Talk to people who are involved with traditional publishing about the role of editors, and you hear mixed messages. Some say publishers no long provide significant editing services. The author submits a “camera ready” manuscript, and it gets published. Any errors are the fault of the author, not the publisher.
Still others insist that the editing provided by the publisher doesn’t change. They content edit. They line edit. They proofread. The put out good books, just as they always have.
Probably a lot of both is going on. The alleged lack of editing by publishers is something I’ve been concerned with, and is one of the factors that pushed me toward self-publishing. I figured if I had to do all the editing, why seek a publisher?
I recently read a review on Amazon of a traditionally published book that included the following comment.
“…the editing/proofreading was terrible. Inexplicable changes in font size. Missing words. Wrong words. Mispelled words. Clearly a hurry-up, shoddy job of publishing.”
This book briefly hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and is by a multipublished bestselling author. It is the only review out of 163 (or at least out of the 50 of those that I read) that mentions this. I haven’t read the book, but will be soon.
So it seems that, to some extent, those who say publishers no longer edit are correct.
I hear writers going on and on about editing (or the lack thereof), but honestly, I wonder how much the average reader really cares. For instance, your observation that only one reviewer mentioned it. While really odd formatting or obvious misspellings may turn off readers, I suspect that all the ranting about editing is mainly something propagated by writers, editors, and agents.
I think you are on to something, Susan. While a book riddled with errors, especially grammar errors that make the meaning unclear, might turn readers away, I don’t think the occasional error bothers the average reader at all. I was reading a history tome this weekend, and found and marked an error on page 190 something, the first error I’ve found in the book. It’s no less enjoyable to me for that reason.
I’ve had a chance to look at that book in the Kindle edition “look inside” feature, and in the hardback at the library. The errors are in the Kindle edition only. On the 15 or so pages I reviewed, the letters “fi” in a word are almost always followed by a space. Such as:
fi re
suffi cient
fi nally
fi ght
It looks as if a search and replace went awry, and was never proofread.
I’ve been submitting short stories and I know they aren’t book ready.
I hope if I get accepted they do edit.
I’d get a headache re-reading everything I’ve written.