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Preface Years ago, when my children were very small, I worked as a freelance writer for Publishers Weekly, mainly doing book reviews and author inter- views. Eventually, my editor gave me my first big assignment, covering a conference on dissident Czech authors at NYU. This was in 1990, just shortly after the Velvet Revolution. I attended literary panels, conducted interviews, and in short had an absolutely thrilling time. But when I got home and sat down to write the article, I began to panic. I had no idea how to structure a newspaper article, in fact I didn’t even know what the lead was. After several hours of half-hearted attempts at writing, I simply handed all my notes to my husband, who at that time was the managing editor of a trade newspaper. He sat down with me, and we (really, he) wrote the article. After we had finished, he said, “Now that I’ve shown you what to do, you don’t need me. You’ll be able to do this yourself from now on.” And I did, although in the beginning it was slow going at best. This book is called Librarian’s Guide to Writing for Professional ­ Publication because the kind of writing we do as librarians is not an art, it’s a craft. And any kind of craft takes some practice to get right. I hope this book can provide you with some of the support I received when I began to write and that you will be successful in all your writing endeavors.