Write, Edit, Publish: What Every Writer Needs to Know but Only an Editor Will Tell You

by Michael J. Totten

Literary agents and publishers reject 99 percent of manuscripts before finishing the first page, and readers are just as impatient. If your opening doesn’t grab them by the throat, they’re gone. Award-winning author and veteran editor Michael J. Totten will show you—in the first two chapters alone—how to craft a killer first sentence and a gripping first page.

Most books about writing are written by writers, not editors. They don’t see the troubled manuscripts that Totten sees, so the dozens of crippling mistakes that sink so many otherwise promising manuscripts, both fiction and nonfiction, aren’t well covered in most books about writing—until now. In Write, Edit, Publish, you will learn how

• Correct all the most common mistakes that expose you as an amateur.
• Hook your audience and compel them to keep reading.
• Avoid the top two fatal errors most self-publishers make.
• Tap into readers’ innate capacity for empathy so they truly sympathize with the characters and people you’re writing about.
• Give readers exactly what they want—even if they don’t consciously know what that is.
• Fast-forward through the boring parts and ratchet up the suspense.
• Spellbind readers using real rather than vacuous descriptions—and, just as importantly, know precisely where and when to include that description.
• Turn your muddled story into a focused, structurally sound narrative.
• Declutter your sentences so they land like hammer blows, not slaps with a Nerf bat.
• Remove friction from your prose so readers can relax and glide through it.
• Write dialogue that actually sounds spoken rather than written.
• Repair fractured, backward, and bloated information flow so your writing is as clear as a still pool of water.
• Craft an ending that haunts readers long after it’s over.

Read this book, show readers you have an expert command of the craft, and write so well the world can’t ignore you.


Praise for Michael J. Totten

“This book is game-changing for writers. Michael J. Totten gives great advice about writing that only a seasoned editor could convey. I'm including this book as required reading in my editing course and plan to have other folks in my department read it as well.”
—Allyson Longueira, professor in the graduate program in creative writing at Western Colorado University

“I’ve admired Michael J. Totten’s work as a writer for years, but it turns out he is also a superb editor.”
—Judith Deborah, author of A Falling An Evan Adair Mystery

“As an accomplished writer, journalist, and editor, Michael is second to none. He has helped me with two books and enormously improved both.”
—Fred Litwin, author of I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak

“If you’re looking for an editor to help you take your book to the next level, look no further than Michael J. Totten. I’ve always found his astute insights invaluable.”
—Scott William Carter, author of The Grey and Guilty Sea

Genres: Writing

390 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 30, 2025

Reviews

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book on the do’s and don’ts for beginning writers.
This isn’t a grammar-heavy book, so if you're brand new to the basics, you might want to start with something more foundational. That said, it’s full of solid tips and practical advice that I found really helpful—especially as a newer writer. A lot of the points it makes are echoed in other writing guides too, which just reinforced them for me. Worth a read if you’re just getting started and want a clear, no-nonsense overview of what to aim for (and what to avoid). It does shortly address how dire hiring an editor is if you're self publishing (something even big publishing houses seem to fail at today), which I am fully on board for everyone.

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. There were a few things I’d never seen in other reference books by editors.

:)