my first-ever Dear Publisher letter!

[lagilman]

Dear Major NY Publisher I Used to Work For:

If you are going to charge me $14 for a slight and obviously page-inflated trade paperback by a Name Author, there are a few things I have the right to expect. First and foremost is that you will have had someone - an editor, a copy-editor, a proofreader, an intern doing the slugging -- at some point actually READ THE BOOK.

I should not constantly be encountering "there" for "they're," "your" for "you're," sloppy and obvious tense changes, or having the narrator say they could only talk to a character during the hours of x to y because of it was too crowd-noisy, and then 20 pages later have the narrator say that he could only talk to that same character in that same location after J-where-J-is-before-X, because that's when the crowds left and it got quiet.

Because that? Is bullshit.

Nolove,

Your Former Employee.


P.S. I am very tempted to mark up the book and send it back to you with an invoice....

Comments

[eyemage.livejournal.com]

do it....obviously they need the clue stick.

[onyxhawke.livejournal.com]

That would be hilarious...

I would pay to see it in fact.

[sabriel-0405.livejournal.com]

They had someone read the book. A computer. Along with a person in a country to be named later who answered "don't replace" to every word that wasn't in the spelling dictionary. At least you only paid $14. It's equally awful for Name Authors in hard cover.

[difrancis.livejournal.com]

Oh. Dear. This is my publisher, isn't it? Sigh.

[lagilman]

Other side of the hallway. But yeah. :-(

[lagilman]

The author is no longer with us, and may not have been healthy enough to properly go over the proofs. That makes it doubly more offensive that they didn't have anyone checking in-house.

(especially since the story, although slight, was not bad and mostly held my interest)

[wishwords.livejournal.com]

I was completely shocked the other day to read a paperback by a big name SF author, published by a big name publisher that was horrible in that regard. If I can see that the editing was atrocious, they really need to hire a new editor.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Last time I bought a book like that, I sent a letter to the publisher asking why I would think it was worth my money if they didn't think it was worth a spellcheck.

[controuble.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, spell check won't find those kind of word substitutions/mis-uses. If it's a real word, the checker won't flag it. You need a REALLY good syntax checker for that, and there just aren't very many good ones.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Not those... but they could have caught some of the ones in the book I'm thinking of.

[lagilman]

Spell-check wouldn't have found these particular word-errors, the tense changes, or the plot inconsistency, though. They'd have to let an Actual Person go over them -- and, ideally, an actual person who was paying attention, not just skimming lines to make sure it was all in English.

If an Actual Person did proof this.... they really should be embarrassed. I was only reading casually, and these things jumped out and clubbed me with the Stick of Annoyance.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

In the book I'm thinking of, they needed a real person with no more than a Fourth Grade English education *and* a spellchecker... but the attitude was quite obviously "her fans will read anything she craps out" and unfortunately the fans are, on the whole, living down to that expectation.

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

*yeeouch* That's just sad.

[ex-fashioni.livejournal.com]

Dude, I so dare you.

That's unforgivable.

[lagilman]

Having read the book, I now find myself with no desire or energy to go through it again, especially since it would, um, not be taken in the spirit in which it was intended.

Or maybe it would. I am really quite annoyed, on behalf of the author as much as anything: s/he deserved an editor to go with the contract.

(I really am old-fashioned that way)

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

I suppose you could send them a proposal for how much it would cost if they paid you to redline it before the next print run (if there was one).

I am amused that "too poorly edited to read without pain" is an acceptable reason to return a book!

[jennifer-dunne.livejournal.com]

Well, at any rate, you can take it back to the bookstore where you purchased it for a refund.

I hadn't realized it, but apparently "Too horribly edited to be able to read without pain" is a valid reason for a return. :-)

[lagilman]

except that would ding the author's estate as a return, which...yeah, the author should have caught this shite but the publisher has a responsibility to the product, too. Otherwise why not self-publish and be done with it?

[dianora2.livejournal.com]

*snerk*

[house-draven.livejournal.com]

The only thing I can say is...wow. Dear god.

*wanders off shaking head*

Boy do I hear you.

[lyonessnyc.livejournal.com]

I've taken to marking things in pencil just for my own peace of mind. It's a rare book these days that doesn't have such glaring errors. My mom is constantly calling me asking "Do you still know someone at XYZ Publisher? They need to give this one another pass! It's TERRIBLE!" I've suggested that she write letters to the publishers to this effect, complaining about their substandard product. She has, but has yet to receive any response.

These days, I'm mostly reading textbooks, and I'm *still* making pencil marks in the margins.

Dependence on spellcheck-as-proofreader is yet another reason why too many of us are out of work. It's quite sad.

Re: Boy do I hear you.

[chaoticgoodnik.livejournal.com]

My favorite book screwup of this nature comes from a history textbook. I'm reading along, I'm reading along, and all of a sudden, I see "needs more punctuation" (or something vaguely like that) in the middle of a sentence. After my brain stopped sparking from the short circuit, I realized what had happened: someone was using a certain feature of MS Word in a way that they shouldn't have been, and a comment got integrated as a change to the manuscript.

[handlebar605.livejournal.com]

if anything, I would ask them, as a former employee, if they felt they were giving the author the respect they deserved especially considering their situation?

[lagilman]

as a former employee, I know that it wasn't a question of respect, but how fast they had to turn the manuscript around and how little budget production had to spend.

Respect for the readers? Now that's a different question entirely...

(and the author is not without responsibility here, too! Many of those things should and would have been caught in a careful read-through before sending the manuscript in... it's just that the established and accustomed safety net wasn't deployed.)

[handlebar605.livejournal.com]

yeah, if the author dies before doing a final read thru, it makes it kinda hard. Still, in that situation it shouldn't have taken that much more time for an editor to read through the manuscript once just to make sure, should it?.

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

I've had that same experience with other books. I don't know if they were by the same company that published this one, but I've actually seen some out and out typos that spellcheck would've caught.

And you're right about the whole thing. Having worked as an intern at an NY publishing company (although much smaller than yours), I can safely say that the other company had no problems dumping things in my lap and saying, "Oh hai there. Here's 300 pages. Make sure it's all perfectly perfect. Enjoy eating lunch at your desk again! Toodles!"

So there really is no excuse for that kind of thing at all. Especially if it's a big name author or something. I mean, surely there's an intern somewhere they can straddle with it! It's why you have interns!

I would send them the marked book, maybe not with an invoice, but at least with a letter expressing your displeasure at their sloppy work.

[lagilman]

I can safely say that the other company had no problems dumping things in my lap and saying, "Oh hai there. Here's 300 pages. Make sure it's all perfectly perfect. Enjoy eating lunch at your desk again! Toodles!"


Oh, as an assistant living on a "you don't need to eat, do you" salary, it was common for us to use our lunch hours to freelance a slugging (I have slugged so many Barbara Cartland reprints...oy). Now, I have to assume they've cut the budgets so that slugging's a thing of the past... and proofreading as well, if they're crunched for time or money.

[jperceval.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, you have no idea how often I've been tempted to do just such a thing -- and it's happening more and more with mainstream publishers lately.

Edited to add: my alter-ego even ranted about this issue (http://riley-merrick.livejournal.com/91116.html) a while back.

[sfmarty.livejournal.com]

And they wonder why I now get my books from the library. Sloppy editing is a stopper for me.

I simply will not pay for a book that hurts my brain. If I can't re-read it with pleasure, I just don't bother.

I will buy a book that I like, after I have read it from the library.