The wheat from the chaff

July 25, 2007

I still haven’t figured out how to link articles, sorry, but here is the url (is that right?) to a nice overview on why great books get missed and why editors’ rejection letters are so nonspecific:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-franklin/the-real-reason-why-publi_b_57424.html

  1. stevenagy

    You’ve got to use the appropriate HTML.

    Use this — a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-franklin/the-real-reason-why-publi_b_57424.html” — enclosed in greater and less thans with the URL entered in the quotes, then whatever link text you want for the URL and then a closing tag of “/a” enclosed in greater and less thans to finish it off.

    Rejection Letters

    Reply
      • ccfinlay

        Re: Testing

        Hey, Chris,

        It looks like you’re simply pasting the wrong url into the brackets. (Learning to get this right is an exercise in self-promotion: getting links right lets websites trackback to you as a referrer, which can lead them to check out your content. It’s kinda like any public appearance leading to another appearance. I’ve had interviews result from some stranger linking to my blog, for example. Also, readers like the ease of being able to jump right to the story you’re linking to.)

        Here, it is in steps. Replace the square brackets with arrow brackets: < >

        1. Paste this into text box:

        [a href=””] [/a]

        2. Insert url and text:

        [a href=”insert complete url here”]Insert useful text here[/a].

        3. An example (note no quotation marks around useful text):

        [a href=”http://www.cbc.com”]This is the most amazing website ever![/a]

        4. With the correct brackets, that would look like this:

        This is the most amazing website ever!

        Hope this helps!

        Reply
          • ccfinlay

            Re: Testing

            You have to include the http in the webaddress, otherwise it defaults, thinking that you’re linking to a subpage of the current webpage (in this case, your blog). That’s why the second link works and the first one doesn’t.

  3. arcticghost

    Very interesting article! The numbers are staggering. I knew they were up there from talking to you and by reading around, but having them laid out in black and white … it both terrifies me as a wannabe and makes me quite sympathetic to an editor’s red pen.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

  • (will not be published)