Do you prefer a book not be published rather than published without proper editing?

[darryl]

This question has been touched upon in other threads, but I think is worth a thread of its own. I posted in another thread discussing selecting self-published books:

I do come across books which whilst readable and far from appalling could benefit substantially from the attentions of a good editor. This is frustrating. At the end of the book I am left with the feeling that it was good but could have been great. I console myself with the thought that under the tradpub model I would never have had the pleasure of reading the book at all, a far worse evil.

A number of people have indicated they agree with me on this, but I know at least some do not. Not long after posting the above I came across what I regard as a good example. The book concerned is "Hell Calling" by Enrique Laso. It retails on Amazon US for the princely sum of $1.00. I borrowed the ebook from a library, but had I been purchasing the low price would have prompted me to dig a little deeper.

The book is published by Babelcube, a publisher who introduces authors to tranlators and boasts:

Babelcube will enable you to convert the book into the different file formats for the various sales channels, publish it, and update things like pricing. Babelcube will distribute your book to all its channels that support the book’s language. Babelcube’s 300+ sales channel include the global online retailers, such as Amazon and Apple, and local retailers specializing in regions. You can request assistance from the translator(s), as desired.

Now of course the English book is the product of a collaboration between the author and a translator. To me the translation seems to be technically competent, but though it is impossible to be completely sure, I don't think the books problems stem mainly from the translation.

To me the English version reads more like fan fiction than a professionally published novel. The author's writing does show promise and he certainly seems to have some talent, and the basic idea behind the book is a good one. The author tells the story in very short scenes, a technique which initially seemed to be effective but soon grew tiresome. These passages sometimes took great leaps ahead in the plot, leaving part of the story untold. The book in some ways reads more like an outline than a completed novel. Character development was minimal and unrealistic. But this is not the place for a review of the book.

Much of my enjoyment of a promising plot was simply not realised. Yet the writing was not terrible. It just left me with a feeling of frustration that it could have been so much better. But when I posed myself the question as to whether I would rather not have read the book at all, I had to answer no, even with all of its flaws. I have little doubt that had the book been picked up by a traditional publisher it would have undergone extensive editing and possibly more than one re-write, with the author learning from the experience and improving his writing, though he would effectively have lost his rights to his work and made less money.

I read the next book in the series as well, which I thought had all of the same flaws. This is sad. Yet the first book is proclaimed "An International Best Seller" and was adapted for Spanish Cinema. And the authors biography proclaims that he has won numerous literary competitions throughout his extensive literary career and has sold around 1,500,000 copies worldwide and been translated into 14 different languages.

So perhaps the problems with the English version are due to translation after all?

Comments?

[doubleshuffle]

You can look inside the Spanish original on Amazon. From a quick glance over the first page it seems that the English translation mirrors the sentence structure of the Spanish exactly.

[gmw]

Hmm... there is an awful lot buried in that opening post.

Looking at just the subject line my reaction was that "proper editing" is in the eye of the beholder. Many tend to think that proofreading is sufficient editing, but for a lot of books this is the least of their trouble. Ideally a book will see a structural editor at least once (very rare for Indy publishers), a copy editor and a proof reader. The full combination is, if you like, "proper editing".

But then your post moves on to translation and you move out of my experience. I expect that a poor translation can break a good story - but not necessarily so, witness The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas that we have been discussing for the book club. By modern standards the old Victorian era translation is not good, but evidently it has been good enough for the book to be popular for a very long time.

What you seem to be describing as problems sound like structural problems with the story, and it seems unlikely that translation (on its own) is to blame for that. But there may also be cultural differences that may mean a direct translation is simply not up to the task of getting the point and feel across in the new language. Stephen King describes it as a writers' ESP, but much of what he is talking about is a shared culture. I don't know how well his stories sell in translation, but I imagine it would take very talented translators to get it just right.

A lot of structural problems - getting the pacing right and so on - are things that improve with experience. How Indy writer/publishers generally get around the problem of not having a professional structural editor is to just keep trying until we get it right. (Actually, this is true of most traditionally published authors too, since tradpubs don't actually nurture new writers, or not until they've proven that they probably don't need it.)

So, while it may be tempting to answer your subject line with a simple "yes", the truth is that there is a lot a writer learns only by getting published. At some point you have to bite the bullet and say you've done as much as you can, gotten as much help as you can, it's time to publish and see what happens. ... Which is generally very little, in my experience.

[rhadin]

I would prefer that an unedited or poorly edited book not be published at all. I grant that I have a somewhat biased perspective in that I am a professional editor and have been editing books for more than 34 years. But it is because of that experience, and because I have spent hard-earned money on books that have turned out to be poorly edited or unedited, that I think as I do.

Poor/no editing leaves a confused reader and, depending on the book, can result in disaster. For example: My editing niche is medical tomes written by doctors for doctors. In a recent book I edited, the author called for a dosage of 25 grams, which would have killed the patient many times over. What the author really meant was micrograms. Absent editing, the book would have been published with 25 grams.

For pleasure reading, I like fantasy (among other genres). Not so long ago I read a fantasy novel that, I subsequently learned, was self-edited by the author, which had the hero as dark-haired, stocky, and short in early pages, and transformed as pages progressed to light-haired, slightly built, and medium height. That was typical of the book's problems. It wasn't even worth reading for free (and I eventually gave up).

