Quote:
Originally Posted by Tonycole
I mostly get my ebooks from sources such as Smashwords, and invariably they are full of typos.
Given that the prices are generally in the $2 area, I should perhaps not be too critical, but I feel strongly that any author who has any pride in his or her work should take the trouble to proof read their masterpiece carefully.
Am I wrong in this idea?
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Please don't dump unrelated URLs into conversation
. That's what people use signatures for.
I think there's actually a reasonable argument in favour of typos or other simple mistakes that produce non-dictionary words. Often the eye will skip over them without noticing. And naively running a spellchecker over something can produce even worse results. If there's a tradeoff between a laborious proof-reading of spelling and typing, v.s. honing word choices, grammar, and how well sentences flow, etc., I'd rather a budding author spent their finite time and enthusiasm on the latter.
I'd much prefer a brainfart like "we we" for "we were"... even something like "struggle to breath[e]"... than common incorrect usage, like "should of" (should've), or multiple long sentences in sore need of a comma or two.
Or to put it another way -- there's a fantasy with adult elements that's written as a serial online (read: blog), as a full-time job, where after several years the author still relies on commenters to correct multiple errors per post. Perhaps it's an unfair comparison, but it does work really well. I don't see why Smashwords doesn't encourage and support fixing of typos (or scannos in backlist material) by readers.