Jared Correia interviewed Ed Walters in the latest Legal Toolkit podcast, providing a glimpse into the future of legal publishing. It's a fun conversation for book geeks, and it serves up some great insights. For example, big global publishers (Thomson Reuters, Wolters Kluwer) have found print books to be a drag on their business, but this has … Continue reading The Future of Print Books and Legal Publishing
The latest update in Fastcase's push for secondary content is its addition of Wolters Kluwers treatises. This is an important step, immediately giving Fastcase users alternatives to some of the biggest West and Lexis practice aids. Fastcase is playing with the big boys now. But for legal publishing as a whole, this is more of … Continue reading Fastcase Adds More Secondary Content
Writers get jazzed up about punctuation, with good reason. Those dots and squiggles have a lot to do with the character and clarity of writing. And there's no mark that exemplifies the many uses of punctuation better than the em-dash. I was reminded of the em-dash by Jeremiah Shoaf of Typewolf, whose newsletter included a … Continue reading Fear Not the Em-Dash
What is editing worth? Few people assume that having their work edited is worth it anymore. We have to show that it's worth significant time and money. Richard Adin at An American Editor has some suggestions in his most recent post, The Business of Editing: Explaining the Price of Editing. He points to this YouTube video as a … Continue reading The Value of Editing
I've been taking a break from posting here since I ended my one-week experiment with daily posting. I wanted to write more. I'm happiest when I write—even more so when I publish. It was a good experiment, but daily posting took too much time. I'd like to think I could fire off some pithy remarks … Continue reading Experiments with Daily Posting and Deep Work
I've been reading, for the first time, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, that puzzlingly popular little book on punctuation. I found it for two dollars at a local used book sale. It's very British, and I mean that in a good way. But I've found it a little disappointing so far. Lynne Truss' rants on apostrophes … Continue reading Semicolons
Since Fastcase's big announcement last week, I've continued to think about what it might mean for me as a practicing small-town lawyer in a small state. And the more I think about it, the more I realize it will probably be a long time before Full Court Press publishes much for me. I want somebody … Continue reading Full Court Press and Bar Associations
Fastcase announced its own publishing house last week: Full Court Press. The name comes from this New Yorker article about a basketball strategy that gives plucky underdogs a chance against bigger, more skilled, more traditional teams. It recognizes the monumental task of creating a body of secondary legal materials that can compete with West and Lexis. … Continue reading Fastcase’s New Publishing Arm
This morning I read a blog post on Thurott about his Windows 10 book, which is published on Leanpub. Since I used to be an attorney-editor in my state bar's publishing division (where I spent perhaps too much time thinking about publishing problems instead of editing) I went to the Leanpub site and started digging. … Continue reading Lawyers Should Adopt Lean Publishing
https://youtu.be/gNRibogFG00 Bryan Garner just shared this video of five writing tips. It's a great start to writing better in your job, whatever it is. I, for one, will try to use we, our, you, and your more. As Garner states, good business writing "is a skill you must cultivate to succeed." William Zinsser made much the same point in On Writing Well: … Continue reading Garner’s Business Writing Basics