Nitpicking: When Editing Goes Horribly Wrong

I'm sending a shoutout to my bestie Grace Draven this week, celebrating the long-anticipated release of THE IPPOS KING on Tuesday, October 6, 2020. I read an early copy and this book is amazing and wonderful and totally worth the wait. (I know her website still says September, but it really comes out Tuesday!) (Also, Grace might be a dear friend, but she became my friend because I read and loved her books. So, I'm biased, but in the best possible way. This is really is a wonderful book!)

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is  Nitpicking - venting about things or thinking about the value of attention to detail.

I want to tell you all a story.

Recently, a good friend self-published a book. This is not Grace, btw. (I also discussed the initial part of the story on my podcast on September 24.)

But this friend is an accomplished author - more than two-dozen traditionally published books, multiple appearances on the top bestseller lists, winner of top industry awards - and she knows what she's doing in writing a book. 

As a responsible self-publisher, she lined up an editor to proofread the book, scheduling them for two days to read an ~60K book. She'd also factored in a couple of other reads: one from her continuity editor and a couple of betas, including me. I read - and loved! - the book in about a day. I marked the very few typos I happened to spot and identified a few word-choice questions and one continuity error that could be fixed in five minutes. 

In other words, it was a really clean manuscript.

Or, it was, until the "proofreader" got a hold of it.

H.G. Wells is credited with saying "No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft." There's a lot of truth to this. It seems particularly true when the editor is also an author.

Unfortunately, the proofreader succumbed to this passion and began making vast changes to the book. When I say "vast," I'm not exaggerating. It was on the level of a deep-dive developmental edit. Scenes were rearranged. Sentences deleted and new sentences added. Her personal opinions added to change aspects she didn't approve of. 

Reader: this was not a proofread.

The resultant manuscript was in such terrible shape - with almost no time to sort it out - that my friend was reduced to stress tears multiple times. I was hugely upset on her behalf. So, I went to another proofreader, one I thought could be trusted to help sort it out, for help.

That person, however - also an author as well as an editor - scrambled the manuscript further. They didn't listen to the writer of the book either and made huge changes again. It took my friend days to sort it out. Time she did not have. Worse, they didn't even catch the typos as was the job they'd been hired to do.

Finally I - chagrined that I'd thrown my dear friend from the frying pan into the fire - found one more proofreader for her. By this time, so many people had made changes to this manuscript that it desperately needed another set of eyes. I'm going to tell you that I asked Crystal Watanabe at Pikko's House. I'm giving you all her name and link, because she did an amazing job. And you know what? She did exactly what she'd been hired to do: proofread. She submitted a quote, performed the turnaround in the agreed upon timeframe - and she didn't attempt to do any more than that. No bragging on social media about "saving" the book. No rewriting or trying to make herself look special by her affiliation with the author. She did her job and she did it well. 

I've hired her to proofread my next novella.

All of this is by way of a cautionary tale. It's not always easy for Indie authors to find professional services that aren't predatory - and that aren't primarily a path for the service provider to advance their own interests - but it's critical that we do. And that we share those resources with each other. 

My friend and I both learned a good lesson here. 

All the Options

Happy Beltane or May Day if you celebrate either. I hope you have a few minutes to enjoy the outdoors. At the very least.

Talking about publishing paths is a lot like Max standing outside my boat looking in. As Sinéad O'Connor liked to title an album, I do not want what I haven't got. Most of us come at publishing starry-eyed and with strong opinions about how we want to go. When I started, publishing really only had one option - traditional publishing. Self-publishing was still in its infancy and had the taint of desperation clinging to it. Dawn was beginning to break and there were a few outliers playing around with what might be possible. Shortly after I was first traditionally published, the ground totally shifted under self-publishing, fortunately.

These days, the options are legion.

Traditional
Self-publishing
Small press
Audio
Hybrid
I dunno. Triad?

Your choices are limited only by your wishes. Some of us NEED the validation that traditional publishing represents. Some of us hate playing by traditional publishing's timelines (which are glacial, especially if you're a high out-put author). They're also hard to break into. Generally you need an agent because the slush piles are towering door props. No lie, it took one editor three years to reject a book I'd sold someplace else.

