I finally started to read “Writing the Breakout Novel” by Donald Maass and was a little surprised by something he said. He was debunking myths about the business of writing and how to become successful, when he mentioned editors won’t necessarily make your novel shine anymore. What? If we can’t count on our editor to make our novel the best it can be, who can we count on?
Before you fall off your seat, if you haven’t already, Maass does state that there are editors out there who will help you fix the problems in your book. However, there are many who are overworked and simply don’t have the time. Have you ever read a best-seller and wondered how those obvious grammar errors were not caught? Or what about the fact that the heroine had blue eyes in chapter one, but by chapter ten her eyes were brown? I've noticed flaws in best-selling novels quite often and thought the editors were simply afraid to touch the author’s masterpiece. Granted, that does happen, but the problem tends to stem more from too much work than anything else. Maass goes on to state that paperback editors can be responsible for three novels a month and one editor he knows has a hundred titles annually. Could you imagine?
What are authors doing to help solve this problem? They’re submitting work that is as near polished as possible. Sometimes they use a critique group to help them get to that point and other times they hire an outside editor.
It's disappointing to see the publishing industry has changed so much. Gone are the days of promoting each and every author, and now editing is not even guaranteed. Wow. That was a shocker for me. Such a shame. But, let me be clear, I'm not blaming the editors or even the industry. Publishers are doing what they have to do in order to survive. Editors simply can't do more than what's humanly possible. Unfortunately, this affects all of us. When an unedited book is printed with flaws/errors/mistakes (whatever you'd like to call them), this reflects upon the author, the editor, and the publishing house. None of which is good for sales.
Have you read novels that obviously hadn’t been edited? As a writer, how does that make you feel?
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Authors need to be their own editors first. I can shrug off a few typos and things here and there but its lazy writing that gets my goat.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, Travis. Having an editor is not an excuse to send a manuscript out unpolished. However, we do tend to expect editors to tweak our work since we can't possibly find everything wrong with our babies. We're blind to their flaws. That's exactly why we need other writers or professional editors to read our work. Still, even after doing that, I'd prefer to have my editor review my work one last time. Printing mistakes only makes the author look bad in the end.
ReplyDeleteLynnette Labelle
I have read a novel where the first part of chapter 1 was in present tense then the rest of the book was in past tense. I can't understand how something like this was missed, except this was a big name author and it was automatically assumed the story was polished.
ReplyDeleteI try to keep in mind that we're all human. I know some authors who have caught errors after printing, which is frustrating. But a publisher isn't going to recall the books to change it. On the bright side, we have fair warning on the issue and can go the extra mile to do our part.
ReplyDeleteIt’s hard to believe the publishing industry is falling to such lows. As if it wasn’t bad enough that they don’t promote most of their writers, now they can’t ensure we have the highest quality story before it appears in print?
ReplyDeleteI think it's unfair to say the industry has fallen to such "lows"--the industry is fighting to survive, to ensure we still have books on the shelves. They're not evil or lazy. They're saddled with an outdated way of selling books (essentially on consignment), and it's slowly killing them. They cannot afford to promote everything (they can barely afford to pay their staff decent wages), and after the economic downturn, editors are more overworked than ever because a whole bunch of their colleagues were laid off.
One of the other myths Donald Maass debunked at SiWC recently was the idea that if you don't get enough promotion for your book, that will sink its chances.
It isn't true. Promotion convinces people to take your book off the shelf and consider buying it, but they make the decision to buy based on the words on the page. A lousy book, promoted to the hilt, will fail faster due to negative word of mouth. And great books with zero promotion surprise everyone regularly--it just takes them a while to build up steam.
To blame a lack of publicity for a book's failure is really a way for a writer to wriggle out of taking the blame for what they should be owning up to--their book didn't resonate with readers. Publicity wouldn't have fixed that.
Wow. And yes, I've read way too many novels that had huge errors, never mind the small ones. I especially liked your example of the changing eye colour-- that one seems to happen a lot, and it drives me insane.
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ReplyDeleteThere obviously was something lost in the "translation". ;) I said it's a shame (meaning: that overworked editors are the norm now). Many editors don't have the time to edit the work. That doesn't mean they don't care. They just can't do what's not humanly possible. That is the industry's fault. However, you're right. They're only doing what they have to in order to survive. It's just too bad it had to come to this. That's my point. I wasn't bashing the industry, publisher, or editors. Sorry if it came across that way. What I'm mostly concerned about is the fact that unedited books are printed, which makes the author and the editor look bad, which isn't fair to either of them.
ReplyDeleteLynnette Labelle
Maybe they should print fewer books that they could both edit well and market heavily.
ReplyDeleteI'm reading that same book now too...if you count 'leaving it on my bookshelf and starting at it now and again' as 'reading' it. Maybe once NaNo is over I can dive into it.
Thanks for clarifying, Lynnette! Sorry I had misunderstood you.
ReplyDeleteI've definitely read some with mistakes. One recently had a period that was obviously in the wrong spot and then another grammatical error. Of course I was thinking "What the heck is that author's editor getting paid for???" Obviously I know the writer is responsible too, but I could not believe that no one found the mistakes.
ReplyDeleteI once read a book that was full of grammatical errors, but it was by a best-selling author who had been publishing for over twenty years. I couldn't believe it, but I figured they could get away with anything.
ReplyDeleteI certainly have. It makes me feel upset that such typos and errors can get in print. I've also noticed very strange conversation/paragraph combinations. Not the way I was taught.
ReplyDeleteYes, I've definitely read novels where mistakes were aplenty, but there's one thing that must be kept in mind.
ReplyDeleteAfter spending months on end writing, researching, writing, researching and then writing some more, the author's eyes become blind to many small mistakes.
You can look over a page a million times and still miss the same mistake every time. I think that's why critique groups and beta readers are virtually invaluable.
I've written two complete manuscripts - mulitple short stories and I can still go back through them and find a typo/mistake.
The author is responsible for polishing the manuscript to within an inch of perfect, but like I said before - mistakes will be overlooked unless you have fresh eyes.
:-)
I've read quite a few novels that needed some serious editing. Often, I've wondered how such award winning novelist got away with this while I am toiling away to make my MS perfect. It's annoying at times to see this, but I am sure their first novels were scrutinized as hard as ours are being, the first time around. I've thought of hiring an editor, but they are so expensive, so I stick with crit groups. Hope it works out in the long run. *fingers crossed*
ReplyDeleteThat book and companion workbook are on my top three writer's tool list.
ReplyDeleteGuess professional editors are raking it in these days because the days of pub house editors doing it for authors are pretty much gone.
Ugh! I hate reading novels with glaring errors in them- the color of a car changes mid-story or the protagonist is fourteen on one page and thirteen on the next (not a time travel book!). It drives me nuts- shouldn't the author want their work polished before it hits the shelves?
ReplyDeleteI run across errors in published books pretty often. And I think we just have to take the responsibility on ourselves.
ReplyDeleteOne of the writers in my RWA group just got her first sale with Harlequin and they were able to fast track her book because she turned in such a polished manuscript. So all that scrutinizing and crit group work we do could be the thing to put us over the edge into getting sold.