Readers/Writers

[patrickt]

Readers and writers are obviously part of a symbiotic relationship but it isn't without bumps. I was reading and the author said, "He immigrated out of China...." I'm thinking, "Wrong, wrong word." One immigrates to but emigrates from. Should I write and tell him? How many gotchas can an author accept before killing someone?

[Penforhire]

I contact authors to correct things only when I like what they otherwise have to offer. I e-mailed Robert Ludlum about a late model convertible car he used that never existed and calling a particular revolver a pistol.

[crich70]

It's possible the author got immigrate vs emigrate wrong in part because we tend to call people immigrants from (insert country). I imagine few caught the error since apparently even the editor didn't catch it. Which isn't to say it's not an error, just that even the editor missed it somehow.

[susan_cassidy]

A revolver is a pistol. Perhaps you meant to say a certain pistol was called a revolver when it was a semi-automatic, or similar?

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

A revolver is a pistol. Perhaps you meant to say a certain pistol was called a revolver when it was a semi-automatic, or similar?

Not true. Both are handguns, but a revolver is not a pistol. A pistol is a handgun with a chamber that is integral with the barrel, where as a revolver the chamber is separate from the barrel.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

Not true. Both are handguns, but a revolver is not a pistol. A pistol is a handgun with a chamber that is integral with the barrel, where as a revolver the chamber is separate from the barrel.

And of course I imagine it's called a revolver because the cylinder into which the bullets are loaded revolves to bring the next chamber up in line with the barrel so the firing pin can be used to send the bullet down the barrel. A pistol on the other hand has a clip that is loaded into the handle in which the bullets are placed.

[starrigger]

Speaking as a writer, I'm happy to receive corrections when I've gotten something wrong, as long as the information comes in the form of a constructive suggestion, and the sender gives some indication of appreciation of the work in general. (Well, happy might be an exaggeration. Grateful, perhaps.)

On the day my Battlestar novel was published, I got an email from a reader informing me that I'd misread the nickname on the side of William Adama's old Viper. It wasn't Husher, it was Husker. (My only source of information on this was a shot from the DVD of the miniseries, and there was exactly one frame that clearly showed the correct spelling.) Still, the correspondent was right, and we got it fixed for the paperback. Now that I think about it, I don't know if it was corrected in the ebook or not.

More recently, someone sent me a short list of typos in the ebook of Sunborn. That was very helpful, and caught some things I'd missed, the copy editor had missed, and the proofreader had missed. (The list also included some suggested copy edits, and that was less useful.) In fact, Tor recently uploaded a corrected version of that ebook, fixing those typos and also including a new afterword.

So yes, if it's done tactfully, sending a correction may be a gesture the author will appreciate. (In my younger days, I sent an author a correction, and did not do it tactfully. That was a mistake I did not repeat.)

[mr ploppy]

Maybe it's my lack of tact, but I get quite a mixed reaction to lists of mistakes. I'm not going to gush praise at someone for selling me a faulty product, but I don't make a big deal about it either.

What I don't understand is why they don't bother fixing them. I'm only a hobby writer, but I would want anything I wrote to be as near perfect as possible. To have a list of mistakes and then not do anything with them makes me think I'm probably the 50th person to point those mistakes out, and I could have had a better reading experience if the writer wasn't so lazy.

These are all indie or small press writers, BTW.

[neilmarr]

That slip wouldn't have got by a good editor, Patrick. Maybe the author didn't have one. It's your right to write, and to the author's advantage to boot. Best wishes. Neil

[S Livingston]

Tell him, otherwise he may never know.

[Assassin]

I believe we have to take into account the status of the writer when expecting perfection. A beginning indie writer should be cut some slack until they have attained some measure of success. The cost of cover images, professional editing, paper and ink (I tire of looking at the computer screen and do my editing in an easy chair with red pen and paper) can run several hundred dollars per book. Until they generate sales equal to the investment required I accept their flaws as part of the growing process. For myself, when I earn more than I spend while writing I'll consider hiring a professional editor. Additionally, with Smashwords alone publishing over 6,000 books a month some of these works are going to be dogs and will never be successful commercially.

[J. Strnad]

I appreciate it. Shows that the reader is paying attention and cares. It would take some major mistakes, though, to get me to delist my book, change it, and resubmit.

[DuskyRose]

Originally Posted by Assassin

I believe we have to take into account the status of the writer when expecting perfection. A beginning indie writer should be cut some slack until they have attained some measure of success.

I disagree.

Any author that wants to perfect their craft should be open to having their mistakes pointed out at any time. Everyone makes them. Things get missed. Writers need to learn that early, and do their best not to continue to make the same mistakes over and over.

I've been reading, and doing a small bit of writing, in fanfic for years. I've found the better writers, those that produce' classic' stories in their fandom, never stop learning nor taking criticism. And they didn't shy away from it when they first started.

Those writers that fail in fanfic, (which means posting their stories with little response, few reviews, and in the end no readers, in a world where their only 'pay' is a LOC or "Letter of Comment") usually do so because their writing is poor and they're closed to feedback.

(The worst ones are even closed to self-help. "Not Beta'd" or "Not spell-checked" warnings from the author themselves the first sign of disaster in the works. So much easier to skip those than to care what's been written beyond that warning.)

The poor writers may continue to produce, but they don't get better if they don't look for ways to improve. When they don't listen, they just become part of the mass of writers out there people consistently pass by because they're just not very good.

I think any author out there will only find an advantage to growing a thick skin early, listening to their readers, know that they'll make mistakes, and appreciate the fact that someone like their stuff enough to let them know that they found problems. And then take steps to implement what they've learned.

If they don't, they may find they never achieve success. They just become another flawed writer among millions of others that never get read.

There's too much competition out there not to do every single thing they can to produce their best work.

[Hellmark]

The way I look at it is if it is an indie author, I know they cannot afford an editor, so we the readers can act as an editor for them, helping them improve their works. I mean, if I like someone's writing, I only want to see it get better, right?

If it is someone with an editor, I still point it out, because it was stuff that should have been caught. Me and my girlfriend were recently talking about this in relation to continuity, comparing book series to comics. The Southern Vampire Mysteries (Sookie Stackhouse books) are making a lot of money, more than enough to have good editors and continuity managers, yet there are quite a few problems in them. I guess I hope that if enough people point out problems in books that have no excuse, future releases will have more attention paid to making them better.

[Penforhire]

Hellmark was spot-on about the difference between pistols and revolvers. Don't call a S&W model 29 a revolver. You will fail to make Dirty Harry's day.

Crich, to go one more step, "clip" is an incorrect term for magazine that drives many firearm enthusiasts crazy. On the other hand, I find its usage so common I do not stumble over it or fire off angry e-mails. Except this one.