The Tuesday Tip

On Tuesdays I post a tip for writers.

Today - Repetition.
Remember trawling through your manuscript trying to spot the repetitions, such as "Who's calling," he called.

Or perhaps, "He eyed the maid with interest. "Aye," he said, looking her in the eye, "I'm Iron Jack, the ironmonger, and I've come to collect Eileen's ironing."

I know, none of your writing is as bad as that. But if you laughed guiltily at the first example, here is the answer. A neat little downloadable gadget that will scan your manuscript for you and do all the hard work.

Here's the link.

http://www.gaddy.fr/repetitiondetector/online.php?l=en

My book has been pirated!

I suppose it was inevitable, but it is pretty disappointing as a writer to find that "The Lady's Slipper", which is barely out of nappies - still in its pristine hardback edition in the uk - has been copied and is now available worldwide for people to download free from the internet. I the writer, can do absolutely nothing about it, and will of course receive no royalties from them at all.

When I got on the 'get books for free' site, I was astonished to find I could download lots of just-released pirated books, and yes, it looks tempting to a bookaholic like me to have all the latest books available for nothing.....


Of course in the end, if people download the books, (which are probably of varying quality) and they therefore don't sell in an official version, then publishers will not be publishing them, or supporting their writers.

Those that do get books this way for free are slowly strangling the publishing industry. But we've seen this before, haven't we, with the music industry.

I have to say it is frustrating when the US Kindle edition is still a few weeks off, but also I suppose its flattering that someone could be bothered to copy and upload it.

Tell you the name of the site? You must be kidding.