Just a few words about words about words

The knights paraded onto the tournament grounds riding magnificently comparisoned horses with their lances raised.  Once the competition began, the steeds would be given free reign, but for now they pranced in anticipation.  Sir George of Luxling, the only warrior out of the dozen on the field whom carries an unmarked shield, turns his red stallion in a tight circle until they are facing the lord's and ladies whom were seated under the royal canopy.

Lady Ashleigh sat near the end of the canopy between two older women wearing an emmerald green gown and silver crown.  She is the most beautiful woman Sir Luxling had ever seen, he immediately wondered who she was, what her name was, if she married or not.  Lowering his visor and planning how he would make the ladies acquaintance after the tournament, the red stallion snorted and pawed the dusty dirt.

If the preceding two paragraphs don't make your brain hurt, you could be a one-star self-published author -- or an editor at a small digital publisher.

In other words, just because your book was "edited" by someone other than yourself doesn't mean it's free of errors.  Errors of verb tense.  Errors of misplaced modifiers.  Errors of peerage titles.  Errors of pronoun case.  Errors of word usage.  Errors of missing words.  Errors of spelling/typing.  Errors of punctuation.

When a reviewer complains that a book needed to be edited, the author should not insist that the reviewer is wrong.  Just because someone edited the book doesn't mean it's free of errors.  Sadly, I've been looking at a lot of digital books that have been issued by well-known digital publishers, and the books are riddled with exactly the kind of errors illustrated and listed above.

The author whose name goes on the cover has to accept full and complete and ultimate responsibility for the quality of the product.  Shifting the blame doesn't correct the errors.

A word to the why's -- A rant with no links

So I was sitting there in the coffee shop this morning, composing another writing lesson, and a friend asked me why I was doing it.  She's not a writer, but her comment echoed an often-voiced sentiment from my days in RWA.

"Isn't that like training your competition?" she asked.

Well yes, and no.

Let me backtrack a bit.  During my dozen years or so of active RWA membership, I gave my share of time and energy to helping the unpublished become published.  I gave workshops.  I belonged to several critique groups in which I was the only published writer.  I judged manuscripts in contests open only to the unpublished.  I worked with several writers on their contest entries, finding the tiny flaws that might have kept them from winning, and two authors who followed my advice not only won Golden Heart awards but ended up selling those books to print publishers.

Could I have spent my time and energy more profitably on my own writing?  Probably.  But part of the business of writing is cultivating an audience and a market.  I believed wholeheartedly that by encouraging other writers I was creating good will with them, with their friends, with their eventual readers, and so on.  Call me naive and I won't disagree:  A few of the authors to whom I gave more than I should have ended up stabbing me in the back.  I won't name them; they know who they are.

But that never really diminished the teacher/helper in me.  Even though yes, I knew all along that in the day when print publishing was the only viable game in town, I was indeed training my competition, I still did it.  And most of the time I enjoyed it and took great satisfaction in seeing their triumphs.

As I wrote in an early blogpost, some of the authors whose manuscripts I judged did not take my advice and those books never sold.  Instead, they have ended up on Amazon (and probably elsewhere) as self-published e-books or as print-on-demand trade paperbacks.  They've sold a few copies, but that's about it.

My intention is not to give you the impression I think I'm an infallible judge or editor;  I know damn well I'm not.  As has been said often enough here and elsewhere, even the editors at the big traditional publishing houses make mistakes all the time, either passing up books that eventually become best sellers for another publisher or paying big bucks for and then promoting the hell out of duds.

But because of the major shift in the book industry to digital publishing the past few years, many books are coming on the market that would never have reached traditional publication.  The reasons these books failed to find publishers are numerous -- weak stories, bad writing, unlikable characters, whatever -- but they were always competition for those of us writers who weren't locked into secure and lucrative contracts.  We always had to take our chances with the rest of the manuscripts in the slush pile.  Having an agent or having even a minimal track record helped a little, but it didn't necessarily give us an advantage.  In fact, having a record of publishing with less than stellar sales numbers could be a distinct disadvantage.

So now we're all competing against each other on a sort of level playing field.  Why would I want to help my competition?

Well, because we're all up against another competitor, one who has a lot more clout than we do:  The Traditional NYC Publishing Houses.

