Comments on: Are you a writer who needs help?

By: bibliobibuli

bibliobibuli — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:39:00 +0000

i'm so glad you picked this up, Glenda.

i think there are a lot of writers in malaysia who would benefit from such help. trouble is so many of them are reluctant to pay. i do know those who have paid for the service of a professional editor and have been v. happy with it. (one friend who did this recently managed to get an agent)

but i think a lot of authors here need help with organising their material, developing characters etc. not just the line editing.

btw i don't know how to contact you - lost your card. want to invite you to things!

By: hrugaar

hrugaar — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:47:00 +0000

Urgh, I suffered on this one with my first book …. the galleys had loads of typos which I corrected, but the typesetter didn’t make the corrections (maybe he didn’t get to see them) and I didn’t see the thing again until it was in printed form, with all those nasty typos leaping up to smack me in the eagle eyes. *sob*

With my later books I emailed the publisher my own Word doc of the text (including the revised version after editing) which helped to tighten up the process. 🙂

By: Jo

Jo — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 07:25:00 +0000

I guess I do have an eagle eye and tend to spot these things instantly. But this current book is one of the worst I have seen and I have only just read a few chapters. One of the funniest I ever saw was a character was “peering at herself in the mirror” only they had left out the r in peering.

By: glenda larke

glenda larke — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 07:11:00 +0000

Every publisher has a different way of doing things. If it was one of my books, here's how it probably happened:

The copy editor goes through the MS, and if they are good, they find all typos of this kind and pencil in corrections. MS comes back to me and I agree (or otherwise). However, copy editor may also suggest some alterations e.g. expand this paragraph, or add a bit here because this doesn't make sense.

So I do, and then the MS goes to the typesetter (now someone with a computer!) but he's having a bad day and enters the new stuff, or even the corrections, carelessly.

I then see the first pages (or galley proofs) and so does my editor, but alas, we are not copy editors with that eagle eye for the minutae of typos...and the mistakes creep through into the published book!

I am lucky in that I have not yet had a book with a lot of typos. Fingers crossed.

By: Jo

Jo — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 06:06:00 +0000

I have just started a Margaret Weiss book and I don’t know who would be considered responsible, but there are all kinds of missing words. Small ones perhaps, but nevertheless it makes you stop and re-read to make sure what should be said. Would this be the editor, author, publisher or printer, or all of them combined?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 04:05:00 +0000

So absolutely true! (and that's just from reading the snippet you've posted).

Barb

By: Jo

Jo — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:41:00 +0000

That should be very helpful I would think. I have a friend who is an editor – not fiction though – and she seems to be very busy all the time. Something I often thought I would like to do, but presumably you need some ‘training’ first.