the tedium of editing
There are any number of publishers out there - both on demand and traditional - who will publish books without properly editing them. Oh, the product may look glossy, but it’s easy to tell when something hasn’t been properly edited:
- spelling and syntactical mistakes (OK, so that’s the easiest)
- inconsistency of the spelling of names. The most hilarious example I’ve come across was in a book I was reviewing for a magazine. Diana Paxson is a prominent figure in the US Asatru community. The author of the book managed to spell her name four different ways over about 200 pages.
- inconsistency in the treatment of foreign languages. This will show up by transliterating a character that does not exist in English in several different ways. Plus, of course, all those terrible foreign names!
- Explaining a concept after you’ve already referred to it once or twice.
- repeating yourself in a later chapter. At length.
- general lack of coherent development to the work
- failure to tie it all up properly
OK, so that all applies to non fiction, but fiction can be just as bad. In my neck of the woods, there’s always the problems of
- not giving the reader sufficient information to work out what’s going on (crime/thrillers), and
- breaking any rules you set in fantasy fiction with the wave of a magic wand. (Gods, I hate that!)
OK, that’s just the substance. Then we get on to style. Gee - how tedious can it get? Very!
Laid up with ‘flu, I have spent the time overhauling every stylesheet I use in Open Office, to ensure a complete consistency between the books I publish. Every publishing house has a ‘housestyle’ that includes things likes the preferred typefaces, the heading styles… and whether or not it’s one ot two spaces after a full stop. You may find this laughable, but I have had an all-out battle lasting weeks with a senior editor over that last one. My deputy (who had been around longer than I, and dealing with the senior editor far longer - I was the new kid on the block) told me it was a battle I had no hope of winning. Sod that, I thought. I scoured the internet for pundits to back up my argument that, in these days of proportional spacing, the whole thing was governed by the bloody computer, so it doesn’t matter what spaces one puts in as one has no control over the actual spacing that will result. Oh, I did win. :)
Anyway, the whole point of this is that I now have a damned spreadsheet that details all the settings on all the styles I use, including page set-ups. What a bore! However, it does mean I can ensure consistency of style.
I’ve also decided to be a style fascist. I loathe serif typefaces. I’ve given in up to now, but no more! I have decided to alter my books to my preferred sans-serif typeface. That also, as it happens, reduces the number of pages in each book. And, using a print-on-demand publisher, that affects revenue. in the right way. :D
So, the next problem is : ISBN or not ISBN? But that’s a whole other subject…
- spelling and syntactical mistakes (OK, so that’s the easiest)
- inconsistency of the spelling of names. The most hilarious example I’ve come across was in a book I was reviewing for a magazine. Diana Paxson is a prominent figure in the US Asatru community. The author of the book managed to spell her name four different ways over about 200 pages.
- inconsistency in the treatment of foreign languages. This will show up by transliterating a character that does not exist in English in several different ways. Plus, of course, all those terrible foreign names!
- Explaining a concept after you’ve already referred to it once or twice.
- repeating yourself in a later chapter. At length.
- general lack of coherent development to the work
- failure to tie it all up properly
OK, so that all applies to non fiction, but fiction can be just as bad. In my neck of the woods, there’s always the problems of
- not giving the reader sufficient information to work out what’s going on (crime/thrillers), and
- breaking any rules you set in fantasy fiction with the wave of a magic wand. (Gods, I hate that!)
OK, that’s just the substance. Then we get on to style. Gee - how tedious can it get? Very!
Laid up with ‘flu, I have spent the time overhauling every stylesheet I use in Open Office, to ensure a complete consistency between the books I publish. Every publishing house has a ‘housestyle’ that includes things likes the preferred typefaces, the heading styles… and whether or not it’s one ot two spaces after a full stop. You may find this laughable, but I have had an all-out battle lasting weeks with a senior editor over that last one. My deputy (who had been around longer than I, and dealing with the senior editor far longer - I was the new kid on the block) told me it was a battle I had no hope of winning. Sod that, I thought. I scoured the internet for pundits to back up my argument that, in these days of proportional spacing, the whole thing was governed by the bloody computer, so it doesn’t matter what spaces one puts in as one has no control over the actual spacing that will result. Oh, I did win. :)
Anyway, the whole point of this is that I now have a damned spreadsheet that details all the settings on all the styles I use, including page set-ups. What a bore! However, it does mean I can ensure consistency of style.
I’ve also decided to be a style fascist. I loathe serif typefaces. I’ve given in up to now, but no more! I have decided to alter my books to my preferred sans-serif typeface. That also, as it happens, reduces the number of pages in each book. And, using a print-on-demand publisher, that affects revenue. in the right way. :D
So, the next problem is : ISBN or not ISBN? But that’s a whole other subject…