The Unsung Heroes of the Literary World ~ Storyteller

Thursday, June 21, 2012

The Unsung Heroes of the Literary World

As I have posted several times before, Editors have the most thankless job in the Literary World. They are the unsung about heroes of the Literary World. They know English, Grammar, and about the Elements of Style. They not only have to tell writers that their babies are ugly, they have to point out period and comma, every misuse of a word, every misspelling, and a myriad of other problems of style, redundancy, and prose which raises its ugly head throughout their work.

Most readers will read a book or two from the same author before bothering to actually see who wrote it or write down their name to purposefully search out more works from the same author. Nobody ever picks up a book to look to see who edited it. By the same token the author will catch the flack for a book that contains grammatical errors and wasn’t properly proofed prior to being published, not the editor. As authors we will only be as good as our current editor as far as the mechanics of the story are concerned.

Indie Authors don’t generally have literary agents, publishing houses or professional editors and proof readers pouring over their books prior to publication. We have to wear many different hats throughout the process of writing, editing, proofing, formatting, and art work just to bring a book to market which hopefully looks and reads at least half-way professional.

I love the fact that authors aren’t generally competition for each other!

One it takes a writer much longer to write a novel than it does for a reader to read a book. When readers can consume literally hundreds of books over the course of a year they are obviously going to be reading stuff from a multitude of different authors. That’s why Authors, especially Indie Authors, can work together and join resources, help promote each other’s works and it not be a conflict of interest!

So in light of this I want to pass on the website to my editor. If you’re a new author, writing a book and planning to self-publish it in the near future, or have recently published and the book reviewers are crucifying your book because of the English and Grammar, you should look into professional editing! Seriously! What you write has the potential to be out there on the Web in some form or another for eons! Make it count! Make it professional! Put your best foot forward from the start. I didn’t when I started out. I thought I did, but I also know I rushed getting it published to get it out there.

My Editor Final-edits.com

Three Edits later and “Whisper” my first book is good. I have to still go back and make the corrections to my second novel when it gets back from the editor and re-release it. Time I could be spending writing another blockbuster, spent re-editing. Take my advice and do it right the first time.

Oh, Yeah, Today’s the last day my first Novel “Whisper” will be FREE on Amazon dot com.