Business Case for Chicago Manual of Style Online

I use the Chicago Manual of Style as my primary and de facto style guide when writing.  I paid about $45 plus shipping for this book on Amazon.  It costs $100 to pick up a copy here in Australia.  The online version is $35 as an annual subscription.

As I continue to improve my authoring work flows, I am using more and more cloud-based systems and apps which are now licensed on a subscription basis.  I made a major foray into subscribing to the Adobe Creative Cloud and have been very happy with the results.  I get access to 20 major applications, including the big four in the Adobe line-up of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Dreamweaver.  These apps are being constantly updated and would have cost several thousand dollars to buy.  Additonally, I would have to occasionally substantially pay for upgrades.  I am paying $49 per month which was far easier than finding several thousand dollars  and worrying about future upgrade costs.

But the Chicago Manual of Style only cost me $57 (including shipping) and seldom changes (even though it is constantly adding content, especially for sourcing and providing citation of online and alternative material) .  My initial reaction was why would I pay $35 per year and $350 over ten years when I can get the same content for $57 over that period of time.  I was not looking at the business case properly though.  I was only looking at the buy versus lease costs and making the wrong decision.

I love serendipitously sitting down with my Chicago Manual of Style book to browse and learn and do that occasionally and with enjoyment.  During the last month, I have been heavily copyediting my current writing project, a book on wine.  This has been a serious effort.  I have outlined at least a dozen mechanical copyediting phases, plus have frequent question on how to handling particular editing issues.  Relying on my physical copy of the Chicago Manual of Style, I could usually find my answer within several minutes.  But I needed to have a good idea where to look in the first place.  And after doing this several hundred times, I recognized the many hours I was burning by researching from the physical book.

Since Chicago Manual of Style Online provides a 30-day free trial and I was into heavy copyediting, I signed up for the free trial.  Within minutes, I knew I would subscribe annually and pay my $35 year after year.  As an example, I used the online version to check the proper use of 'de facto' in the first sentence of this blog.  Was it 'defacto,' 'de-facto,' or 'de facto?'  Within seconds I had my answer.  Similarly for 'copyediting' versus 'copy editing' or 'copy-editing.'

The online version provides a hyperlinked Table of Contents to immediately go to the section you want instead of flipping through pages in the physical book.  It also has a search capability in which I can enter different phrases to find what I need if my first phrase does not yield results.

Overall, I expect I am saving several hours a month using the online version.  If I price my time at $50 per hour, then I am saving at least $100 per month.  Not a bad return for spending $3 per month.  That is the proper way to build the business case.  Subscribing to the online version is an obvious decision when reviewed properly.  My authoring workflow has improved in that I now spend only seconds researching an editing issue and can correct it up-front while I write.  Previously, I was parking these issues into a special Scrivener Binder or Evernote as dealing with them distracted from and slowed the writing process.  Now my copyediting phases are much shorter in duration and my draft copies of higher quality which is important if you are sending drafts to potential agents or publishers.

Use the right approach to building your business case and, if you are a writer, use the Chicago Manual of Style Online - you will not regret it.


Steve Shipley
SAZ in the Cellar Facebook page
Twitter: @shipleyaust
My wine blog SAZ in the Cellar
Still Stupid at Sixty (published under my writing pseudonym Blake Stevens)
Steve Shipley Pinterest Boards

My journey to the Adobe Creative Cloud for design and publishing

I have become fascinated by the technology to support writing and publishing.  My first book Still Stupid at Sixty (published under the pseudonym Blake Stevens) was written in Microsoft Word and converted into Amazon Kindle format using Calibre.  That is how easy it is to self-publish these days.  Anyone who can type claims they are an author these days, including me!

But my current book Wine Sense is a different matter.  It will be published electronically and as a physically printed book.  It is almost twice the size at 125,000 words or the equivalent of roughly 350 pages based on format.  It will contain almost forty photographs, multicolored tables, and a couple of QR Codes to link to videos.  I researched over twenty other wine books and multiple research papers, therefore requiring numerous citations for the original source.  The total effort involved is estimated to be ten times what was required for my first book.

