Quote:
Originally Posted by Blossom
What I mean by Proofread is I bought a few blacklist titles that had typically scan errors in it like 1 instead of 1 and / instead of ! that sort of thing. A simple regex in Word can help you scan for those type of mistakes and fix them.
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I understand your point, but I don't simply mean scan errors and substitutions. I've spent half a decade pointing them out as an editor for various imprints and far longer discovering them as a writer reading through my own galleys (or "blues"). What I'm referring to are errors that an actual person would be needed to point out.
Davis's Proust contains sentences that forget what they're talking about half-way through, and all because a dangling modifier has been introduced by a homonym, or a conjunction has been substituted for a visually similar pronoun (
when instead of
them), or any number of things might have happened which are more difficult to find than, say,
arid instead of
and. This is especially annoying when the text is a translation.
And when a book is less prestigious or marketable than any I've mentioned, it can receive even less attention at the editing stage.
That's why a small press with a reasonably conscientious staff is sometimes more likely to produce a readable book than a major publisher. I suspect that a really diligent indie author might do a better job of creating a readable ebook than a major utilizing an impersonal conversion process. Official publication is not necessarily the most painstaking.
Here's what I'd like to see:
Just as we have systems set in place for self-publishing and marketplaces for selling self-published books, so I'd like to see an exchange program created (with user ratings!) for writers to proofread, make suggestions and otherwise improve each other's work before self-publication. This could also be done by volunteers with no interest in being published at all, but I'm not certain what their incentive would be other than receiving abject gratitude.
You could then create an official agreed-upon seal for books which had undergone that process, and the seal would then be verified and advertised in particular marketplaces whenever a self-published ebook had been throroughly checked and reviewed through that method.
I myself am the co-editor of a web magazine that has published original writing by people like William Burroughs (posthumously) and Luc Sante, and I'm maddened by mistakes that can't be corrected due to scheduling and formatting constraints. In an ideal world, I'd have enough staff to ensure the magazine's copy was perfect and still be allowed enough time to write fiction, criticism and poetry (my first priority).
Recently, a friend's book was scheduled to be published under an art gallery imprint. I had to read the book through, write a report, and look for deeper editing errors (place-name consistency, superfluous language, solecisms, unresolved threads, etc.). All that hard work would have made more sense if devoting it to his book had meant he'd be doing the same for mine.