Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack Torrance
As much as some people will call a misspelled word, a missing comma or an occasional fragmented sentence the end of the world, they are not.
I have yet to read a book without errors, and I am hardly OCD on the subject. I'm not talking about random indie writers but national bestsellers.
Personally, when I'm reading a book, involved in the story and characters then an error is very, very easy to overlook. Write the story, get it down on paper and clean it up afterwards. Get someone else to look at when your done, as it's almost impossible to catch your own errors.
Something I recall reading a few years ago was that if a car came of the assembly line being 99.99% perfect there would still be 10 things wrong with it. So just write your story, if its good, it will be good typos and all.
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I think you mistake my point. I have zero issues with anyone just sitting down and getting "it all out there." I have fewer issues with the occasional typo, grammar mistake, etc. Your point:
Quote:
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Personally, when I'm reading a book, involved in the story and characters then an error is very, very easy to overlook.
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...is actually
my point. If one is
involved in the story, fictive or otherwise, those things blow past our inner editor and outer eyeballs, and
we don't care. But that that means is that the author had the good sense to either be a fine storyteller, or at least get out of the way, through the craftsmanship of telling the story
well enough so as to make us not see those things. And to do that, impedimenta must be dealt with. That includes the vast bulk of typos, horrible homonym howlers, painful sentence structure, so on and so forth.
I, for one, can't bring myself to buy a book with a dreadful description (nowadays,
constantly, annoyingly and frustratingly misnamed a "blurb") or "wince-y" mistakes in the first page of the LITB. I can't do it. It's like this: with so many books to choose from, why
deliberately choose one that will inflict pain? If an author cares so little for my opinion that they'll put up dreck in the first 1300 words, then I can't be bothered--EITHER. I expect the author to at LEAST put as much effort into cleaning up the damned thing as I will put into reading it. It's a matter of respect for your PAYING audience.
If the writer doesn't want to do that work, fine, put it up on Scribd or Wattpad or SW for free. Then I shan't care. But as in all other things, when it comes to "you pays your money, you takes your chances," I'm only willing to take chances, on PAID-FOR writing, that at least looks like someone gave a crap.
The following contains my RANT about Indy publishers who think that their education should be funded by my pennies; feel cheerfully free to ignore:
Spoiler:
Here's the thing: I have zero patience for the "but I'm just learning..." whine/argument. Sure. I get that. But can any of you imagine what would happen if I gave an utterly unusable, crappy, mis-built eBook to my clients, and said, "oh, gosh, Janie Doe was just learning to make eBooks, give us a chance, she'll be better on your NEXT paying job?" Right. Like THAT would ever happen. Not if I wanted to stay in business for more than two weeks.
You need to learn? GREAT. That's what critique groups and writing groups and writing courses are for. That's not what MY nickel is for. That's the vast difference between buying books today, post-gatekeepers, and "before," when gatekeepers still ruled access. A blatant and blithe and instant-gratification disregard for the much-vaunted 10,000 hours. And I'm not appreciative of the blithe disregard for my pocketbook, either.
Writers writing for pay have to get over the whole "but I'm an ARTISTE" thing. That's fine if you have an agent and a publisher. But once you cross that line, and you're all three, then it's simply a BUSINESS. And like the rest of we poor working slobs, you gotta deliver on what you've said you're selling.
</rant>
Hitch