I have to admit something. It may come as a surprise… please bear with me…
I’m not perfect.
There. I’ve said it.
I know, you’re shocked. Some of you may be crying out in denial right now. Deep breaths, we can make it through this difficult time together.
As some of you may well be aware, one of my weak points is grammar. As you can imagine, this isn’t good considering I’m self publishing and in charge of my own editing. There are some readers and writers out there who think that if you self publish it’s your duty to make your book grammatical perfect.
Okay. Well, since no one in this world is perfect, there is no way that’s going to happen. It’s just not possible to write a grammatically error free book. And yes, I could hire someone to read my book for errors, but that would cost me a minimum for 300 bucks. Minimum. Add the (at least) 100 bucks for a book cover… and bam. No longer are my books 99 cents… or even 2.99. Just like N.Y. I’d have to up the price to make up for overhead costs.
Perhaps because I’m not a grammar aficionado, grammatical problems don’t bother me. When I read a story and I’m into the story, it would take a missing sentence to pull me out. In some instances a missing page. And even then I’d probably just shrug and move on. But I am aware that for some, grammar problems are like the end of the world. All I can say is sorry; at this point I’m not willing to pay hundreds of dollars (that I may or may not get back) to try and catch them. If I ever start making more money, then yes, I might.
The great thing about self publishing is that there are no overhead costs and therefore we can price the books low. The downside with low-priced self published books is that they may not be as well edited as you’d like.
Just recently I purchased this wonderful thing called Text Aloud which reads your book aloud. Yes, the voice is very much like a computer, but it helps find those things like “heart” instead of “heat.” And yes, I do have critique partners, but they have their own lives and can’t read as fast as I can write. And, oh yeah, they’re not perfect either and miss things.
I’m not complaining about the few people who have emailed to tell me of my errors. Relax. You ladies are fine. No hurt feelings and when you point out specifics, I’m actually grateful because I can fix them. But I am pointing to those people who mark self published books down because of errors.
If you want a professionally edited book then pay triple the price and buy a N.Y. book. There. I’ve said it. But don’t expect those N.Y. books to be perfect either. In fact, Wild Heart had plenty of errors that my many N.Y. editors missed. Because, yep, that’s right… not even N.Y. editors are perfect.
For now, just know that I do edit the books to the very best of my ability. I really do. But when you are as close to your work as a writer is, it’s very hard to see typos. And before you become all offended, I’m talking about minor problems here. I’m not talking about books that are ridiculously problematic.
If you’re the kind of person who notices every little thing, you might want to skip my books because I can guarantee you that they will have errors.
Now I have to go; America’s Next Top Model is on 🙂
