Quote:
Originally Posted by ficbot
This attitude bothers me. If you view your writing as a hobby and an art, fine. But then, don't expect to earn a living at it. If you expect to earn a living at it because it's a business, then just like any other job, there will be vital things you must do which you may not like. I am a teacher, I am good at it and that is my job. I dislike playground duty, am not good at it, and resent spending time on it when I could be doing teaching stuff, but it's part of the job so I do it. Every job has things like this.
To reiterate one more time, everyone seems to think I am expecting authors to proof-read for formatting mistakes in multiple e-versions. I am not not. I am expecting authors to proofread for CONTENT mistakes in the actual story, like Jimmy being called Jimmie and things like this. That is a very different thing, and imho that IS the author's 'job' certainly if he is charging people money for the book.
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Actually? The content mistake you use as an example is a classic example of what the copy editor's job is for -- spotting bloopers that whizzed right past the author's eyeballs (because they look at the page and see what they're expecting to see, not what's actually there).
Just as looking for typos in the page is the job of the proofreader.
This isn't to say that professional authors don't do both jobs themselves -- but Torvald's Law applies to books as well as software: "with enough different pairs of eyeballs, all bugs are transparent".
Finally: I speak as one who earns a living by writing fiction. The only way to do this is to concentrate on the
writing and -- assuming you're with a major publisher -- trust the professionals who take your manuscript and turn it into a book to do their job properly. Otherwise there aren't enough hours in the day ...