For A Ha'porth of Tar.

This is a story about some books that should be selling like hot cakes, but probably aren’t. Stick with it, because there may be lessons for the Indie author to learn here.
 
I am reading the second book in a lengthy series, written by an Indie author. Like the first book in the series (and all the others) it is set during World War I and it has a lot of merit.
 
The plot is generally good and the main character is engaging, with a good supporting cast of minor characters. As far as I can see, the author has done his research and that gives the book an authentic feel.

Under normal circumstances I would have reviewed the first book in the series and posted the review on this blog. It is part of what we do to help Indie authors.

​There is enough good writing in the plot and characterisation to allow me to give it a 4 star rating and, perhaps, even a 5 star if I’m in a generous mood. It’s all “boys own adventure” type stuff, but none the worse for that. 
 
Question:  why am I talking about this book as though I’m not going to review it?
 
Answer: because I’m not going to review it.

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If I did review it and my review was an honest one, as it should be, I could give it no more than 3 stars and if anyone is going to sabotage this author’s work, it isn’t going to be me. For the same reason I’m not going to give you the title of the book or the series and I’m not going to name the author.

Besides, why should I do what the author has done so admirably, by sabotaging his own work?
 
The first book in the series had me screaming in frustration and the second book has me in shaking my head in disbelief. When it comes to editing and proof reading, it is awful.
 
As we know, even books published by the big-name publishing houses have the odd typo or punctuation error in them, overlooked at the proof-reading stage by a professional proof-reader. If that were all I was talking about, there would be no problem and you wouldn’t be reading this blog.

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But I’m not talking about an error every third or fourth page, or every second page or even every page. I am talking about an error in every paragraph and sometimes more than one.
 
There are punctuation errors, typos and the use of the wrong homonyms. In some cases, the errors are so bad they change the meaning of a sentence. To give one example, in an historical note the author uses the word ‘temerity’ when it is quite clear he means ‘tenacity’.

​Sentences have to be read twice or three times to decipher them because a lack of punctuation means they can be interpreted in more than one way and it is hard to work out which way the author actually meant us to interpret them..
 
So much for proof-reading. But it doesn’t stop there, because the editing or, more likely, the lack of editing makes the books difficult to read and impacts on the entertainment value.

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In Book 1, so little happens in the early chapters that I was thinking of giving up reading the book out of boredom. It made me wonder how many readers had used the ‘look inside’ feature on Amazon and done just that, passing the book by to go and look for something that grabbed their interest a bit quicker.
 
And it is a shame if they did that because, as I said above, the stories are quite good if you can just get passed these issues.
 
Later, some of the descriptive passages become repetitive or rambling. In some places the paragraphs make it hard to follow the plot and in other instances the paragraphs don’t make sense.

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"And now we get to the moral of this story "

To give another example to illustrate my point about the editing, at one point the author describes the light fading – when it was dawn and the light would be increasing. He probably meant that the darkness was lessening, or that the light was improving, but that’s not what he wrote. It’s the sort of thing an editor would point out and which is easy to correct.
 
And now we get to the moral of this story and the reason I hope you Indie authors have read this far.
 
Because these books deserve to be best-sellers but will never become so. The poor editing and proofreading make them appear amateurish.

Now we come to a question that you might like to answer. How would your books stand up by comparison?
 
Are you sabotaging yourself because you aren’t a good editor or proof-reader? It is entirely possible that you are if you aren’t getting other people to cast their eyes over your work.
 
Both editing and proof reading take time, we know. And anything that takes time usually costs money if we want someone else to do it for us. So, how do we avoid the sort of mistakes that I have described above, but without it costing us anything?

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You are not alone

This is where the ‘writing community’ can help. We can buddy up and look at each other’s work and tell the author which bits work for us and which bits don’t. At the very least we can spot the typos, punctuation errors and incorrect homonyms that I referred to earlier. And, best of all, we get to read a free book as well.
 
If we are doing things properly, then we will be editing and proofreading our own work anyway, so all we would be doing would be expending the same amount of time doing it for someone else, while they do ours. It costs us no more time than it was going to cost us anyway.
 
Here at Selfishgenie Publishing we have a golden rule that no book is published until it has been read at least 4 times by a minimum of two different people (that’s twice each, not 4 times each). If anything slips through the net after that, then at least we have done our best to prevent it.
 
And if you weren’t going to edit and proofread your own work – well, you may want to read this blog again and see if there is anything you may wish to reconsider.
 
If, by any chance, the author of the books I have referred to is reading this and recognises my references, please feel free to contact me (use the general enquiries email address given on our ‘contact’ page) and I’ll be happy to offer some feedback on the work. There is still the opportunity to withdraw these books from sale, sort them out and turn them into the best-sellers they could be.

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