Wednesday, September 17, 2014

A Curmudgeonly Pontification on Editors and Self-Promotion

       I'm plenty old enough to be called a curmudgeon and I've occasionally written a post where I assume that appellation. A couple of observations have occurred to me lately that fall under that category.
      
Editors and Editing
 

Thanks to
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/composition/editing.htm
       I'm probably the only person around who prefers to indulge in that tremendous no-no, the violation of which shocks and horrifies!  I prefer to edit my own books.
       I have recently encountered someone who knew her book needed editing, so she hired an editor and paid good money, and then everybody who reviewed the book talked about how poorly edited it was (including me).  I am not about to waste money for somebody to do what I can do better, and I have no desire to be patronized by somebody who just assumes that if you're looking for an editor, you yourself are an uneducated simpleton.   (To be fair, I should insert a disclaimer here: I realize that not all editors are like that.)
       I have a sufficient academic background in English and language that I think I know how to write English using correct grammar and usage.  And I certainly know how to look things up, not only in the dictionary but in other tools.  I was a librarian, for goodness sake!  And when I first started writing when I was 29, I had my mother right there.  She was an English teacher and she's the one who taught me most of what I know about grammar and usage.  She and I proofread my early writing together, in the proper way -- with one person following the manuscript and the other reading in a slow, detailed way -- one word at a time, with all the punctuation verbalized.  Somewhere along the line I was taught that method, but it doesn't seem to be something anybody knows about these days.
       Now my mother is gone and I don't have anybody to proofread with, and I'm aware that when you proofread by yourself, you can miss a lot of typos.  So I apologize if a few typos slip through, or possibly the occasional small grammatical error.  Still, I trust myself to catch, for example, misuses of  homophones like "horde" and "hoard," a couple of words I always check out in every book so I don't have the Shshi sending out a "hoard" to found a new fortress.
       I think the reason people need editors so badly (apart from dyslexia, which can't be helped) is inferior education (and also poor typing skills, but that's a different problem).  Where were they during their high school English language classes?  Off in some adolescent haze, I guess, because it was obvious they ain't never gonna have no use for what the teacher was trying to larn 'em.  I think that's always been true to a considerable extent.  I'm quite sure many people who sat in my mother's classes back in the '30s, '40s, and '50s didn't learn grammar any better than the kids do today.
 
Self-Promotion
 
Thanks to
http://jezebel.com/5738957/social-minefield-how-to-self-promote-without-being-a-jerk
       We indie authors beat our brains out trying to get people to buy our books.  I list all my special prices on Twitter, Goodreads, Facebook, Google+, and in special forums and listings. I post them on my blog and I get promos on websites like The Story Reading Ape (bless his furry hide!)  I've been interviewed, and I thank all those interviewers.   I belong to several book promo groups on Facebook and Google+.  You put your posts on those and immediately they sink like a stone in the sea. 
       So I've decided all this is based on a false premise:  that people are actually out there trolling all these sites, looking for books to gobble up in order to fill their cavernous maws that hunger for reading matter. 
       I don't think this is true at all -- I don't think anybody is looking for books to read.  I'm basing this on myself.  I admit I hardly ever pay any attention to the myriad of books posted on these sites (not cites, you notice).  That's probably a flaw -- I should pay more attention, especially if I want them to pay attention back.  First off, who has time to investigate every book that's just been published?  Secondly, most of these books are in genres I have absolutely no interest in.  Erotic romance? Forget it!  Vampires?  Likewise (I have read one or two with vampires).  Zombies?  tha'sask|>|| as my Shshi would say.  Paranormal in general?  Nope!  I realize that my interests and the books that I write are literary in style and trends don't attract me.  I've even quit reading most high fantasy (dragons and elves and magic don't seem to appeal much to me these days).  I read tons of it in the '70s and '80s, as well as a good bit of more traditional science fiction.  Ursula K. LeGuin was my favorite, however, and I think everybody realizes her stuff is pretty literary in tone -- carefully crafted, with deeply dimensioned characters.   That's what I like, and I hope that's what I write, whether it's laid in the real world of the future or on a distant planet.
       There are many books that I would like to read before I die and unfortunately most of them were written years ago -- standards that I never got around to reading earlier, like The Great Gatsby or The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende.  I cannot possibly check out every book that crops up on a promo listing no matter how much I want to support indie authors. When I do, sadly, the books often turn out to be a waste of time.  It's not only poor editing -- it's that the authors think they can toss off a book in a week or a month and publish it immediately and have a masterpiece that sells a million copies.  They need to write ... and write ... and write ... and put the manuscript away and let it cook and then go back to it months or years later after they've gained more knowledge and experience, and then judge if it was really any good.  Perspective -- authors need to gain perspective on their own works by coming to them as if they were new.  I have no intention of ever publishing anything I wrote in the first eight years of my writing life.  I rewrote it so many times that the beginning became nothing but a jumble.  I do have a couple of manuscripts from the late '70s or early '80s (the period around the writing of "The Blessing of Krozem," my free novelette on Smashwords) that I may resurrect someday, but much as I loved the really early stuff when I wrote it, I think it's consigned to oblivion.  Juvenilia, they call it -- only I was in my thirties at the time! 
       So I apologize if I cannot pay attention to every indie-published book out there, and I understand why mine get ignored.  If I don't like to read erotic romances, the writers of erotic romances surely don't want to read character studies of giant termite people.  But somebody out there does want to, and that's why I don't give up.  You just have to find your readership.  That is what is important, and probably the hardest thing you have to do!
      
