Tricky Edits Column for May 2025

Tricky Edits

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson

As Promised in Dawn’s Last SPARREW 

Glorious Appendices Tricks for Final Edits

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Dawn’s The SPARREW Newsletter Gift Sample Collection up and ready for you to benefit 
from the best-of-the-best from those years in 2025. 

Help us celebrate. Gift it to a fellow author. Find it on Amazon.

If you read about Dawn’s celebratory book in her last newsletter issue where I promised to follow up on one of my favorite final edits tricks, you’re in the right place. This isn’t a duplicate.

Birthday celebrations are forever. You might have last read this helpful book above a few weeks ago or read more about it in my “Tricky Edits” column last month. If that’s the case, you remember I promised you more on Appendices.

So, it’s keep-my promise time. This is part of a short list of important edits to consider in final edits, the ones that too many authors don’t know about or bother with.  We’re concentrating on the last suggestion in that issue; number eight that promises a list of  "What you might be missing if you don’t read Appendices in books that have them:”

When you read appendices, don’t skim. Think about the details you can begin to apply for the needs of your own books.  Appendices are mostly found in nonfiction books but not always, so if you prefer to read poetry or fiction, the appendices of others’ books might be valuable for you, too.

1. Sometimes you’ll find near equivalents to appendices in other genres masquerading under other names, glossaries for instance. It’s a mistake not to take that observation as a lesson. You might use this same approach to helping your reader. 

2. Don’t just read for information. Watch the way segments are worded and the layout for the sections. Is there anything there that can be used to help your readers for your next book? 

3. Does recommended reading offer something that will help you delve deeper into topics you now realize you know too little about? 

4. Watch for examples or samples--sometimes set out visually--that will support what you learned in the book you just read, some that you can use as templates.

5. You might find a summary or organizational chart of the book you just read that will make you think twice about what you just read. 

6. A list of experts the author interviewed or were otherwise instrumental for quotes or information--even beyond acknowledgements which can have a different focus.  My The Frugal Editor includes a list of agents who offered me their query letter pet peeves and permission to print them.

7. Sometimes you’ll find a whole new how-to section that doesn’t fit in the rest of the book because it’s written by some other expert for something the author knows you’ll need but doesn’t quite fit in the book.

8. You might find resources other than recommended readers (like those agents mentioned above!)

MORE ABOUT CAROLYN

Once a month Carolyn Howard-Johnson shares something writer-related she hopes might save some author from embarrassment (or make the task of writing more fun or creative.) The third edition of The Frugal Editor from Modern History Press includes a chapter on some of the words most misused by the very people whose business it is to know them. It is the second multi award-winning book in her multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers. The Frugal Editor, now in its third edition,  has been fully updated including a chapter on how back matter can be extended to help readers and nudge book sales.

Carolyn blogs sporadically on editing at http://www.thefrugaleditor.blogspot.com and at her SharingwithWriters blog on other aspects of the publishing world and welcomes guest posts with ample author credit lines and links and welcomes guest posts complete with credit lines and ample links for her guests. She also tweets writers' resources and tips at www.twitter.com/frugalbookpromo using #FrugalBookPromoterTips hashtag.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson brings her experience as a publicist, journalist, marketer, and retailer to the advice she gives in her HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers and the many classes she taught for nearly a decade as instructor for UCLA Extension’s world-renown Writers’ Program where has found a little humor can decidedly make a lot of learning easier on one’s disposition. 

The books in her HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers have won multiple awards. That series includes both the third editions of The Frugal Book Promoter and my The Frugal Editor. Published by Modern History Press, they have won awards from USA Book News, Readers’ Views Literary Award, Dan Poynter’s Global Ebook Award, the marketing award from Next Generation Indie Books and others including the coveted Irwin award. How To Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically is still in its first (very frugal!) edition but please wait for the second edition from Modern History Press. 

Howard-Johnson is the recipient of the California Legislature’s Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award, and her community’s Character and Ethics award for her work promoting tolerance with her writing. She was also named to Pasadena Weekly’s list of “Fourteen San Gabriel Valley women who make life happen” and was given her community’s Diamond Award for Achievement in the Arts.