Saturday, July 7, 2012

Editing and proofreading-----a real issue.

I enjoy writing and telling stories for my books but I don’t enjoy the follow-up editing and proofreading stages. I have heard that publishers like Penguin and others, put books through many stages in the pre-printing stages. Of course I cannot afford that when it comes to self-publishing, so I rely on others to do most of that work.
I am pretty good at making lots of typos and mistakes--- the fixing of that should be done by someone other than me, because I just don’t (usually) see the errors until the book is in print and that means making yet more changes. Just as well my first prints are and are going to be short runs. The beauty of short runs is that the changes can be made at each small print and only once the books sells in numbers (I wish!) am I going to be satisfied that the errors are gone.
I have to say that I am disappointed with some of the proofreading and when I notice errors on each page, I get a bit annoyed, because I have paid for them to check. I hope that the latest round of proofreading results in a better product. We shall see.
It is probably important that I don’t get friends to do the job as it’s harder to criticise them---especially as they know how useless I am at that process. Once I find someone who is really good at this job, I shall indeed be pleased.
One a finishing note: Even the books that I get out from the library often have glaringly obvious mistakes. See--- I can see that in someone else’s books, but not my own. It’s a weird world.