Self-publishing lets you put books out at your pace and you need never suffer a suck-tastic cover again. Self-publishing is limited only by your budget. You get what you pay for in regard to cover work and editing. As mentioned last week, I'm currently priced out of this option.

A small press - or in my case- an e-first press with POD as an option, has trade offs just like the other options. Small presses can be risky. We've all seen presses go under. It's always sad when that happens. BUT. They're far more open minded about working with new authors and with authors who are in the position of having to start over. In my case, they were willing to republish books that had already been published once before just so they could complete the series. That's pretty flexible.

Some authors are writing specific content for audio books. I don't know much about it and I'm starting to hear that the shine is off that apple, but it is still an option. I don't do audio because there's not much call for it in my genre. Not a single one of my readers has asked for it .

Hybrid/mix of all the things - well, I suppose that's the most flexible of all, but it is a lot of balls to juggle. It means that you're published either traditionally or via a small press and you self-publish. You are still on the financial line for the books you self-pub, but if you're writing books that don't fit your traditionally published brand, self-publishing those can be a reasonable option. You'd control branding and messaging around the books that way.

The only thing I notice is that I feel a lot like poor Max. The publishing cash looks greener over there.

Indie & Proud

I'm one of many self-published authors on this blog but one of the few non-hybrid. Not being traditionally published by one of the Big Houses isn't because I've eschewed that part of the industry; it's simply because stars and stories haven't aligned.

I'm unrepentantly Indie. It's been a joy watching this half of the industry scrabble into existence, explode with popularity, then settle into a competitive marketplace. Sure, the royalties from the gold-rush days would be nice to see again, but that era is long gone. Then again, so is the insanity of indie authors having to release two books a month just to have a toe in the game. It was a fascinating moment when readers cried, "Whoa! Too much, too fast!" Authors happily responded, "Whew! Burnout is real!" By then the importance of backlists was established. Readers could binge, authors could breathe. Suddenly there was room for authors who couldn't pump out a dozen+ books a year, but who did publish stories readers were willing to wait to read. Niche markets were finally being served in measurable quantity with rising quality.

Speaking of rising quality, the Indie market provided opportunities for more than authors. The supporting industry of creative professionals from artists to editors to formatters and designers found new demand for their talents. It used to be a struggle to find someone willing to work with a self-published author, now our business is par for the course. Small tech companies have popped up too to serve our unique demands, innovating in ways that are thrilling to provider and user. Oh sure, crackpots and exploiters abound everywhere, but for the most part, Indie authors are gaining the respect of peers and readers.

The downside of self-publishing? There are many institutional biases we still have to overcome. There are public-facing opportunities (books fairs, expos, cons, local news, etc.,) from which we are excluded because organizers don't consider us properly vetted. We are hugely dependent on the benevolence of a singular capricious capitalist company. A single seemingly insignificant design change on any retailers' site can tank our sales. A tech glitch on their end can result in significant losses in sales and challenges to our Intellectual Property (among other legal complications). Retailers who struggle financially find the easiest copout is to delay paying us pay us or to not pay us at all. Worse are those who under-report our sales, a circumstance against which we have no proof or recourse. When distributors have a problem--be it in tangible or digital product--it's the author who gets blamed, though we have no ability to right the wrong. We've yet to consolidate our voices to demand changes that benefit all self-published authors. We ride the shirttails of the publishing industry despite our conflicts of interest. Oh, and of course, the whole damn enterprise is costly. Success is a long-game. Books into which you invested your heart and savings will tank. Envy is real, jealousy pernicious and prevalent. Don't get me started on piracy.

But...for all the negatives, it's worth it. To me, at least. I write stories because I want to share them. I want to help total strangers escape their realities and find a bit of joy.

The biggest advantage of being an Indie author is also its greatest disadvantage: control = responsibility = accountability.  It's our name on the cover. It's our words on the pages. It's our reputation regardless.

I wouldn't have it any other way.