Mencken's Americana Book

This book has some great general information on getting published and making money writing. The focus on money-making didn't really appeal to me personally, but the author is clearly an expert in this aspect of writing. At times I was annoyed with the repetition of information and examplars. It felt as though the author took his own advice of recycling his material into different articles and then putting them together to repackage and sell, in this case without a ton of regard for overall effect. There were also quite a few typos, which didn't make it less readable, but felt shoddy given that this is a book on writing. Some of the advice relating to the internet was a little out of date, understandably so, given that this is a 2008 edition -- Twitter was just a baby bird! Still, references to MySpace but not Facebook? The opening to chapter 13 that states "we live in the nanosecond nineties"? Did no one proof this "expanded and revised" edition? Is this the result of too much repackaging and recycling of material?

Despite these shortcomings, the nuts-and-bolts of how publishing works was useful information if you have a limited background, and I would still recommend the book for this type of overview.