Category Archives: Editing

What goes around…

04 Friday Mar 2011

Posted by in Editing, Feedback, Indie writing, Writers

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A few months ago, a fellow indie writer gave me some great feedback on The Roman and the Runaway, coming up with three errors in the text (which I’d been so sure was perfect by then!). I hadn’t asked her to do this, and was grateful for the time and effort that she’d put into reading and correcting the book.

As a result, I determined to do the same for other authors if I found similar problems with their works. Sometimes with self-published books there are just too many errors to make it a sensible option, but if there are only a few, in an otherwise good book, then I’m willing to do some free editorial work to make the book even better. I feel quite strongly that indie authors should help each other out where they can: we don’t have the resources of publishers behind us and experience has shown me the truth of the view that it is impossible to be sure that you have caught all the errors in your own work.

Last week I sent another indie author a list of around 20 errors that I’d found in one of her books. I’d noted them on my ereader as I do when I’m editing my own work. She was glad to hear about them and has given me another one of her books in return. In my experience, indie authors are always pleased to be told about mistakes: don’t be afraid to let them know!

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E-editing

30 Sunday Jan 2011

Posted by in Editing, ereading, Writing

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E-editing

I’m enjoying my ereader very much – it’s such a comfortable and easy way to read. One way I’m using it which I hadn’t anticipated is as an editing device. I’m slowly working on The Viking and the Vendetta, when I have time. I’ve written about half the book, so far. The other week, I converted the Word file into epub format and started to read the work-in-progress on my ereader. I soon found that it was much more pleasurable than trying to read the book on a computer screen (as is the case with every other ebook, so of course it was!).

The ability to make notes on the ereader makes it even more useful. When I notice something that needs changing, I can insert a note and then, when I’m back at the computer, I can go through the file, note by note, and make the alterations to the master Word document. The limitations of the stylus and on-screen keyboard mean that I won’t be making major additions to the book using this method, but it is great as a line-editing device.

It’s interesting that having an ereader is changing the way I write as well as the way I read!

Ebook quality

28 Friday Jan 2011

Posted by in Editing, epublishing, ereading, Free reads, Libraries

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To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

She was watching them and biting her Up.

…from the sideboard as! I held their attention…

Ill work on Terence and make another stab at the diary.

“J think he lost the battle because of his hemorrhoids.”

Kõiõing-neeaies as sne spoêe.

Authors of self-published books are often criticised for poor editing. It is, of course, notoriously difficult to edit one’s own writing – this is one area where a book that goes through the traditional publication process is almost always going to have an advantage. Almost always…

The examples above are not from a self-published book. They’re from the first ebook I borrowed from my public library (via the OverDrive service I discussed the other week). In theory, from a book which has undergone a rigorous quality-control procedure. Oh yeah?

They’re clearly errors which have crept in through an OCR (optical character recognition) process. Which has been poorly checked. Now I haven’t paid anything for this book, having read it through the library service, but if this is the same file that is made available for purchase, then I would have paid between $6.07 and $7.99 for it. And would have been even more annoyed by the mistakes. It’s not just self-published books which need careful proof-reading.

The book is an excellent read, by the way, despite the distracting errors.

Book review: Tamar Black – Djinnx’d by Nicola Rhodes

25 Wednesday Aug 2010

Posted by in Editing, Indie writing, Reviews

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The useful list of free Smashwords books that I linked to in my last book review has now gone, so I found my next free read by going to Smashwords itself and searching for free books from their home page. I went into the Sci-Fi and Fantasy section, which wouldn’t be my normal first choice, but thought I should mix up the genres I’m reviewing a bit. From the ‘most downloaded’ list I picked the first book that appealed, which was this one. Having just blogged about book covers, I should mention that I really try not to let them influence me. It’s the words that matter, as far as I’m concerned. The blurb for Tamar Black – Djinnx’d showed an author with a sense of humour, so I bit and downloaded the book.

