Sunday, October 2, 2011

Check that ARC!

Somewhere, and I won't say where, a proofreader is about to earn her pay. I've had the privilege of reviewing a number of novels over the years, many in the ARC stage. The quality of the stories has varied, of course, and they all have a few errors. Who hasn't read even the best of books and not found a typo here and there? This is an especially dangerous problem for self-published work, but the best publishing houses are not exempt.

In the case I have in mind, the scheduled pub date is early 2012, and the author teaches writing and literature at a reputable college. The story he tells is a good one, full of twists and turns, terror and excitement. But the typos! I have never seen so many typos from a mainstream publisher, even in an ARC. We have many instances of characters pouring over records instead of poring over them, and scrapping when the context calls for scraping. At first it looked like someone over-relied on the spell-checker, which only flags misspelled words, not incorrect ones--and then came "dispite" and "underware," which never should have left the author's word processor. There are many more bloopers, but the worst one involves a character named Kurt. Use your imagination.

Perhaps a diligent proofreader will catch what needs to be caught. Perhaps she won't. My point is not to belittle anyone, but to warn writers to scour your manuscripts and galleys. Don't bet your reputation on someone else cleaning up all of your mistakes. The cleaner the manuscript is to start with, the less a proofreader can miss.

7 comments:

Morgan Mandel said...

I'm in the process of editing my manuscript once again because of just what you'ved mentioned. I'm deathly afraid of submitting it for reviews in poor condition. Your example begs the question, how many errors are allowed in ARCs?
I don't really know the answer to that one.
Morgan Mandel

Rasana Atreya said...

Like your commenter above, I'm afraid of leaving to it chance. Esp since I'm self pubbing. I probably have the opposite problem. Don't know when to stop.

Bob Sanchez said...

I claim no expertise on this, and I assume (guess) that ARCs are subject to further proofreading, so my reviews don't normally include comments about typos. Morgan, I will try to find out an answer to your question and post an informed reply.

Kevin R. Tipple said...

I think the standard is roughly about six per 300 pages. I don't know if that still exists today.

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Randy Rawls said...

Bob, Browsing and saw your post. Gotta say you are right-on. It doesn't matter who created the typo or misspelled word, the author will get the blame. Read carefully, my friends.