Quality editing can be the difference between readable and unreadable.

[darryl]

@rhadin. Thanks for your insights from an editors perspective. I certainly agree that quality editing can make the difference between readable and unreadable. But think it can also make the difference between a book being merely readable and a book being something more.

@gmw. I agree. Proper editing is indeed subjective to at least some extent. And I think one of the beauties of self-publishing is that authors can, as you put it, do all they can, publish and learn their lessons afterwards. I know of both tradpub and indie authors who cringe at their earlier works. Which is one reason why I think that there are many books which are worthy of publication despite the fact that they could be vastly improved by editing.

@doubleshuffle. I speak and write a single language, English, and there are perhaps some people who would dispute even that statement. Whilst I still suspect that the problems with the story are structural, I can certainly see how a literal translation only slightly modified could. as gmw put it, break a good story.

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by darryl

Whilst I still suspect that the problems with the story are structural, I can certainly see how a literal translation only slightly modified could. as gmw put it, break a good story.

Oh, absolutely. I don't speak Spanish either, and it is completely possible that the Spanish is better than the English.

I was intrigued by your post because I once attended a lecture by the guy who translates Zafon into German. He spoke about the problems of translating Spanish to German, and one of his main points was that literary Spanish was usually much more flowery than German and had to be toned down to be palatable to German readers. That's why I wanted to see if something like that might have happened here, but it seems the Spanish is just as simple as the translation.

[Mivo]

I'm generally skeptical of the "Everyone is an author!" self-publishing wave, and my experience with unedited, self-published fiction has not been encouraging. The result is that I am unlikely to buy self-published works unless they are reissues from traditionally published writers.

To answer the question: I don't feel it's my place to tell an author whether or not they should put their unedited book into the wild. I wouldn't want to spend money or time on a piece of fiction that hasn't gone through a proper editing process, and I feel that it turns people like me off self-published works, but it's their book and they can do with it what they want.

If the unedited book is non-fiction and covers a niche subject that I'm interested in, I would be more willing to overlook the lack of proper editing, though if non-fiction is published by a reputable publisher, it adds to the credibility of the material (in other words, accuracy of information is more important to me than style and form, in this case).

As for translations: I think that the quality of the translation depends on whether the translator is a good writer herself. Literal translations are rarely impressive. I don't read much translated fiction anymore, but looking back, I distinctly recall two German translations that I felt were noticeably better and more memorable than the originals: the 1960s translation of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (the later translation from the late 1980s or 1990s was inferior), and at least the early books in Goodkind's Sword of Truth series.

[theducks]

The Author runs the risk of being added to my DNR list if the editing (or lack there of) interferes with the reading experience.

I have brands of products that I no longer buy because I got a Lemon (design or build) that was not corrected.

It is easy to get a new customer.
It is impossible to get a dissatisfied one back

[haertig]

Grammor, and spealling, & puntation, and other ... errors destract! from the reeding IHMO;

If I see to many of the above, I abandon the book. If the book reads like it was written by someone who has never written before, I abandon the book. I can certainly suspend my disbelief when reading, but if things get too preposterous, I abandon the book. If the author starts spewing out details about something they are obviously ignorant about - "I shot him in the chest and watched him fly back 20 feet" - I abandon the book. If the author gets preachy, even about some cause I might agree with, I abandon the book.

There are way too many good books out there to waste your time on something amateurish. This should make my answer to the initial question fairly obvious, "Don't publish poorly edited books".

[darryl]

I think we all have our thresholds, mostly different ones, as to the magnitude of the flaws that we are prepared to tolerate. No matter how good the story, it is not worth persevering if it is unreadable. In the example I gave I was prepared to overlook what I see as some serious deficiencies because the book was not unreadable and the plot was interesting. I would of course prefer that the book had been very well edited and translated. But in the end I am happy to have had the opportunity to read it as is rather than not have that opportunity at all.

I do strongly agree that there is so much choice out there that it is simply not worth persevering with a book you are not enjoying. I am much more prepared now to abandon reading a book I am not enjoying than I used to be.

[pendragginp]

It's interesting that I immediately reacted to this question not as a reader but as a writer, and I would definitely prefer that anything of mine not be published than be published without proper editing. And sadly, this can happen now with traditional publishing as well as with indie. Even if it's a short story or a non-fiction article it makes your soul curl up like a salted snail. As Wodehouse would say.

[evanhson357]

I have to agree with much that's already been said. Ideally you should never publish a book until it's as perfect as you can make it. But it's a good exercise for authors to edit their own work for a while. It's amazing what you can learn that way.

[Tarana]

I read the self-published version of The Martian by Andy Weir. I later read the edited version by Random House. I enjoyed the original story, but loved the edited version. The ending was so much improved too. The thing is, the book likely would never have seen a publisher if it hadn't been so popular self-published. So, yes, I do prefer the edited version, but I'd still read a self-published book if it interests me enough.

[darryl]

Interesting. I only read the self-published version. I may at some point read the Random House version on your recommendation.

[theducks]

I definitely DO NOT want to read the Hollywood version.