|
I am an indie author partly out of inclination and partly out of necessity. I like the idea of being free to produce work on my own schedule. I also recognize that the odds of an unknown author being picked up by the regular publishing world is slim and none.
That said, I am slowly gaining a sense of the work that is required if you take the craft of writing seriously. To be quite honest about it, my novel had 99,000 words, of which a certain small percentage were inevitably misspelled. Finding every single typo has been an exhaustive undertaking, one that continued even after initial publication.
I feel like I have corrected 99.9% of the errors within the first month of publication, but certainly the purchaser's of the first couple of e-book versions had to put up with errors that later readers won't. The only defense I can offer is a willingness to keep digging and correcting errors in an effort to produce as near perfect a book as I can.
Over the long span of time ahead, I think the merits of the book -- whatever they might be -- will overcome the initial lapses in quality control. Certainly I will be much more careful the second time around. Meanwhile, I am digging into my old grammar books to see if I can't wrestle this comma thing to the ground.
|