The traditional houses have the editors, the proofreaders, the formatters, the artists.  They have EVERYTHING, and of course they extract a price for it.  Amazon pays 70% royalties, with no advance; a traditional publisher pays 10% royalties and maybe gives $2,500 advance.  Of course, traditional publishers charge readers $7.99 and up for a paperback, and there's often little to no discount for the digital edition.  The paperback can be traded or sold; the digital version can maybe be lent once -- unless of course the buyer wants to (illegally) strip the DRM and convert the digital file to something transferable.  A self-published e-book frequently runs $2.99 or less, and many can be picked up for free by the careful shopper.

The complaints from readers, as voiced in reviews, are that self-published books just don't measure up to the quality of traditionally published books (TPBs).  Stories are weaker, formatting for e-publication is often messed up, typographical errors abound, and on and on and on.  The mechanical problems of grammar, punctuation, spelling and so on are usually non-existent in TPBs simply because there are enough editors and others to go over the manuscript prior to publication.  If the SPA can't afford to have her book professionally edited and professionally proofread and professionally formatted, those errors are going to slip through.  And if she herself isn't a good enough writer, a good enough editor, a good enough proofreader, a good enough formatter, those errors are going to be numerous.

The big question, then, becomes whether or not the reader should be obligated to accept without complaint the lower quality on the self-published book.

Read that last sentence again:

The big question, then, becomes whether or not the reader should be obligated to accept without complaint the lower quality on the self-published book.

The authors who end up having public tantrums because someone dared to give their book a bad review are almost always self-published.  Just Google "author meltdown" if you don't already know enough about the subject.  And most of the meltdowns are precipitated by bad reviews.  One star on Amazon.  Criticism of anything about the book, whether it's the author's poor grammatical skills, a borrowed plotline, inaccurate research, whatevah.

And all too often these melting authors defend themselves by castigating the readers for not giving them and their books a pass because they're self-published and self-published books shouldn't be held to the same standards.

In other words, a reader who downloads a self-published book should not only expect lower quality but should accept it as is and not complain about any flaws.  The fact that the author wrote the book and had the courage to self-publish it (but not the courage to withstand any criticism at all) is supposed to be enough.  Bad grammar?  Pay no attention to it, Gentle Reader.  Misspellings galore?  Ignore them, Gentle Reader.  Can't make heads or tails of the syntax?  Pretend you can, Gentle Reader.

But the readers aren't so gentle, and they aren't buying -- in the figurative sense, more than the literal. 
Many readers and reviewers have adopted a "Do Not Read" attitude toward self-published books.  They've become so disgusted with the lack of quality assurance that they just won't waste their time on the SPBs at all any more.  These are readers who are knowledgeable enough to check the identity of the "publisher" on the book's listing before they buy it.  Or maybe they read the free sample to determine if there's even a chance that the rest of the book will be readable.  But more and more often there are comments on blogs and discussion boards and even on the Amazon discussions that readers simply will not bother with self-published books.

Obviously, if a well-known but traditionally published author moves into self-publishing, she has a certain amount of name recognition and can build on that.  But as publishers hold onto digital rights -- and pay diddly in royalties to the authors -- and authors are emotionally bullied into continuing with their traditional publishers, self-publishing becomes more and more of a wasteland.  That means even the traditionally published authors are losing out.

Yes, you traditionally published authors, the bad SPBs out there are hurting you. 

The only way to break the chains of literary serfdom is to make self-publishing truly viable.  That means the authors who are taking that route, myself included, absolutely must put out a quality product.  No more making excuses.  No more hiding behind lean budgets. 

And no more tantrums when a reader or reviewer points out "The book is garbage.  It's unreadable tripe.  The author can't spell, the heroine is a doormat and the hero is a dunce, and there were no zippers in Regency ballgowns."  Any author who engages in this sort of pathetic, infantile behavior is not worth of the title.  Go away.  Grow up.  You're not the "special snowflake" you think you are.  You're a fraud and a phony. 

No more paid shill reviews, no more friends and family and sock puppet reviews.  No more fan-girl attacks on the truth-tellers.  No more take-downs of legitimate websites, no "Stop the Bullies!" campaigns.  The people who are telling you your book is crap are only telling you what you already know:  If you're defending it on the basis that it shouldn't be compared to "quality" writing because self-publishing means it's of lesser quality, then you're admitting you know it's crap and should just smile and say to the reviewer, "I appreciate that you recognized my work for what I intended it to be. Thank  you so very much."  And then SHUT UP.

And that's why I'm offering my little free lessons on how to write.  Some writers may pay attention.  They'll have just the slightest bit of advantage over those who don't.  And if all of us build on that advantage, then maybe, just maybe, we can swing the royalty pendulum more our way.

