One good reason for traditional publishing

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

No such link on my kindle page, and I bought my own book so my update should be showing at least.

I do not have a Kindle, only the Kindle app, maybe that makes a difference?

[HarryT]

This is what I see:

[GeckoFriend]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

I do not have a Kindle, only the Kindle app, maybe that makes a difference?

Makes no difference; I use only Kindle for PC and currently have 81 updates available, all for free books.

[kennyc]

I'm not seeing anything like either...

....oh wait I do see one on "The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway"...

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Definitely not my experience. The mindset of many self-published authors is still, alas, "I don't need the services of a professional editor". Big, BIG mistake. Authors who don't need editors are as rare as hens' teeth. I'm not saying that traditionally-published books don't contain errors - of course they do - but far, far fewer (in my experience) than many self-published books.

It's proof readers the tradpubs have killed off, they still use copy-editors. There's a bit of a skills overlap, but a copy-editor will never catch things a decent proof reader would.

Not sure what sort of books you're reading, but I followed a couple of writers from selfpub to tradpub (and back to selfpub again in one case) and there were a lot more mistakes in the tradpubs.

[VydorScope]

Yeah, I am just not seeing that on my kindle page. odd.

[frahse]

Maybe we should start putting out "erratas" for eBooks. They could combine with the version and change the text.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by frahse

Maybe we should start putting out "erratas" for eBooks. They could combine with the version and change the text.

Sure. Why not?

Clive Barker's publisher from Weaveworld put one out.



Don

[crich70]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

gmw, my understand of POD (print on demand) publications by self-publishing authors is that they are easily revised.

Your post suggests to me that you have the old mindset that once a book goes to the printer, that's it until the second edition comes out.

But in the new reality, you are free to upgrade the versions of your book as often as you like.

Yep. Some of the books I've bought through Smashwords are like that. Wesley Allison has done some 7 edits of "His Robot Wife" since it's original posting presumably to clear up mistakes that were missed or conversion problems from Smashwords Meatgrinder and it was originally published in Feb. of 2011. He couldn't have done that with traditional publishing I imagine. There would have been several print runs probably before he was able to get any corrections made. And traditional publishing wasn't and isn't always free of mistakes either. Just look at the history of publication for Lord of the Rings if you want an example. Plenty of errors have popped up time and again and even crossed the bridge into the ebook version I understand.

[gmw]

I've left room for the possibility of edits (this first release is marked inside as "Edition 1.0 (Nov 2012)", with the intention that typos will get point and date updates as needed).

However I opted to avoid the Smashwords meat-grinder and create my own epub (it is going to be automatically converted to mobi, but I've tested that process here using the Amazon Kindle Previewer, and it appears to come out fine). Since I chose to use BookBaby for distribution it means that updates are going to cost me (hopefully not too much).

Print on demand is more problematic. It definitely costs, and it's not as though I can afford to send those people that have already purchased a copy an updated edition. I did consider the option I've read about here (delaying print until e-books have been out for a while and the worst errors found), but e-readers are not so wide-spread among the people that I know here in Australia, so print is likely to be important for my word-of-mouth sales (as opposed to word-of-internet sales). Hence POD was a higher priority to me that perhaps for some others here.

I would also add that the idea that "I can fix it later" is not really one that I think self-publishers should adopt as an easy way out - it won't do much for our reputation. Yes there are probably going to be some errors, and yes it's great we can fix them later, but it is still best if the first editions are of as high quality as we can manage.

(I'm not saying that the previous posts were suggesting otherwise, but I am saying that we need to be careful how we state such things. Quality is one of those things always brought up in support of traditional publishing, it doesn't help if we are seen to be adopting a "let the (paying) readers fix it for us" approach to publishing.)

And, of course, having opened my mouth about my quality expectations, I am now feeling that much more pressure about whether I have done well enough by my own standards.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by crich70

Wesley Allison has done some 7 edits of "His Robot Wife" since it's original posting presumably to clear up mistakes that were missed or conversion problems from Smashwords Meatgrinder and it was originally published in Feb. of 2011. He couldn't have done that with traditional publishing I imagine.

Perhaps those mistakes wouldn't have been there in the first place if he'd properly edited and proofed his book before he published it.

[avantman42]

Originally Posted by gmw

I would also add that the idea that "I can fix it later" is not really one that I think self-publishers should adopt as an easy way out - it won't do much for our reputation. Yes there are probably going to be some errors, and yes it's great we can fix them later, but it is still best if the first editions are of as high quality as we can manage.

I completely agree. Being able to fix errors is great (and they will happen, even with good editing and proofing - editors and proofreaders are human too!), but it should be used as a last resort. Much, much better not to have errors in the first place.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I'm not seeing anything like either...

....oh wait I do see one on "The Complete Short Stories of Earnest Hemingway"...

Is Earnest a different author than Ernest? Or was Hemingway simply earnest when he wrote his short stories?

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

It's proof readers the tradpubs have killed off, they still use copy-editors.

They are using something but true copyeditors rarely. I often get calls from publishers asking me to "copyedit" a book and then they send me a list of what they want me to do and not do. When you get through the list, what they want is something quite distinct from copyediting, perhaps a bastardization of proofreading and copyediting.

But the real problem is less what they want than what they are willing to pay and whom they are willing to hire to do the work.

The pay scale is based on the lowest price the publisher would pay if the publisher put the book out for bid on the Internet and accepted bids from all interested persons. It wasn't so long ago that one publisher wanted an American who had multiple years of experience copyediting medical texts, an advanced degree, able to pass a copyediting test, demonstrable knowledge and expertise in a particular style, and several other "minimum" requirements, at the great pay rate of 75 cents per page. Based on the standard throughput for medical copyediting of 4 to 6 pages an hour, the publisher was offering an hourly rate of $3.00 to $4.50, depending on how fast you could edit.

One of the editor's responsibilities was to verify drug dosages, that is, that the dosage given in the manuscript was within the FDA-approved range. I surely would want to trust that kind of work to someone earning less than half of minimum wage; wouldn't you?

I have been told on several projects to not make any changes to anything an author has written except for obvious misspellings. The publisher called that copyediting.

My point is that it is not enough to say that publishers are hiring copyeditors. There must be an understanding of what the parameters are of the work they are hired to do and the pay they are offered to do that work.

[rhadin]

One more thing I would like to note. I am currently reading the Mike Shepherd Kris Longknife series, which is in many ways a knockoff of the David Weber Honor Harrington series. The Shepherd books are published by Ace, a traditional publisher. It is pretty clear to me that neither the author nor the publisher spent any money on editing, or if they did hire editors, they went the least-expensive route and probably instructed the editor to make no changes.

It is not that the books are unreadable; they are quite readable. The problem is that they require a reader who understands language. Not only are there numerous homophone errors (sheer when shear was meant; there when their was meant; you're when your was meant; etc.) but there are sudden jumps in logic that require the reader to flip back pages to see how the author morphed the character to the current dialog/position.

These are not new books. They are from the early 2000s. What they are is symptomatic of what all publishers -- traditional and self -- are doing, which is trying to save a few dollars by skimping on the "invisible" or "too late" services. Editing is both of those in that good/bad editing isn't discovered until after a book is purchased and read, by which time it is often too late to return the book (or in the case of ebooks, impossible to do so), because most people buy a book and add it to their to-be-read pile rather than immediately tackle it.