Errors and the editing process
I feel I should apologize to my readers regarding the errors I've recently corrected in all three manuscripts, though I will also offer a few points that will hopefully help explain how things have gone.
First, and perhaps the least convincing, I was largely unaware of just how many problems were left in published versions of the first two books. For some reason, most people never report the typos they find. Not sure why, considering Kindle has a built in 'report error' function for ebooks. BDEL had a dozen or so get reported in a single batch, so I'm assuming they all came from the same reader. FS and DK? Not a single peep.
Second, and not terribly convincing even if most people would find it understandable: I had far less of a clue what I was doing with BDEL and FS than I do now. This point is largely why FS and BDEL saw some fairly hefty edits done with time around. I didn't change any content, but I did my best to apply what I've learned since writing them. I left the content as untouched as possible while hopefully improving the overall local structure.
Third, by dint of how my writing process is put together, I honestly figured I'd caught the majority of the errors. I don't just write the manuscript, toss it to my editor, and then publish. The process roughly follows this form:
1. Write manuscript and then re-read with an eye to edits.
2. Pass manuscript to my first reader for her impressions and edit suggestions.
3. Open to beta readers.
4. Pass to editor
5. Final re-reads between me and my first reader.
6. Publish.
Generally speaking, I aim for at least a dozen beta readers, and each of those steps end with me doing another read-through while considering the feedback I've received from the step in question. By the time something gets published, it's been read by at least 14 other people, and some of those people read it multiple times.
Dusk Knight is a bit of an exception to the process above; my editor's life at the time was best described as a dumpster fire, so I spent a fair amount of extra effort trying to minimize the amount of work she'd have to do. As a result, I think the wife and I ended up passing the story back and forth at least a half-dozen times, so that's another dozen reads on top of the betas.
Regardless of the above, some of the errors that went unreported in both FS and BDEL were pants-on-head level dumb and nothing that comes to mind explains how they made it into the final product to any satisfactory degree.
All I can say is that typos are essentially literary glitter; no matter how hard you clean, you'll still find more later... but those should be things like missing or extra commas, not sentences with two verbs or other weirdness that should necessarily stand out like a house fire at night. When I ran into one like that, I had little choice but to go over everything I'd released looking for more. Hopefully, I've improved the quality of those works sufficiently.
As an aside for the readers I've seen mention hiring an editor or proofreaders, as you can see above, I have an editor and multiple people I'd consider trustworthy as proofreaders.
One could make the case that I could do better, but I'd have to point out that while it's easy to proofread short works, longer works are another beast entirely. 10-20 page high school/college papers are a breeze. Those clock in at a few thousand words, tops. Dusk Knight is 196k words, the others ~150k. After a certain point, things blend together and your brain will autocomplete errors, especially if you've been sucked into the story.
That said, professional editors and proofreaders aren't cheap. One of the quotes I received while shopping around for another editor for Dusk Knight ran $2k for 196k words. Trying to avoid belaboring the point here, but in the two months since release, I've barely made half that. The only reason I could afford the first editor I had was because she offered me a steep 'friends and family' discount. So, I need more sales to afford better editing, but I probably need better editing to get more sales. I'm sure people can appreciate the circular bind there, and that's not including the cost of getting cover art made, either.
I'm certainly not trying to walk back my apology with that last bit; I am honestly embarrassed by some of what made it past us all, but past a certain point, all you can do is your best and commit to coming back after the fact to fix what you can.
First, and perhaps the least convincing, I was largely unaware of just how many problems were left in published versions of the first two books. For some reason, most people never report the typos they find. Not sure why, considering Kindle has a built in 'report error' function for ebooks. BDEL had a dozen or so get reported in a single batch, so I'm assuming they all came from the same reader. FS and DK? Not a single peep.
Second, and not terribly convincing even if most people would find it understandable: I had far less of a clue what I was doing with BDEL and FS than I do now. This point is largely why FS and BDEL saw some fairly hefty edits done with time around. I didn't change any content, but I did my best to apply what I've learned since writing them. I left the content as untouched as possible while hopefully improving the overall local structure.
Third, by dint of how my writing process is put together, I honestly figured I'd caught the majority of the errors. I don't just write the manuscript, toss it to my editor, and then publish. The process roughly follows this form:
1. Write manuscript and then re-read with an eye to edits.
2. Pass manuscript to my first reader for her impressions and edit suggestions.
3. Open to beta readers.
4. Pass to editor
5. Final re-reads between me and my first reader.
6. Publish.
Generally speaking, I aim for at least a dozen beta readers, and each of those steps end with me doing another read-through while considering the feedback I've received from the step in question. By the time something gets published, it's been read by at least 14 other people, and some of those people read it multiple times.
Dusk Knight is a bit of an exception to the process above; my editor's life at the time was best described as a dumpster fire, so I spent a fair amount of extra effort trying to minimize the amount of work she'd have to do. As a result, I think the wife and I ended up passing the story back and forth at least a half-dozen times, so that's another dozen reads on top of the betas.
Regardless of the above, some of the errors that went unreported in both FS and BDEL were pants-on-head level dumb and nothing that comes to mind explains how they made it into the final product to any satisfactory degree.
All I can say is that typos are essentially literary glitter; no matter how hard you clean, you'll still find more later... but those should be things like missing or extra commas, not sentences with two verbs or other weirdness that should necessarily stand out like a house fire at night. When I ran into one like that, I had little choice but to go over everything I'd released looking for more. Hopefully, I've improved the quality of those works sufficiently.
As an aside for the readers I've seen mention hiring an editor or proofreaders, as you can see above, I have an editor and multiple people I'd consider trustworthy as proofreaders.
One could make the case that I could do better, but I'd have to point out that while it's easy to proofread short works, longer works are another beast entirely. 10-20 page high school/college papers are a breeze. Those clock in at a few thousand words, tops. Dusk Knight is 196k words, the others ~150k. After a certain point, things blend together and your brain will autocomplete errors, especially if you've been sucked into the story.
That said, professional editors and proofreaders aren't cheap. One of the quotes I received while shopping around for another editor for Dusk Knight ran $2k for 196k words. Trying to avoid belaboring the point here, but in the two months since release, I've barely made half that. The only reason I could afford the first editor I had was because she offered me a steep 'friends and family' discount. So, I need more sales to afford better editing, but I probably need better editing to get more sales. I'm sure people can appreciate the circular bind there, and that's not including the cost of getting cover art made, either.
I'm certainly not trying to walk back my apology with that last bit; I am honestly embarrassed by some of what made it past us all, but past a certain point, all you can do is your best and commit to coming back after the fact to fix what you can.
No comments have been added yet.