And I’m really glad I did. It’s a twist on the classic genie-in-a-bottle story and is very Terry Pratchett-esque in its humour. From the cheeky foreword and the very first chapter, with its sly rewriting of the Book of Genesis as a computer programming job, I was sucked in. Funny and smart. What’s not to like?

Well, actually, there is something that not everyone will like, and that’s the standard of editing. Font size changes randomly in the .epub version of the file and the punctuation is decidedly hit-and-miss at times. But (and this follows on from observations I’ve made before) it really doesn’t matter that much. It’s slightly irritating and my inner copy editor was itching to take out a red pen, but after a while I gave up noting down the errors (yes, I really did start to write them all down – thinking that the author might like to know about them) and just sat down to enjoy the ride.

There are four other books in the series, which sell for between $2.50 and $2.99. Now, the question is, would I pay for them, knowing that they are probably as badly edited as this one? And you know what, I think I probably would. But not right now – I’d want to get an ereading device first and then curl up in front of the fire with them in the winter. Paying to read things on my computer screen still seems wrong.

So there’s the proof of what I’ve been arguing in this blog for a while. Quality matters, yes, but if there’s a good read in amongst the errors then this reader is willing to overlook them and potentially pay for the next book, regardless. It’s time to stop wringing our hands about the quality of editing in ebooks – let’s just enjoy a damn good story when it presents itself instead.

Instant gratification and literacy

13 Friday Aug 2010

Posted by in Editing, epublishing

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I thoroughly enjoyed Kent Anderson’s blog post ‘It’s the End of the Book As We Know It – and I Feel Fine’ over at the Scholarly Kitchen blog. It sums up a lot of my own feelings about ebooks and literacy. These paragraphs, in particular, resonated with me:

But will book reading actually suffer? I doubt it. My kids would love to have Kindles so that they could read spontaneously. They get addicted to a series (don’t get me going about “Pretty Little Liars” right now), and once one book is polished off, they want to start the next one. But the scarcity model of book publishing means having to wait days between reading events if ordering a book from an online retailer; calling around town to find a book and often failing; or checking the library which often doesn’t have the latest materials. Does waiting, calling around, or getting frustrated help the reading experience? Not at all.

The new era of books may actually see more authors, more reading, and more books being bought and sold.

There is a lot of complaining about standards of content in ebooks (particularly from professional editors, I’ve noticed…). Not just in those that have been self-published, but in books purchased from mainstream publishers, too. Usually it is standards of literacy that are criticised in the former and formatting problems in the latter. I agree that it’s irritating if a book is badly put together. I also agree that it is difficult for highly literate people to read a book if they are spotting spelling or grammatical errors every five sentences. What I would argue here, though, is that this doesn’t matter for every reader.

To illustrate my point I’d like to introduce a twelve-year-old would-be-author. She is three chapters into her first book and is happy to admit that:

I might make a few mistakes in spelling and grammer.

She loves writing and is spending a fair part of her spare time working on her book. Yes, it’s littered with errors, but she’s learning her craft and is committed to improving. Would you sneer at her for her mistakes? I hope not (especially as she’s my daughter).

This trainee author loves to share her work and get feedback on it. I think that a lot of self-published authors have a lot in common with my twelve-year-old. They have given up on the old publishing model and are anxious to share their stories with the rest of the world. Since many ebook retailers offer the opportunity to download a sample of a book before purchase, it is easy for you, as a reader, to assess its quality before you make a purchase. If you’re bothered by bad grammar and spelling, you won’t buy a book that offends your sensibilities. If your literacy levels are low, you probably won’t notice and you might buy the book and enjoy it anyway.

So what? Surely it’s better for someone with low literacy levels to be reading something than reading nothing? If a story is very good but the spelling and grammar are bad, then it isn’t too late to do something about it, when the book is still only in electronic format. Self-published ebooks are quite often works in progress, in this respect, as I’ve argued before.

In lowering the barriers to book publishing we are also lowering the barriers to book purchasing and opening up the written word to people who might have been too intimidated to walk through the doors of a library or a bookshop. It’s never too late to discover a love of reading. I agree with Kent: the availability of books in electronic form can only be a good thing for readers and for authors of all calibres.

