Curious to follow your example about what you deem bad editing, I followed your link to the review of a Triskelion anthology. The review in itself is based on what the reviewer thought of the story lines. Would it alter my decision to purchase the book? No. What one person loves another person hates. It is that reviewer’s POV, and she is welcome to it.

But tell me, how much do you know about the reviewer? Well, let me answer that for you. At one time Kate Cuthbert was Chief Editor for a rival e-publishing house. I have seen the books that she has edited, and my opinion of her editorial skills are less than savory. Editing is a beast that cannot be caged. What one editor thinks is right, another editor will come up with arguments explaining why it isn’t. Editing should be done from the editor’s AND author’s POV. That is, they collaborate together to come up with a final product they both believe shows the book in its best light.

Because of Ms. Cuthbert’s status as an editor, she should have backed up her claims of poor editing with examples, otherwise she simply comes across as someone trying to sabotage the sales of a rival publishing house.

Now, I made an assumption here. I am not so naive to believe there is only one Kate Cuthbert in this world, so if this is a case of mistaken identity, I readily offer my apologies. Having said that, if a good reviewer is going to make claims of poor editing, she must, IMO, provide examples so that the buyer can properly be aware.

Nobody is perfect!!

I am an avid reader… and I’ve found errors in probably 80% of all books I’ve read for pleasure. I usually tend to laugh them off … and move on. What good does it do to do anything else? Bad mouth the publisher… the author… the editor? It’s unproductive.

And ultimately, you… the reader who has deemed herself far too good to be lowered to reading something less than perfect… who will suffer. Because of a blanket decision, you may have just excluded the possibility of enjoying another truly wonderful story.

To err is human… to really mess up requires a computer. Such is the nature of the world today… almost everything we do involves technology. And technology messes up.

Let she who has never made a typo publish the first perfect novel…

And Fiona, I agree that it was nice to hear from Pam about her book.

Pam I didn’t mean to try and make you look bad here. My main frustration is directed at the publisher.

As for Cece’s comment, I would agree. Those are probably the typos missed most often. The best example I can give of this. Have you ever seen the paragraph/sentence that gets passed around the internet, where it’s a mess of misspelled words, with the letters out of order, etc. And the point of the paragraph is that you can still read it despite the craziness of how it’s written?

That’s what happens with the real word being replaced with one that’s very similar. As an editor, I go over a book, three, four, five times. But the brain is a tricky thing and some things your eye might skip over, despite your best attempts to read every word, look at every punctuation mark. After a certain number of times reading, the people working on the book see what should be there, not what’s actually there.

That’s why it’s easier for readers to pick out the typos–because they’re looking at it with fresh eyes.

Now, this is meant to be a brief explanation and please, don’t think I’m saying a book riddled with typos and errors is acceptable, because I don’t think that at all. I work very hard to produce a clean book, as do the authors I know. But I also know that the books I’ve worked on may have typos. Not because we didn’t work our asses off on the book, but because ten people can look at a book and still there will be errors. It’s a frustrating fact.