 

18 comments:

  1. Lorinda, you did a superb job editing the Read for Animals anthology and your skills are top notch. I think the quality of education today is inferior to previous decades (just my perception, perhaps), but I also think the ability to write well is largely innate. Some people have it and some (most?) don't. As for reading books, I find myself in this same dilemma, since my genres of preference don't included fantasy or sci-fi, although I try to promote friends' books through my amazon store (which nobody buys from :P). I am planning to self-publish a short memoir about my boarding school days in the not too distant future and understand how tough the promotion end of it is.
    I think you do have a loyal fan base out there and hope it will translate into book sales for you.

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    1. Thanks for all the kind words, Debbie! I look forward to your memoir and I promise I will buy and read it! And you might give my books, especially The Termite Queen, a try sometime. It has to be called SF because it's laid in the future and has space travel, but it also has an intense love story and a lot of heroic action, especially in v.2.

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    2. I did download a couple of your books during your recent promotion, and they're waiting in my Kindle. :) Sorry I haven't had a chance to read them yet.

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    3. I understand completely! It takes me forever to get around to reading something. Right now I'm reading Jeanne Rogers' The Sword of Demelza. Great story for middle graders, or adults!

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  2. Loved this and reblogged it Lorinda :)

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  3. You are not alone! My own similar ruminations are known to have put at least one "professional" nose out of joint. And because writing is an art (not a craft), it belongs in a different kind of marketplace than the craft-oriented stalls into which Indies are attempting to shoehorn their works.

    BTW, I keep the same kind of bicycle horn beside my bed, to summon assistance when my son is home from work. Now I’ll toot it when I’m alone, too.

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    1. Thanks for stopping by, Christine! Truly, my books are difficult to shoehorn into categories - literary-style science fiction/fantasy/myth/adventure/first-contact/love story! LOL Btw, I just signed up to follow your blog.

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  4. Not "curmudgeonly" at all; truth has no personality. Here's an interesting anecdote for your consideration: The literary critic Edmund Wilson once described F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise as "one of the most illiterate books of any merit ever published." Yikes!

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    1. For sure, editors and professional publishers don't always get it right! Glad you stopped by, Jack! You were the first person to categorize my books as literary science fiction.

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  5. Tell it like it is! I've read a couple indie books and cringed. Thank you for this post.

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    1. Yes, there is no real excuse for indie authors to allow their books to be made public in such poor shape. I'm confident that if you ever read any of mine, you won't find that to be the case! Thanks for stopping by!

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  6. Yes it's a sad fact that there are Indies out there who have tarnished all our reputations with their sub standard offerings, but there's no accounting for taste. I once tried an Amanda Hocking novel... after she got published by a big trad publisher... and couldn't get past the first few pages... it was awful! But look how well she has done...

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    1. Yes, it seems that if you can hit just the right note of trendiness coupled with lowest common denominator, you can sell books no matter how bad a writer you are. That, however, is not my goal. Thank you, Ali, for stopping by!

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  7. Lorinda, I agree with some of the points you make. First, it seems to me that some so-called editors need editing themselves! This happens especially with children's writing. Jeez! Looks like some people think that writing children's books is a piece of cake. I do, however, think that an editor is necessary for most of us. I'm educated and have a good grasp of English, but it is my second language, and some 'gaffes' always, always slip. Actually, lots of them! I do use an editor when I write in Spanish too, even though I'm very good at Spanish grammar. I believe than an editor does more that 'fixing' odd sentences and finding missing punctuation. My editor provides me with a creative point of view and critique that, in the end, makes my writing stand out. I do agree with your statement about self-promotion. I'm about done with all the sites that offer you to promote your book. Filling out interviews and browsing through infinite sites only takes time away from my family and my writing. I'm going straight to my market through school visits because that's what I love to do. I've reviewed several children's books. Sadly half of those are poorly edited, written and executed. They lack creativity and the charm that a children's book should have. Children's books should be artistic, whimsical, and some educational at the same time. It's disappointing, especially after visiting the author's website and seeing all the advertisement --and prizes!!-- the book has won. At that point I try to think, is it that I didn't like the book? (not my style), or that I consider that this is a bad book? But I've also read some indie children's books that stand out and give me hope. Just like you, I'll keep on writing with my own style and producing quality--and literary-- children's books. That's about the only thing I can do! (And pardon my grammar mistakes. I'm sure you'll find quite a few!)

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  8. After I posted this, I thought I should have added the remark that for people writing in other than their native tongue, an editor is probably the way to go. And if you can find a knowledgeable editor with whom you have a good rapport and who is really interested in and basically likes what you're doing, then I say, stick with them!
    I don't write children's books, so school visits wouldn't work for me. I'm still going the social media route for promotion, looking for the kind of people who would appreciate what I'm doing. Thanks for stopping by! (And your English looks great to me, Mariana!)

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    1. Lol, Lorinda, after thirteen years living in the US my English is in great shape but my accent isn't going anywhere :). I do realize that I write (and spell!) better than some native English-speakers, but my problem is that I'm a perfectionist, so I rarely allow myself to make a mistake. It's a curse!! But I'm working on it... I'm only human. BTW I've been reading some of your book excepts and they sound stupendous. I expect to download your work very soon.

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    2. That's terrific! Always happy to learn somebody wants to read what I write! Remember that my ebooks are available on Smashwords as well as Amazon, so if you want to read on Nook or any EPUB format or even off your computer, you can do multiple downloads of a book on Smashwords. https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/TermiteWriter

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