"Editing Your Book: It's a Basic Requirement, Not a Selling Point"

Browsing through my Twitter feed this morning, I came across this pure gem:

Editing your book: it’s a basic requirement, not a selling point. http://t.co/fuSmeAGPTv @EditorJamieC #askeditor @RobertEdits
— Michelle Ule (@Michelleule) November 3, 2013

 I've written about the importance of editing before, including at Emlyn Chand's excellent Novel Publicity, but still too many writers are ignoring it.

The problem, as far as I can tell, is that editing costs money, is voluntary, thus writers want to skip it. There's a shared trait in many creative people - we don't like criticism. After dedicating months or years to a project who wants to pay someone to tear it apart? This, in my eyes, remains one of the biggest issues with self-published books; that anyone can upload their writing to Amazon with zero editing, fact-checking or accountability to quality means that for the first time in publishing there is no guarantee of a basic standard. When you buy Random House's latest book you can be sure that it's properly formatted, has been edited and proofed multiple times and non-fiction books will be fact checked. Conversely, when you buy a book on Amazon's platform, it could literally be the work of a toddler whose proud parents uploaded it to the Web in the hope that their child becomes the Mozart of the literary world.

Like many, I try to downplay this with the suggestion that the cream rises to the top, and these wannabe writers will quickly be found out. I'm sure that's true to an extent, and while I could discuss both sides of that argument all day long I'll mention just one point here: it doesn't matter too much. The people who don't yet own Kindles use that as a big reason why they don't want one, or why people who do own them won't buy cheap or free books from the store. Given that many new authors - even those who have put the time and money into making it as good as possible - will launch with a free or cheap price, the upshot of this is the platform is being affected by those who release garbage.

(And never underestimate how much garbage is submitted to publishers - but now, rather than the public being mercifully spared these offerings, they can be self-published with no warning to their inadequacy.)

Thankfully, plenty of authors fully appreciate how important editors are and put their book through the process. Unfortunately, plenty of authors think they're good enough at catching the errors, and friends will catch what they miss. I'll put it bluntly: this isn't true. It undermines what editors actually do - which far exceeds catching typos.

Self-publishing's popularity today, combined with bloggers and free marketing opportunities makes it possible for indie authors to gain a wide and loyal following, thus creating a lucrative career. There's every chance of that happening now if the work is put in. But it requires dedication and effort, and if you want to write and sell more than one book, each and every one needs to be professional standard.

I frequently tell my clients that they're not just selling books, they're selling their name. We all have our favourite authors and we will buy their books because their name is on the cover - if you have any hope of readers doing the same with your books, they need to be bulletproof in their quality. Your name and reputation is literally at stake here; what no author wants is for the word of mouth reviews to be "Yeah, the story was ok, but it was so full of errors and badly written that I couldn't finish it."

Good editing means readers don't even think about it, they can just read the book. A bad book is one that keeps the reader distracted with dodgy formatting and endless errors.

Yes, editors cost money. As they should, they're selling a professional service. It's an investment, that an editor will make the book good so you have a fighting chance of establishing a good reputation and selling your writing. You wouldn't build a house and not hire an electrician or plumber, so why write a book and not hire an editor?

Christmas Trees for Literary Fans

Whether you're a reader or a writer, you're happy and grateful that books exist. Most of us have never thought about having anything other than a Christmas tree (real or fake) in the festive season, but some have.

Following my earlier post of the book Christmas tree, Linda Lee directed me to the ones she's found online, which you can see below.

Have you found any others, and what are your favourites?

Amazon Matchbook - Finally!

I don't own a Kindle. I'm not alone in that, but there's a certain peculiarity for me, as I'm a huge fan of technology and also of reading, so Amazon's marketers would expect me to be first in line.

But I never have been.

Not that I don't understand the appeal or the benefit - in 2011 I spent 6 months in America with my then-girlfriend (then fiance, then wife), and our shared appreciation of books meant we spent a fair amount of time in Barnes & Noble. Buying books. I purchased a few hardbacks and some paperbacks, all of which were quickly enjoyed. Then came the day of packing to board the plane and suddenly those hardbacks didn't seem like such a wise investment - they took up considerable space, but also, worse, valuable weight. Adopting the "We never leave a man behind" military approach I got each book home safely, tucked away into their appropriate places in the bookcase.

Shortly after, I bought my wife a Kindle, as she decided she wanted one. I saw the benefit - especially after that flight - but I wasn't ready to part with real books. I'm still not. Given the choice, I will buy a CD over a digital song purely for the fact that I enjoy the aesthetics and the effort that went into the liner notes and images. Music and books still represent art to me, total products, and increasingly the digital world seemed to be devaluing them to me, reducing the total products to commodities.