I started to use a cloud-based approach in order to work more appropriately across multiple platforms.  The apps used included Dropbox and Evernote on my laptop, iPad, and iPhone, along with some ongoing collaboration with my wife's desktop computer.  It also included converting from using a word processor to using a real writing management system called Scrivener which tripled my productivity for addressing a more complex project such as Wine Sense.  And I learned some basic HTML and CSS to have more direct control over the final formatting of the book in electronic format so it would work properly across multiple devices and eReaders..

It is still my intent to still involve a support team, especially a graphic designer.  While I am somewhat innovative and creative when it comes to systems and technical problem solving, I lack creative visual design skills.  However, the more and more I worked to develop and optimize an integrated writing and publishing workflow, the more I fell in love with computers and technology again.  I wanted the ability to work collaboratively with my graphic designer and editor in an interactive and back-and-forth manner without having to pay designer for multiple changes in final layout.  Nor did I want to pay heavily for small tweaks to a basic layout design when I could do that myself.

Therefore I started to study and become more intrigued with some of the freeware tools to manipulate photos and other images.  My initial reaction is that the Adobe products were too high-end and too expensive.  I felt I had neither the budget nor the capabilities or experience to utilize these products.  But then I found out about Adobe Creative Cloud which includes Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver and about twenty other products for publishing and it was all for $49 per month if I signed up for one year.  I took two months reviewing strategies, continuing to optimize my writing workflows, and thinking about the commitment of time required.  Ultimately, I felt the $600 or so I would spend per year was well worth it in terms of what I would save by reducing the charges from graphic designers  and much more in the time it was taking fiddling around with integrating and trying to get precisely what I wanted from the freeware apps available.

So I have committed to the Adobe Creative Cloud.  Be aware that these products are extremely high end and have a very steep learning curve.  The products have matured over 25 years and they have thousands of features and thousands of different ways for doing things.  Some of the keyboard shortcuts require the use of three different keys and a mouse click!  These apps require some serious investment in time to become proficient.  I have read books, viewed online videos by Adobe, and tried to play around with the apps myself.  What is really getting me up to speed though is the tutorials I am taking with Lynda.com.  This is a great training site to provide training in many different areas including outstanding training courses and videos for the Adobe Creative Cloud product suite.

While the tools take some getting used to, they provide amazing capabilities to do exactly what you want.  It takes years to become a professional in just one of them and I am trying to come up to speed on four of them quickly.  But I am certain the savings in time and money for my current book and many books in the future is worth it.  While this approach works for me, I understand it may not work for everyone.  But if you need to have high-end design and want control over what you are doing, then the Adobe Creative Cloud is worth considering.  And if you want to learn the Adobe apps as quickly as possible, I would recommend signing up for Lynda.com.


Steve Shipley
SAZ in the Cellar Facebook page
Twitter: @shipleyaust
My wine blog SAZ in the Cellar
Steve Shipley Pinterest Boards

Scrivener and Evernote - a perfect pair

Several weeks ago, I wrote a post on how Scrivener has more than tripled my writing productivity.  I continue to optimize my writing workflow daily as I become more comfortable with Scrivener.  While most of my writing productivity gains are from Scrivener, they also come from the integration of several other tools, such as iThoughtsHD for mind mapping a new book outline (and key points / notes) on my iPad.  I then export the mind map in OPML format to Dropbox to sync with my laptop for importation as OPML into Scrivener.  It works beautifully!

I also use Scrivener Compile to ePub, then use an ePub editor Sigil to make final HTML formatting changes for a very few things the way I like it beyond what I been able to figure out in Scrivener.

