I meant that as a freelance writer for Pyramid, I submitted as plain text, and the Editor formatted it into HTML.
Oh, sure – where the editor used to handle the HTML tags, you will have to hit CTRL-I if you want italics and drag down B-HEAD from the style menu if you want a subheading. That said, a lot of items demanded lists, boxes, tables, and so forth, and especially character sheets, that we punted back to the writer for clarity a lot of the time. Thus, the writer ended up doing the work twice and the editor still had to code stuff. With the Word template, there are unambiguous styles for the writer to use that will prevent "redo" steps on the writer's part.
I've never used a template in Word, so this will be a new experience for me.
Ah . . . that might color your perception. Once you're used to Word templates, they become yet another triviality like hitting ENTER at the end of a paragraph. If anything, being able to see what you're writing and know that's exactly how your editor will see it can save you many hours of frustrating correspondence.
(Ah, I wasn't aware of any of the back room math, that Pyramid was operated at a loss for a while... my apologies.)
At a terrible loss, and for a long time. It has been marked for ages now. It's just that we only now got around to dealing with it.
I seem to be learning much about the writing industry -- one of the reasons I subscribed to your LJ. Thanks for the patience.
Glad to help! Do be aware, though, that small-run niche publishers who operate primarily on a work-for-hire basis function differently from publishers in general. For instance, there's a huge difference between writing an entire manuscript, submitting it cold for review, and getting either a rejection note or a royalty contract (which is standard elsewhere, but not in RPG publishing), and writing just a brief proposal to create a desired item for a preexistent product line at a per-word rate (which is how RPG publishing mostly works). And who wears what hats is another major difference. Most writing goes through editing, page design, indexing, proofreading, indexing, and prepress checking, but in small-run publishing, those jobs are usually done by one or two people total!
Re: Pyramid change is frightening
Oh, sure – where the editor used to handle the HTML tags, you will have to hit CTRL-I if you want italics and drag down B-HEAD from the style menu if you want a subheading. That said, a lot of items demanded lists, boxes, tables, and so forth, and especially character sheets, that we punted back to the writer for clarity a lot of the time. Thus, the writer ended up doing the work twice and the editor still had to code stuff. With the Word template, there are unambiguous styles for the writer to use that will prevent "redo" steps on the writer's part.
I've never used a template in Word, so this will be a new experience for me.
Ah . . . that might color your perception. Once you're used to Word templates, they become yet another triviality like hitting ENTER at the end of a paragraph. If anything, being able to see what you're writing and know that's exactly how your editor will see it can save you many hours of frustrating correspondence.
(Ah, I wasn't aware of any of the back room math, that Pyramid was operated at a loss for a while... my apologies.)
At a terrible loss, and for a long time. It has been marked for ages now. It's just that we only now got around to dealing with it.
I seem to be learning much about the writing industry -- one of the reasons I subscribed to your LJ. Thanks for the patience.
Glad to help! Do be aware, though, that small-run niche publishers who operate primarily on a work-for-hire basis function differently from publishers in general. For instance, there's a huge difference between writing an entire manuscript, submitting it cold for review, and getting either a rejection note or a royalty contract (which is standard elsewhere, but not in RPG publishing), and writing just a brief proposal to create a desired item for a preexistent product line at a per-word rate (which is how RPG publishing mostly works). And who wears what hats is another major difference. Most writing goes through editing, page design, indexing, proofreading, indexing, and prepress checking, but in small-run publishing, those jobs are usually done by one or two people total!