July 1 - July 7, 2012 Discussions

The main topic of my Sunday comment was the progress of the overhaul of my book to shorten it by at least 15%.  But, of course, it's not just a matter of cutting unnecessary material, I also have to make sure that the narrative runs smoothly and keeps the reader reading.  So, there's a lot of polishing that needs to be done after the big chunks of unnecessary material are cut away.

One agent wanted me to cut 150 pages from the 706 page manuscript, another wanted me to cut 200 pages.  I think I can cut 150 pages, but I'm not sure if I can cut 200.  I'm also moving most of the pictures out of the text and into a separate picture section.  I didn't realize why most books did things that way.  Now I do.  Putting pictures into the text can disrupt the flow of the narrative.  I need to target the book to the people who read books for pleasure, not to students of criminology.  People who read crime books for pleasure are a MUCH bigger audience, and unnecessary pictures can be a distraction to their reading.

For what it's worth, here's a chart showing the number of visitors to my web site for the month of June versus the number of visitors to the main Anthrax Truther web site:

My site got about 3-times as many visitors as Lew Weinstein's site.  The surge on June 12 was from the Cracked.com article.  It's also clear that the patterns are somewhat similar, with mid-week peaks and weekend lows.  I'm not sure what it means, but it seems to mean that more people are interested in the facts of the case than in the theories of the Anthrax Truthers.

Ed