading, in The Book Medium series, we will be examining the entirety of your finished, unpublished manuscript with intent to provide a detailed developmental edit. This will have a very different feel from Over the Fourth Wall, as we’re aware that the manuscript is still being worked on and the author is not yet putting the book out for casual consumption, but seeking outside opinions on how to improve. We’ll provide personal opinions, reader takes, an analysis of why it works or does work from a craft perspective, and actionable feedback on how to fix any major hiccups (e.g., characterization, plot holes, pacing issues, etc.) within the novel. With that, you’ll also receive any notes we may have made during our read-through, though, compiled into a larger letter-like format. As this is a free service, you will not be receiving line-by-line notes, and we will not be available for questions afterward. If further discussion of your book is something you feel very strongly about, you can contact Jack at www.jackarysalem.com to discuss what a paid video call or brainstorming session might look like.
ALL CRITIQUES, REGARDLESS OF THE SERIES, WILL CONTAIN A DETAILED AND IN-DEPTH REVIEW OF THE SUBMITTED WORK. THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. YOUR CHAPTER OR MANUSCRIPT WILL BE DISCUSSED IN FULL. IF YOU ARE UNCOMFORTABLE WITH US DISCUSSING THE INS-AND-OUTS OF YOUR BOOK ON OUR CHANNEL, PLEASE DO NOT SUBMIT. IF YOU DO CHOOSE TO SUBMIT YOUR WORK, YOU WILL RECEIVE A COMPETENT AND DETAILED DEVELOPMENTAL EDIT FOR FREE. THE DECISION OF WHETHER OR NOT THAT TRADE-OFF IS WORTHWHLIE IS YOURS TO MAKE.
If any or all of these services sound good to you, please fill out the form below.
We look forward to reading your work,
—Sarah, Jess, & Jack, Ménage à Typo