Advantages of self-publishing: perpetual beta

02 Wednesday Jun 2010

Posted by in Editing, Indie writing, Writing

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Word count

I can’t tell how many revisions of TR&TR I’ve uploaded to Smashwords since last October, but the number is probably going to be similar to the number of revisions on Scribd, which stands at 37. This is one of the biggest advantages of solely publishing in electronic form: it is easy to amend the text. Usually the revisions are minor ones: correcting typos; sorting out the annoying mixture of straight quotes and smart quotes; adding navigation to meet Amazon’s requirements and so on. Other times, the revisions have involved adding new scenes to the story. There are around 2,500 more words in the book now than there were in September 2009 when I first thought I’d finished it!

I’m intermittently working on a sequel to TR&TR. Having the first book in a fluid form means that I can go back and ‘seed’ it with things that might turn out to be significant in the second. I haven’t done a lot of that yet, but it is great to have that option and not to have the first book frozen in time already.

The main disadvantage that I can see is the inability to ever completely ‘let go’. But as it took 24 years to finally get the story into this form, perhaps it isn’t surprising that I’m not quite ready to say goodbye to it yet.

Advantages of self-editing: swearing

28 Friday May 2010

Posted by in Editing, Indie writing

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In my last post I was talking about how not all self-editing is bad. In this one, I’m considering the positive side of being an independent author who is free of the constraints of a publisher. My feeling is that once writers have a publisher, they are so thrilled to be being ‘properly’ published that they are likely to go along with anything their editors suggest. Certainly on their first books, anyway. I imagine it’s different once you’ve got some clout to your name.

As a self-published, independent author you don’t have that pressure to conform to the publisher’s point of view. Which could be a bad thing, of course. I prefer to think of it as liberating. So in my book, aimed at anyone over 11, there are swear words. In fact the very first sentence contains what I’d think of as moderate swearing (from a British point of view) and the first chapter holds one strong swear word. Not because I’m a big fan of swearing, but because they were important to the progress of the plot. I’m fairly sure that an editor would want to take the stronger word out, given that my book would be likely to be read by 11 year olds. I’d battle very hard against such a decision – although I suspect that I’d roll over and cave in, for the reason given above.

I have close personal experience of this particular age group and I know that the inclusion of these words wouldn’t be a problem for them at all (have you heard a conversation between 11 year-olds lately?). Of course, it might be a problem for their parents but in the context of this particular story there’s usually an unfortunate consequence to any act of swearing. I hope this would provide a hint that it’s not the best course of action.

For now, then, I’m revelling in the freedom to include words that a mainstream publisher might think are inappropriate for some of my target audience. A distinct advantage of being my own editor, I’d say.

Self-publishing and poor editing

26 Wednesday May 2010

Posted by in Editing, Indie writing, Reviews

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One thing I seem to read a lot, in the context of self-published books, is that they suffer from poor editing. It seems to be generally assumed that indie writers are not capable of writing well and paying attention to their grammar and spelling. Rich Adin’s An American Editor post from a couple of months ago is a prime example. He doesn’t say that all self-published ebooks suffer in this area, only that they are likely to.

It’s not always the case: in a later post, Rich recommends the ‘Promises to Keep’ quartet by Shayne Parkinson as a well-written self-published series of books. On his recommendation, I’ve read Sentence of Marriage, the first, and would agree, it’s a great story, well-written, and I didn’t notice any spelling or grammatical errors. There are clearly exceptions to the generalisation that self-published=poorly-edited.

If you look at the top ten Smashwords (non-adult) titles (in terms of downloads), you’ll notice that Sentence of Marriage is in the top five. In the top two if you discount the Smashwords-specific books. It is highly-rated there, too, with ten reviews, each giving it maximum marks.

Perhaps we’re going to find a future where the best of self-published books will end up at the top of charts like Smashwords’, as people recommend them in the way that An American Editor has done for Shayne’s work. Then we will be able to start using sites like that more confidently, as a way of filtering out the dreadful.

Or is this wishful thinking?