Romantic ideals aside, I wasn't ready for a Kindle for other reasons - I like scanning my bookshelf and having a title jump out at me, I enjoy flicking through a book, I like the smell and texture. I like books. The digital copies don't accommodate those facets, and I haven't been ready to sacrifice them for portability and convenience.

I could buy real ones and digital ones

I could, but I wouldn't (I am, however, more open to that now). What I never understood is why there wasn't the same solution for books there is for music and film - buy the physical thing and get the option to have the digital files too. Amazon couldn't do it because of the rights, and it seems publishers were too stubborn and felt it would undermine their business model - which has been eroding beneath them anyway. I'm a strong believer that if a consumer buys a product, they should be able to consume it in the way they desire, and not need to buy it multiple times. I was ecstatic when I bought a DVD one day and found a sticker explaining I could watch it on my electronic devices too, just like we've been enjoying with CDs for years

Welcome Amazon Matchbook

Finally, the publishing world has caught up. I read this wonderful news last week, and if you haven't yet heard of it, the gist of it is this: Matchbook will let you get digital copies of books you already own for up to $3 (and as little as nothing). It's not quite as good as the way it works with music and films, but it's a leap in the right direction. There's now a solution for people like me - buy the physical book, and enjoy the digital version for convenience (or, if you're very particular, read the digital one and keep the physical one in pristine condition. Maybe one day books will be so rare they'll be hugely expensive collectibles).

The bad news is that this is only in America for now, and most books aren't on it. But given that Amazon is behind it, it shouldn't be long before both of those things change. As soon as it hits the UK, my publishing company will be placing our books to Matchbook, so our customers can enjoy the books in both formats without having to pay out for both.

This new development is great for the consumer, and also great for the industry. With any luck it will end the arguments of whether or not 'real' books will die to digital books, and we can get down to what really matters: enjoying the output of the hard-working authors in whatever format we choose. It could also prove to be a big boost to the publishing industry - an indication that it will stop seeing digital books as the enemy and embrace them as a way to sell more copies, reach a wider audience, and increase its bottom line.

As I see it, writers, readers and publishers have a shared interest of appreciating literature, and Matchbook makes it easier for all three to come closer together.

An Agent Agent? Just Say No

Earlier this week I read an enlightening post at Jennifer Represents, the blog of literary agent Jennifer Laughran. In this particular entry, Jennifer posts a great mock conversation with her and an agent agent (which I won't reproduce her but I urge you to click the above link to read the entry), as well as the following, which I've included here to explain what an agent agent is:

Much more often -- every couple of weeks at least -- I get the same basic thing but in email form:

Subject Line: AUTHOR REFERRAL!

Hi Agent, I'm Random McNoname, and I'm writing to reffer [sic] my client Author Sapsucker to you. Sapsucker has a pHd in Neurocathology [sic] and 78 followers on twitter so he's the real deal. The manuscript is attached, I look forward to hearing from you by next week.

If you're not quite following, this is the gist: Jennifer is an agent. Authors need agents to send their manuscripts to publishing companies that won't deal with unsolicited submissions. Agents are easy to get hold of - they have to be, because their livelihood depends entirely on having authors to represent. Somewhere along the line, deceitful cunning people have created a new job, that of the agent agent - an agent that an author pays to find them an agent for their book. As if getting published wasn't hard enough...

Jennifer further explains:

These are what I call "agent-agents" or third-party queriers. They convince authors that their "services" are necessary to query (aka spam) literary agents*. Authors who are totally new and/or desperate will take the bait and pay, in the hopes that it will give them a leg up on the competition. 

But it won't give a leg up on the competition, all it will do is frustrate or anger the agent, cost the author a lot of money, and all but guarantee their work is rejected on the basis that the agent agent is causing problems. The agent agent works on the premise of 'if you throw enough mud at a wall, some of it will stick' i.e. hit up enough agents and one may show interest. As such, they don't take the time to research each individual agent and find out what books or categories they represent; after all, a rejection doesn't matter to them, it matters to the author, so they need no qualms about accuracy. Spamming an agent is the quickest way I can think of to alienate an agent - and the very last thing any author wants to do is alienate agents. If they remember the title of the author or the book, that can haunt the writer if they approach the agent directly after ditching the agent agent - we all make mistakes and act in ignorance, but agents can afford to be picky about who they represent and who is going to want to recommend someone who doesn't do basic research into the appropriate steps to take?

