Quote:
Originally Posted by Moejoe
You're right, it won't be the author alone, it will be the community that does this. We're already seeing proofreading as a crowdsourced publishing venture through Bookoven.com (with more community driven options to come). . . . Design, proofreading, editing, all the traditional avenues of publishing are slowly, but surely, passing over into the hands of on-line communities.
|
I wonder, however, about the quality of the community work on average. (Please -- as with everything else, there will always be some excellent, high-quality work as well as exceedingly poor, very-low-quality work. But these tend to be the extremes to which most work does not go.)
I wonder because I daily see the difference between good-quality editing and poor-mediocre editing and when I talk to some of the editors of the poor-mediocre work, I discover that the following characteristics describe the editors: (a) low paid to volunteer, (b) American English is not their native language, (c) became editors because they found some errors in a book they bought and thus figured they could do the job, and (d) received little or no editorial training/education.
Many great author's books became memorable because they were well edited by highly skilled, well-qualified editors.
Community skills may matter less in fiction but are of great concern in nonfiction.