Baffled crows and book #21

[thistle_chaser]

165 icons and not a single bird one! I guess a dinosaur with feathers is nearly close enough.

I've been hoping for a bigger bird to come to my bird feeder, maybe a blue jay. I should have been careful what I wished for!

Comments

[thistle_chaser]

I'd hope they'd get an unpaid editor to look it over, for just that reason! Sort of like people use beta readers for fanfic. It's so hard to see errors in your own writing.

It's sad to hear that the ones left that they use aren't good (but not surprising, I find errors in books on a regular basis).

Unfortunately it's not just the world of fiction that's lacking in editors. I'm a tech writer for a multimillion dollar software company. We have no editors. We write, check it ourselves, run spellchecker, and publish it. It's a money thing, too.

[thistle_chaser]

Oh! No, I don't mean a professional doing it for free. I mean getting a nonprofessional (or even better, multiple nonprofessionals) to do a read-through.

I'm basing this off loupnoir's experiences. (She's the only other person who has written a self-published book that I enjoyed.) Once she's done writing, she sends it off to a reader (readers? I can't recall), to have them check it over.

Is that as good as a professional editor? Unlikely, but it's still better than nothing.

[thistle_chaser]

For sure. I enjoy editing more than writing, but I miss things as well, both in my own writing as well as when reading someone else's.

[loupnoir]

I've been very lucky in that I have friends with very good grammar, punctuation, and spelling skills, plus they give feedback. If you wait a few months, read a lot of other things that you haven't written, when you go back to read your MSS, it's much easier to find problems. Of course, that means waiting and that seems to be a lost art.

Most of the self-published books I've picked up read like they were written in a rush, much like a lot of fan fiction. Self-publishing places make it so very easy these days. Really, the hardest part is getting your document massaged to fit their template. There are cover-generators on the web, too. And, if someone finds a problem with your work and notifies you, with Amazon at least, you can just re-edit and reload, without generating a new edition. I know one woman who's been using her readers as editors.

Seems like cheating to me.

[thistle_chaser]

And, if someone finds a problem with your work and notifies you, with Amazon at least, you can just re-edit and reload, without generating a new edition.

Timing. I just got an email about the book I'm currently reading.

An updated version of your past Kindle purchase of Zoo (The Enclosure Chronicles) by Tara Elizabeth is now available.

The updated version contains the following changes:

Typos have been corrected.
Significant editorial changes have been made.

You can get the updated version of this book by going to Manage Your Kindle...

Agreed that it's cheating. I'm glad they care, but I'd rather the errors be caught before I buy it, not after.