Whether we sell it for $2.99 or $9.99 or give it away free, we need to make it the very very best we can.  We need to go back to the tried-and-true techniques of the critique group and critique partner, the qualified editor and proofreader, the professional cover art designer.  We need to hone our skills with grammar and syntax.  We need to make sure our digital books are as perfectly formatted as they can possibly be.  Merely uploading a Word .doc file isn't enough. 

So to answer my friend at the coffee shop, I'm doing this to help other writers because I firmly believe it helps me, too.

I can fix your words!

Oh, hell, why not?

As much as I whine and bitch and complain and rant about poorly written books, maybe I ought to make some money off it.

Proofreading -- all genres*, fiction, non-fiction; English only
Will correct spelling, usage, punctuation, grammatical errors.
Rate:  $2.00 (US) per 1,000 words as counted by MicroSoft Word, minimum charge $25.00

Line editing (including proofreading) -- romance (contemporary, historical, fantasy/paranormal), fantasy, mystery
Will correct sentence structure, recommend areas for revision, flag potential factural inaccuracies.
Rate:  $5.00 (US) per 1,000 words as counted by MicroSoft Word, minimum charge $100.00

Manuscript formatting for digital publication (without proofreading or line editing) -- all genres*, fiction, non-fiction; English only
Formatting of MSWord document without graphics for Amazon Kindle and/or Smashwords publication including TOC, appropriate front matter (copyright notice, licensing agreement, etc.)
Rate:  $100.00 up to 100,000 words; over 100,000 words, $100.00 plus $1.00 per 1,000 over 100,000.

Services do not include insertion of artwork or other graphics, design of cover art, or structural editing.

* No pornography; material deemed inappropriate/offensive may be returned uncorrected with full refund of any monies paid.

If interested, contact me through this blog.

I can't fix your story, but I can fix your manuscript.

New words, old words, different words -- Editing vs. Proofreading

The past couple of weeks I've been working on minor edits and revisions to one of my previously print published books with the intention of putting a digital version up on Amazon.  Because the current digital file was spliced together from a variety of sources, I knew it would have to be gone over with a fine-toothed comb to make sure everything was as clean as possible before I began the actual conversion and then publication.

It's a tedious process.  The story is familiar and I know what I want to have written, so it's easy to see what should be there instead of what is there. 

It's also a complex process, because editing is not the same thing as proofreading.  As I found out when talking to a friend about it the other night, not everyone understands that difference.

Proofreading is a very simple, uncontroversial task.  The proofreader goes through the manuscript carefully looking for typographical errors, word usage errors, punctuation errors, grammatical mistakes, and other mechanical errors (and sometimes, but not always, ambiguities).  The proofreader does not look for factual errors, internal inconsistencies, or plot holes.

Here's a hypothetical segment from a hypothetical novel:

"Your not going to wear that dress are you"? Caitlin asked in exaxperation.

"I'll wear whatever I want to wear.  It's my party, not your's so don't tell me what I can and can't wear to it."  her younger sister declaired.

The two girls faced each other across the expance of the bed upon which the garment in question was spread in all it's crimson glory.

"Your just jealous," Vanessa said, "Because Mama made you wear pink for you birthday ball."

The older girl leaned to her left and punked her sister with her elbow.

A proofreader will fix the you/your/you're/yours errors, correct the punctuation and spelling, and will maybe ask if that "punked" should have been either "punched" or "poked" instead.  But there's no guarantee on that last one, because "punked" is a real word and maybe that's what the author intended to use.

A proofreader probably will not ask the author, "If the girls are on opposite sides of the bed, how did Caitlin poke Vanessa?"

That's a task for an editor.

From what I can tell, most of the "editing" that's done on self-published digital novels these days is proofreading, not editing.  (And frankly, some of the proofreading doesn't appear to be top-notch either.)

What an editor -- a good one, that is -- will do is spot the structural and composition errors and help the author turn the sow's ear of a rough draft into a final silk purse.  An editor looks at the whole package of the novel; the proofreader deals with the minute details of individual words and rarely looks at anything larger than a sentence.

A good proofreader can clean up a novel, even a messy one, in a day or two.  And when she's done, she's done.  Proofreading does not require the author to make any major changes to her work.  She in fact has asked the proofreader to fix mistakes, and that's it.  The proofreader's service is to correct errors; her job is not to make suggestions that the author has the option of following or not following.  Maybe she charges $100 or $300, but when she completes the task, she hands the manuscript -- or digital file -- back to the author and that's it.  Her job is done.

