Writers Tricks of the Trade Issue 2 Volume 8 | Page 35

A’Morelli has also published the Elements
of Style Classic Edition, which retains the
flavor of Strunk’s original version – because
it includes the full text of the original 1918
edition, though it’s supplemented with “edi-
tor’s notes and study guide.”
When it comes to being reprinted and
updated, The Elements of Style has more
lives than all the various “original,” “bowd-
lerized” and “modernized” Complete Works
of Shakespeare.
Lest we forget one of the classic how-to
best-sellers that keeps getting rewritten, con-
sider What Color is My Parachute, the clas-
sic find-a-better-job job-search manual writ-
ten by Richard Nelson Bolles. Parachute
has been in print continuously since 1970 –
more important for today’s crop of job-
seekers, it has been revised and updated eve-
ry single year since 1975, and some of those
revisions have been substantial.
Finally, my own (ghost-written) book,
Beautifully Profitable, Forever Profitable,
is also out in its fifth (2017) edition, last
time I checked. I wrote the first three edi-
tions, before turning further updates over to
the “named author,” who of course owns all
the rights to the book (my ghostwriting con-
tract was purely work-for-hire).
Why update a book already in publica-
tion?
Why update a book that was already
complete when first published? There are at
least two compelling (read “profitable”) rea-
sons. First, when a reviewer is considering a
book to evaluate, the first thing he or she
often looks for is the copyright date – if a
book is even a year old, many reviewers re-
fuse to consider it. Second, the same “it’s
S UMMER 2018
not new anymore” feeling can influence
book buyers.
A book with a two year-old copyright
date may turn off potential buyers. However,
a book with a banner in the upper right cor-
ner that reads, “New, Updated 2019 Edition”
will cause both reviewers and readers to
think this is a legitimately new work, one
potentially worth their attention.
Which brings up an important point: if
you do re-issue the book with an “Updated
for This Year” banner, make sure you actu-
ally do revise the book. You can do this by
writing a preface or foreword, an afterword,
or perhaps a new chapter. Or, if your book is
chock-full of statistics, go through and up-
date each one, making the book indeed fresh
and new.
Be honest with your readers and review-
ers, and not just because they might have
also bought the earlier edition. If you play
fair with your readers, it’s far more likely
they’ll play fair with you.
Updating your book also allows you –
especially if you’re a self-publisher with an
email contact list of first-edition book buy-
ers – to offer those readers to buy the updat-
ed edition at a significant pre-publication
price discount. For instance, if you offer a
$0.99 Kindle pre-publication sale on Ama-
zon, and limit it to a single day, you might
find that your new edition re-release is an
Amazon category best-seller even before it’s
even in (digital) print.
Finally, once your book is an Amazon
best-seller, that title (along with its market-
ing benefits) never goes away.
About This Tip: In my forthcoming
book, Write Now!, you’re going to find in-
terviews with more than 20 other authors
P AGE 30
W RITERS ’ T RICKS OF THE T RADE