Remember, budding authors, agents represent authors. By virtue of that fact, they need to hear from you, get to know you, and communicate with you and you alone. Querying is a step that authors need to take for themselves, and authors are already being represented - by their books.

Querying can be time consuming and tedious, but it isn't hard. It's made much easier by agents, because they post visibly on their websites how to approach them and clear instructions on what to include with a query. Paying someone else to do that for you isn't just expensive, it's alienating. 

Writing a Book With Dictation Software

In simpler times (last year) the thought of writing a book through talking had never occurred to me. Not that I didn't think it was against a writer's ethics, it just didn't enter my mind. Then the Day of Change came: through editing a client's book, I found her mentor's book writing how-to guide, in which he recommends writing a book through dictation. It seemed like a good idea to me to incorporate a dictation program into my suite of software used for work, and I obtained a copy of Dragon, which is what I gather to be the most popular and feature-rich dictation program out there.

Before going any further, I'll admit that I didn't get around to writing a book with Dragon. I didn't even write a letter with it. I learned shortly after installing it that I think and write much faster through my hands than my mouth - meaning dictation software just slows me down. Colour me crazy if necessary, but the words flow much easier when I'm not thinking about them, and verbalising everything required definite thinking.

That being said, I understand that there are people out there who would prefer to use a dictation program to get their words done - and if I ever break my hands or find my hands too cold to type, I'll be doing the same.

So, if you're wondering if Dragon is worth the money, and you're sure you'll use it, I can confidently say it is worth the money, in the sense that it is excellent at what it does. It has a superb training section where it gets to learn your voice and how you pronounce certain words, minimising the chances of typos. It also can control your entire computer, from opening programs to shutting down, with Dragon, you won't need to touch your keyboard again (so extreme germophobes may also be interested in a copy).

Dragon also has mobile apps, so you can record your thoughts on the go and then sync it with the computer version later. The usefulness of that is without question - if you get an idea as you're drifting off to sleep or while cooking dinner, you can get it noted without having to write or go to the computer.

Dragon also allows editing, so you can tell it where to place the cursor and then input new words, or delete as necessary.

Dragon's downside is the price: coming in at £149, it's on the steep side for casual users. If you're not interested in controlling your whole computer with your voice, it may be worth exploring other options.

If you're a Mac user, you can stop looking straight away. Mavericks, the latest system update, improves the native dictation ability tremendously. You can now create entire documents with your voice, using a hotkey command (by default you active Dictation by double tapping the Fn key, but this is configurable in System Preferences). The program understands commands like 'New paragraph' and gets to know your voice to improve accuracy. In my own testing of this, it works very well - certainly good enough to not require spending money on a different program.

The downside of course is there are no apps that sync to it from on the go, but that's not necessarily a problem - you can use Evernote to sync between mobile and desktop, or create notes using voice commands on your phone and copy them to the computer later.

Is Writing a Book This Way Possible?

Absolutely. Creating any document via dictation is a simple process, and certainly one I'd use if it wasn't considerably faster for me to type. The software mentioned here are both able to interpret words properly and understand formatting and editing commands, which makes writing part or all of any document very simple indeed. 

A Ratings System for Teen Fiction

Attending the London Book Fair yesterday (April 16), a seminar entitled "Does Teen Fiction Require a Ratings System?" caught my attention. The discussion featured author C J Daugherty and children's book reviewer Dinah Hall. I wasn't able to listen to the seminar in its entirety, but it was a fascinating topic with some very interesting discourse.

Society today largely revolves around children, and perhaps too much. In the entertainment world, children are restricted from certain themes or content, but whereas films have age restrictions and music has parental guidance stickers, books lack any external content information system. Yet are we protecting them too much anyway? An audience member commented that the idea of keeping children in a protected bubble is an adult construct with no grounds in reality - in other words, children are already exposed to 'adult' content far more than is often admitted. C J validated this with tales of her own experience - when researching her books, she spent a lot of time listening to teenagers in public, and said it was "an education". They are discussing themes and using language that many parents would like to think they are ignorant of. She also made the point that ratings are really for the parents rather than the child; they exist so the parent can be aware of what the child is consuming, but kids will read, watch and listen to things regardless - if their friends are doing it, they'll do it too, with or without an age restriction.

C J Daugherty and Dinah Hall discussing a ratings system for teen fiction

Censorship is always a divisive topic, and C J mentioned that with or without a ratings system, there exists a self-editing mentality anyway, as even if she wanted to include certain words or themes she knows her "editor won't want to edit it, the publisher won't want to publish it, and Tesco won't stock it". While there may be a strong argument for not exposing young people to certain themes, is the focus on children stifling creativity?