An editor's job is far more complex and if done properly, editing is process that involves both the author and the editor in at least some back-and-forth exchange involving creative issues of story-building and story-telling.  These issues may be as minor as changing the spelling of a character's name so it's more recognizable to the reader or as major as altering the ending.

Here's another example, again a very hypothetical passage from a hypothetical novel:

Jessikah stood in the cabin's doorway and looked around.  She saw a plain room with a fireplace and some furniture.  It was empty.

She closed the door.  She wondered if the roof leaked.  She was already wet from the storm.  She hadn't intended to walk all the way from town and hadn't expected rain.

An editor might suggest to the author, "I'm not sure readers are going to be able to skim over that spelling for the heroine's name.  It's going to stop them, make them think too long about how to mentally pronounce it."  Maybe there are reasons for the odd spelling, or maybe not.  And that can be an easy thing to fix if the author decides to take the editor's advice, either by changing the spelling or by providing an explanation so the reader can recognize and "hear" the name.

But looking at that scene, the editor may also say, "Give me more description of the cabin.  How big is it?  What kind of furniture?  Is it warm or cold?  Why do you say it's empty when you've just said it has some furniture?  Do you mean no one was there, or is the 'empty' a kind of comparative term?  Why not have Jessikah/Jessica wonder about the roof in her own thoughts rather than narration?"

Now again, this is a tiny passage, and this hypothetical editor is focusing in on a very small section.  But assuming the author agrees with her editor, maybe the author rewrites the passage:

Jessica stood in the cabin's doorway and took in every detail of her surroundings.  The small space seemed larger than it really was because a crude table just large enough for one person to dine and a narrow bed in the corner comprised the only furnishings.  Ashes lay black and cold in the fireplace.  The very air smelled of damp and emptiness and abandonment.

She closed the door behind her, shutting out the storm.  With a nervous glance upward, she whispered, "Please don't leak, roof."  The last thing she needed after the long, unexpected walk from town was more water falling on her already soaked clothing. 

Editing, then, is something the editor does and then the author has to respond to and act.  The editor's job isn't the end of the process, the way the proofreader's is.

Here's another hypothetical example of how an editor works:

By the time they had loaded everything in the wagons, Melody ached everywhere.  She couldn't remember when she had felt so completely exhausted.  Back in Boston she had worked hard, scrubbing floors and toting water for the laundry and waiting on the various old ladies who had hired her.  Like old Mrs. Cleeford who added the task of caring for her miserable old cat to Melody's chores.  Melody hadn't liked cats since then.

And the editor adds a note regarding the highlighted section:  "Is this really necessary?  Nothing else in the book references Melody not liking cats. . . . or Mrs. Cleeford."

So sometimes an editor suggests that something be removed from the book.  This may be due to length restrictions -- which is more a concern for print publication than digital -- or because it just doesn't add anything to what may be an already rambling narrative.

The original version of one of my published books included a lengthy scene in which the heroine has a particularly vivid nightmare that seems to foretell events that unfold later on in the novel.  I felt it was a very well written scene and it depicted some of this character's fears at being in a situation over which she had virtually no control and which offered a lot of threats to her safety.  The book's editor, however, said the scene was too long and really didn't add anything to the story.  I was very reluctant to include that scene in the cuts that had to be made to reach a publishable word count.  As I realized later, however, I could convey the character's fears and even her apprehension that something terrible will happen in a few lines of dialogue with other characters, and thus leave the actual development of events for dramatic, on-stage action rather than duplicate what had already been portrayed in the dream or, far worse, relegate the on-stage action to a brief "everything happened exactly as she had dreamt in her nightmare." 

I was asked a few days ago why I spend time reading and evaluating other people's books.  My answer was, of course, that if I hope to sell my books in an increasingly crowded digital marketplace, I need to know what my competition is.  And then I have to figure out ways to give myself and my books a competitive edge.

Do I believe that good writing, solid story-telling, and clean formatting are enough of an edge in the digital marketplace?  The truth is, no, I don't.  It wasn't enough in the days of print-only, and it certainly isn't enough now.  Twenty years ago, no one was defending and/or dismissing "published" books that were so filled with grammatical errors that they were virtually unreadable, mainly because "published" books weren't filled with grammatical errors.  Now we have authors, their friends, their husbands, their mothers, posting glowing reviews of books that independent reviewers assess as so poorly written that the books are difficult to read.  How can any author who doesn't have a huge fan base or a publisher's promotional apparatus even hope to compete with that, short of doing the same?

I don't  know for sure.  Yet.