I did think about going on and on about the cover art process, especially that flyaway hair, but I decided to duck and weave and come back to that topic in a few days.
We’ve had an e-mail complaint from an author about the length of time it has taken for us to get his book edited. He wants to know if he should finish arranging his own funeral first. I must admit I did find that amusing, but luckily the e-mail was addressed to my business partner, who controls the editing, and not to me.
The problem is, he’s been waiting an awful long time for his book to come out, and there are several reasons for this. Firstly we don’t tend to multi-task on a book, it took us a while to sort out the contract, non-fiction is a nightmare compared to fiction, and then it took us even longer to sort out the cover design. Actually it wasn’t the cover design that was the problem, it was one element of it, the background – you try finding royalty free images of detailed seventy year old maps! In the end he drew his own.
Once the cover was sorted it was over to me to do a thorough story edit, which, given the theme of the book required painstaking checking of and changing of names to protect the innocent. That took a while, but of course for the author, only a few changes which he did, I might say, perfectly and very quickly. Now we’re into the longest part of the operation – the copy edit.
I find his story very interesting, but it must be like pulling hens teeth for an editor who isn’t “into” the subject. Not only that it’s just about our longest book to date. It’s over 400 pages long in draft form. Please note – I am not a copy editor, nor am I qualified to copy edit, in fact I’m pure c**p at it and take my hat off to the ladies that perform this function for us.
The author will of course be able to whiz through those edits when he gets them but then it has to go into the proofing process which will take even more time.
Patience is a virtue. I wish all authors were blessed with rather more of it.
Don’t even get me started on those authors who think their manuscript is perfect and therefore doesn’t need editing – and no we don’t have any of those, but I’ve come across them in the past. I’m not talking about those who argue with the publisher about the quality of the editing, merely those who won’t accept any edits, even when they are right.
I’m currently reading a six book series by one of my favourite authors. By book five I’m beginning to lose heart – the errors jumping off the page are quite serious and it’s clear either it wasn’t edited, the editor was c**p or the author didn’t allow the edits. Big pity, because he is a wonderful storyteller, it’s a pity the quality assurance side lets him down. By the way this is a major publishing house, and he is a big best seller.
I've seen that lowering of quality with many authors who have published a series, or even with some who have had one best seller, and then their next book's been a load of c**p. It's almost as if they don't care about their readers once they get some success, and assume that their name is enough to sell anything. Easy to fix though–once is enough for me to stop buying, and reading those works, no matter how good reviews they might get later.
ReplyDeleteWorst recent example was a bestselling author I read about a month ago, he writes crime and suspense. In the story the Agents did nothing but drink whisky and beer on every third page, to get drunk. I mean, honestly, if you're fighting crime, you can't be intoxicated all the time! I don't believe that any Special Force, MI5, CIA or FBI agent is capable of dealing with ruthless criminals when he can't see straight! On top of which the plot sucked...