I’m on a break between deadlinedeadlinewriteitnow! copywriting assignments I’m trying to finish before my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew arrive, and, lost in some web-browsing, I was about to post the following in the comments for a blog article called “Holding self-publishers to account for quality”.
As my cursor hovered over the “Submit” button, I realized I really don’t want to get into any debates on the internet. I hate them, they do nobody good, and long, hard experience has taught me to steer away from that moment where something in me gets hooked and wants to pick a fight. So I closed the tab.
“¦but I did save the text to my clipboard. I might as well bleat my point here on my own little hill where it hurts nobody. (You can infer from the title the gist of the original poster’s thesis.)
You’re judging all self-published work here by a single bad experience. You’re not alone in doing that””it’s the default position: “Self-published work is shoddy.” Yet every traditionally published book I’ve read this year has contained typos””so, as they say, that dog don’t hunt. The argument may once have held, but now it seems to be the nasty refuge of writers with a hope-horse in the traditional publishing race.
What’s apparently being left out of the process on both sides is good editing; perhaps that’s because this is a human skill that hasn’t been””can’t be””commodified the way print production has. With a shrunken budget in either case, it gets skipped.
That said, editing is something I want to invest in for this next book. The price is generally ghastly, which I can understand, given how time-consuming it is, but later down the line I’ll be searching to see if editorial services are turning up in the wake of the indie publishing armada.
Suggestions welcome!