Peter Economy

Peter Economy’s 60+ books include Managing For Dummies, The SAIC Solution: How We Built an $8 Billion Employee-Owned Technology Company, and Giving Back: Connecting You, Business, and Community. Peter has also served as Associate Editor for the New York City-based Leader to Leader magazine since 2001, recently served as a lecturer at San Diego State University (teaching MGT 453: Creativity and Innovation), is a member of the National Advisory Council of The Art of Science Learning, and is a founding member of the board of SPORTS for Exceptional Athletes.

*After Peter’s interview are instructions for entering today’s Free Full Manuscript Edit Giveaway.

How does revision work within a collaboration?
When collaborating with someone else (most of my books are collaborations), I usually revise their work, and they revise mine. In the case of Writing Children’s Books For Dummies, for example, my coauthor/collaborator Lisa Rojany Buccieri and I split the chapters we were each responsible for—she prepared initial drafts of some chapters and I prepared initial drafts of others. We then traded chapters and edited each other’s work.

How does working with a new collaborator for a new project and each new audience affect your approach to shaping the book?
Every collaborator has his or her own approach and style, so it takes a little bit of time at the beginning of a new project to mesh that with my own approach and style. Most of the time it all works out and the collaboration goes smoothly. In some rare cases it doesn’t, and if we can’t get on the same page we part ways.

Which draft typically gets shown to your editor? How much revising happens after the editor sees that draft?
I only send final drafts to my editors—my very best work. Sometimes the editors do very little revising after I submit this final draft, and sometimes they do a lot—it depends on the project and the editor’s own approach. But I would never send an editor anything less than my very best.

How does revision work in ghostwriting? How do you strike a balance between your judgment as a writer and the preferences of the person you’re writing for?
The balance is that I am the writing expert and my client is the content expert. Sometimes I need to strongly express my opinions and provide my advice about making revisions, based on my many years of experience as a professional writer. This (in addition to the actual writing) is what my clients pay me for. Regardless, it is extremely important that I capture my client’s voice and that he or she is comfortable with the style and happy with the book that results. If I haven’t accomplished that, then I have failed.

What’s the most drastic thing you’ve done to a project while revising?
In a few cases I have had to throw out an entire table of contents—the approach that a collaborator and I were going to take to write the book—and start over from scratch. Fortunately we did this before we wrote the manuscript and not after.

How do you know you’ve got the final draft?
When the deadline arrives and I know the manuscript is good enough. Absolute perfection is not necessary, but it better be damn close.

TODAY’S GRAND PRIZE GIVEAWAY:

The Editor is giving away a FREE FULL MANUSCRIPT EDIT of your manuscript. The edit will be a “Substantive Edit,” in which the author receives general feedback about the manuscript’s overall pacing, organization, narrative voice, plot development/narrative arc, characterization, point of view, setting, delivery of background information, adult sensibility (children’s books only), and the synchronicity of age-appropriate subject matter with target audience, as The Editor determines appropriate and necessary after reviewing the entire manuscript. It is not a word-by-word, line-by-line “Line Edit.” Note that the manuscript can be fiction, nonfiction, or picture books.

Here are the rules:

1. Your manuscript can be of ANY GENRE or CATEGORY (for adults or children, fiction or nonfiction), including picture books.
2. Your manuscript must be COMPLETE and SHALL NOT EXCEED 90,000 WORDS. In the case of a picture book entry, the manuscript cannot exceed 7 double-spaced, 12-pt font pages.
3. Deadline: MIDNIGHT tonight, March 30, 2013, PST.
4. Winner will be randomly selected using Randomizer.org and announced on March 31, 2013, in the DearEditor.com comments section and on the DearEditor.com Facebook page, and the winner will be notified directly via email.

TO ENTER:

One entry –  SEND EMAIL to DearEditor.com using the “Write to The Editor” button at the top of the blog or by clicking here. Type “Free Full MS Edit Giveaway” in the subject line. In the body of the email, include the TITLE of your manuscript, YOUR FULL NAME, and the CATEGORY/GENRE of your project. DO NOT send your manuscript or any portion of it. (If you have any difficulty with the contact button, send an email entry directly to dear-editor@hotmail.com.) *If you do not want your title announced, please use an alternate working title.*

Bonus entry – SUBSCRIBE. DearEditor.com subscribers get a bonus entry by sending a second email with “Subscriber’s Bonus Giveaway Entry” in the subject line and your title and full name in the body. (Note: the Editor will verify!) Not a subscriber yet? Then subscribe now by clicking on the “Subscribe” button at the top of DearEditor.com and then email your second entry.

Extra bonus entries – SPREAD THE WORD. Blog, tweet, or otherwise electronically tell others about this Revision Week giveaway to get additional entries today. Send an email to DearEditor.com with “I Spread the Word!” in the subject line, and in the body include a link to your blog post or your Twitter address or your Facebook wall or whatever social media you used to spread the word. Don’t send screen-shots; attachments won’t be accepted. Include your title, full name, and the category/genre in the body. Spread the word more than once? Then send an “I Spread the Word!” email for each one!

Anyone who doesn’t follow these rules will be disqualified, at the Editor’s discretion.

Disclaimer: The Editor does not share or in any other way use your contact information; it’s collected solely for winner contact purposes at the end of the giveaway.

Good luck!