We’ve all
read bestsellers from the five major publishing companies containing errors
that jerk you right off the page.
Misspelled words. Words jammed
together. Missing words. Not to mention formatting problems and grammatical
goofs.
Yet you will
look through a book with yellowing pages in vain for these errors. I remember my mother and the librarian
clucking their tongues over a proofreading error found in a book long ago. Such errors were rarities. What has happened?
- · Self-publishing
- · Proofreading costs have risen
- · Shorter attention spans
- · Over-reliance on electronic proofreading programs
Self-Publishing
The bottleneck that once existed
between writer and publisher – the agent – no longer ferrets out writers who
have not polished their work to a high gloss.
It is a hard lesson to realize that you cannot proofread your own work.
Proofreading
Costs
Costs for professional proofreading
have risen and can amount to a significant fee, posing a particular problem for
many self-publishing authors.
Proofreaders estimate costs by the hour, page, and word. I’ve read estimates as high as 6 cents per
word for fiction.
Our
Attention Spans
Advertisers calculate that we now
have only a 30-second attention span. We
flit like butterflies from one thought to another. Proofreading requires a laser-like, sustained
focus.
Electronic
Proofreading Programs
While proofreading programs such as
spell-check provide a good place to start for an initial check of a document,
people can develop a false sense of security using such programs. A careful review by a patient, trained set of
eyes is still needed.
Singing the
Praises of My New Proofreader, Mary Goss
I met Mary Goss a few years ago at a
Sisters in Crime convention in Long Beach, which she was attending with author
friend Dianne Emley. She has proofread
my last two novels, and I was very pleased with her meticulous work. Over twenty five years of proofreading legal
prose has trained her eye and honed her skills.
Mary’s advice to writers is to try
to get a second set of eyes to read
through your manuscript, as it is difficult to spot errors in one’s own
work. If you cannot afford a
professional proofreader, find a detail-oriented person who has strong English
skills and at least a slight case of OCD.
Find beta readers. These are people who have an interest in you and your
work and want to see you do well. Beta readers are
fans of crime fiction and willing to read the entirety of your best first
draft. Beta readers are somewhat similar to your critique group members, but
your critique group may have read Chapter IV seventeen times. Beta readers have
fresh eyes. Anyone you can hornswoggle into doing this is valuable to some
extent, but most valuable will be the reader who can catch glaring errors.
Now I expect that Mary Goss may have
a built-in level of concentration that may be superior to mine or yours. She admits to a wee bit of OCD, but this
quirky quality is a good thing in a proofreader. She has likely honed her skills as a
proofreader over the 25 years that she has been reading court transcripts. Practicing a skill over decades certainly
would make you better at it.
Mary would like to expand her
business to proofread more works of fiction.
Her contact info is: iphone,
310-508-9476; e-mail, mkgoss@att.net
As author Isaac Bashevis Singer has
said, “A writer doesn’t die of heart failure, but of typographical errors.”
__________
Check out my webpage for a boxed set of the first four titles in "Writing Your First Mystery"
