Authors, do you use editors? Proofreaders? I have a guilty secret… #amwriting #amediting

October 24, 2017October 24, 2017 / Deborah Jay / Debby Lush / 54 Comments

I published this little confession on my own blog (https://deborahjayauthor.com/) last week, and it garnered so many interesting points of view, I thought I’d bring it over here too…

Since I joined the Indie publishing scene back in 2013, I have read SO many times the

advice, nay, instruction, ‘thou shalt not publish without having your work professionally edited/proof read/beta read’.

But I have a guilty secret…

I don’t use editors or proof readers.

Gasp! Isn’t my work trash?
Well, apparently not, if my reviews are to be believed. Here is a snippet from a recent review, from an Amazon Vine Reviewer, no less:

“This is a good, entertaining read with lots of originality. And THANK YOU to the author for the lack of errors and grammar that mar so many books these days!”

Okay, I admit to working with a writer’s group. They get to see my first draft and pick up on any obvious procedural errors (like the 36 hour day I once managed to write in), and suggest ways of strengthening the plot.
Then I finish the novel and have 2, or at most 3 beta readers. Only if they all say the same thing about any part of the book do I make any changes.

And after carrying this guilty secret with me for years now, I was hugely relieved to read this post from well known author Dean Wesley Smith:
https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/killing-the-sacred-cows-of-publishing-beta-readers-help-you/

This makes me feel SO much better about my writing. It’s how I began, how I’ve continued, and how I intend to continue.
I DO think editors etc. are an excellent idea for writers at an early stage of their careers, when they still have much to learn, but I’ve been doing this job professionally (writing non-fiction for magazines and books) for decades, and while I’m always learning more, I have a fair bit of confidence in my own ability to tell a tale, and tell it in reasonable English. If I break a grammar rule, I (probably) meant to!

How about you writers? Is there anyone else out there who shares my guilty secret. I know a small handful of other. Are there any more?

Have your #reading habits changed since the advent of #ebooks?

July 2, 2015 / Deborah Jay / Debby Lush / 7 Comments

I posted this on my own blog a couple of days ago, and thought as it has relevance to indie authors, I would share it here as well.

Like so many, when ebooks first arrived on the scene I was a bit sniffy about them – “I like a real book,” I said.

I know quite a few who still haven’t succumbed to the electronic reader, though they are a dwindling group.

When I finally embraced the indie revolution and decided to self-publish, it went without saying that I purchased an ebook reader (Kindle Fire, in my case), and downloaded a kindle app to all my devices, so I could:

check out my own books
check out the competition
read lots and lots of books that didn’t cost much and didn’t take over every shelf/cupboard/window ledge (and under beds) in my entire house.

Next, becoming an indie author and maintaining a blog involved producing content, and after a bit of experimentation, I settled on a mix of news, reviews, articles on writing – and hosting other authors on blog tours.

As a result, I find myself signing up for a number of review tours, and reading books I didn’t originally go shopping for, but which sound interesting. And here is where I’ve noticed how far my reading habits have changed.

Sadly, I find I’m becoming less tolerant. Back in the day, when books cost £8 – £10 a copy, I would read from cover to cover whether I was enthralled or not. I’d paid for the book and damned if I wasn’t going to get my money’s worth!

Those books were, of course, traditionally published; but that doesn’t mean to say they were all good – I’ve read many a turkey and wondered how the hell it got published. But no matter how crappy it was, my habit was to always finish.

Nowadays? My habit has been well and truly broken.

My kindle is stuffed to bursting with far more books than I will ever read, and I add more daily. The majority are indie books, and many are very good.

Unfortunately, many are not.

I really hate adding to my DNF list, as I know intimately how much time has gone into writing each and every book; the passion, the agonising over whether it’s good enough, the money spent (patently not on all of them, but most). But with that plethora of reading material available, I just don’t have time to invest in a book I’m not enthralled by.

Hence the change in habit. I now give a book 2 chapters to win me over (provided I haven’t ditched it before that, due to formatting and writing errors, or construction and/or word choice I just can’t bear), and if I’m not thoroughly hooked by then, I stop and delete.

This post, like my earlier rant about cliff hanger endings here, has been prompted by a book I really wanted to like, but just couldn’t. I took it on as part of a review tour, and had to pull out (which I feel slightly guilty about), but the first chapter left me cold, and while the second was markedly better, I realised that it was the main character I did not care for, so not a good basis on which to continue.

The concept is terrific. I scanned the book to see where it was going, and the plot looks as good as it promised to be from the blurb. But that MC? I understand the issues with writing a somewhat unsympathetic character, and this was an exiled fae, with major issues in his life that led him to be rather cold and unpredictable emotionally and in his dealings with other people. I get that. But I couldn’t warm to him, so sadly that was that.

I find that I’m also much quicker to dismiss a book on its blurb – if I’m not hooked in the first two sentences, I don’t look any further.

I find this change a bit sad, but I’m guessing there are many other readers out there becoming more discriminating too, and I take it as a wake up call – indies, polish that blurb until it can’t fail but grab the right reader (of course it must be tailored to the genre), and for goodness sake, start your book with a dynamite scene!

How long do you give a book before you put it aside? Or do you still doggedly finish everything you start?

A Lesson in Uploading Changes to a Published eBook

February 7, 2015February 7, 2015 / Marcia Meara / 4 Comments

Been doing a bit of last minute editing before starting any kind of “official” launch or promotion of A Boy Named Rabbit, and had a real surprise last night. I made some changes, saved my newly revised document, converted it to HTML, and then uploaded it to Amazon. Well, lo and behold, the little spinning wheel that lets you know your file is being converted to Kindle format by Amazon wouldn’t stop spinning. It’s a process that I’ve seldom had take longer than 3 minutes or so, but after an hour, I gave up and went away for a while. When I came back again, it was still going. Obviously, there was a problem with the file, but I could find no way to stop the process. That big wheel kept on turnin’ and I was left doing my truly fine Tina Turner impression as I headed off to bed.

When I got up this morning, I found a message alerting me that there was something wrong with my file (ya think?) and it could not be converted. They advised me to try again. After about thirty minutes of checking various things in my Word document, I realized that in shuffling around some items at the back of the book (Author’s Notes, etc), I had failed to remove a Page Break at the end of the last page. And that, my friends, was enough to throw a monkey wrench into the whole process.

If this ever happens to me again, the first thing I’ll be looking at will be the very last page. If that’s not the issue, I’ll check the page breaks at the end of every chapter, and between the other sections of the book. And I’m sharing this with you today, so you won’t panic if it ever happens to you. Kindle does NOT play well with blank pages. A word to the wise, and a lesson learned by me.