But outside of Scrivener itself, it is Evernote used in conjunction with Scrivener that provides the biggest productivity improvement.  For my current non-fiction book, Wine Sense, I researched over twenty different books on wine, including both physically printed books, and books in Kindle mobi format.  I also used some PDF files in my research.  Previously, I was tagging my physical books with Post-it stickers and highlighting my Kindle books and then reviewing my notes on the Amazon Cloud.  My notes (and my thoughts) were all over the place.  Plus I would have to put in significant effort to source and provide accurate citation for quotes and direct references to others work.  This on its own was going to be a tremendous effort.  I frankly was getting to the point of wondering if it would be possible to finish the book .  And I still had about eight of my most complex books to research!

Taking notes in Evernote on iPad

So I starting using Evernote and created a Note called 'Wine book to-dos' to capture everything I was doing outside of just writing in Scrivener.  It also let me 'tag' and source immediately upon reading any note I thought I may reference later.  Once synced with my laptop, I enter Evernote on the laptop and cut and paste all my notes into a work Binder in Scrivener.

Notes on iPad Evernote now sync'ed to laptop Evernote

These notes can have anything to do with my research or just be random thoughts (such as "Should I use the word 'mouthfeel' or two words 'mouth feel' in the book?") which may be added to my general editing to-do Binder.  Therefore, whenever copying in my notes, I always first copy the notes into a Scrivener Binder entitled 'Evernote In-Box To-Dos.'

Notes from Evernote copied into 'Evernote In-Box To-Dos' Binder in Scrivener

Once I copied the notes from Evernote into my Scrivener 'Evernote In-Box To-Dos' Binder, I then delete the notes from Evernote on laptop (which then syncs and deletes them from my 'Wine book to-do' note on the iPad also.  Then I start the process again as needed.

One of the great things about Scrivener is the ability to establish non-manuscript Binders and I have a Folder of 'To-Dos' including To-Do Binders for a wide variety of things required to turn my writing into a finished work.  Instead of accumulating (or worse, forgetting) these tasks, they are now integrated into my workflow in an organized manner.  Therefore, I am managing my work and doing it in the most efficient manner possible.  And one of these Binders is the one I created for Evernote as described above.

Then from my 'Evernote In-Box To-Dos' Binder, I copy out specific notes as required into the Chapters (represented as separate Binders in Scrivener), to be dealt with when I was either initially structuring, writing, or substantiating (by validating or reinforcing the content of my writing with specific points).  In this case, the note encircled in red is copied into Chapter 7: Wine and Smell (as are most of the notes in this collection of Evernote notes are).  I parse out the notes based on their intended use.  Since I was reading about wine and smell, in this case most of the notes are being copied into my Notes associated with Chapter 7: Wine and Smell.

Original Notes on Wine and Smell now in Notes for Chapter 7 to be dealt with when rewriting later

Therefore, from the very first time I research a topic, I am able to trace the concept into where it should reside in the book with proper sourcing and citation (to be able to easily build the Bibliography and Footnotes).  Using this process, I was comfortable that I had researched and had the content I required to address the topic of my book and that I would be properly sourcing my material. This was done in one integrated workflow, instead of previously having multiple, non-linked workflows that I was always trying to keep consistent.

I had to cut and paste between Evernote and Scrivener, but this was very easy to do.  My next step in optimizing this work flow will be to write a script using specific Evernote Note name ('Wine book to-dos' in this case) and Scrivener Binder name ('Evernote In-Box To-Dos' in this case) to export the Evernote note as a .rtf file and then open my Scrivener Project and import the .rtf file into the Binder defined.  But this process is so easy to do manually, that I do not have a great deal of incentive to write the script!

I know a number of authors who love using Evernote and Scrivener together.  You may have thought about using Evernote with Scrivener, but uncertain about how it would work.  If that is the case, then hopefully this post has helped show you one method of using the two apps together for improving your writing work flow.  The only think I love more than Scrivener is using Scrivener with Evernote!

Steve Shipley
SAZ in the Cellar Facebook page
Twitter: @shipleyaust
My wine blog SAZ in the Cellar
Steve Shipley Pinterest Boards