Be part of the Indie revolution

Indie Authors are a growing force inside the world of the written word, and it scares some of the big publishing houses that have ruled these waves for decades.

The Indie/Self Published Author revolution is gaining a head of steam that will just continue to generate forward momentum, pushing through traditional barriers and establishments that have guarded literature, protected it, but at the same time exercised profitable control over it.

Inside those supposed control measures has existed a degree of 'quality control' in so much as any book has needed to be of a given standard in terms of vocabulary and grammar. The big publishing houses employ people to ensure this is the case, proofreaders, editors, publishers etc. a whole host of 'beta readers' and anyone else they feel is needed. The trade off has always been that these people are paid out of their share of YOUR royalties, but the publishing house has then got an interest in getting your book sold. When you strip away all the fluffy talk, that is what it boils down to.

Anyway, as Indie/SP Authors these facilities are not at our finger tips and tend to be outside of the budget so they have to be taken 'in-house' or to be exact, taken on by the Author.

I have loved writing Russian Redemption, it was a whole new experience for me and one that has involved a lot of learning, and a lot of time outside of my comfort zone. The problem is, I am pretty crap at grammar. Having never attended a posh school or writer classes, and never really having an interest in either, when I started writing my book I wrote as it flowed in my head. I've also never been one for big words for the sake of big words. People (including some Authors) like to use big words because it impresses people, it also makes them feel important. One of my biggest bug bears is to have to read a book with a dictionary beside me; I know I'm stupid, I don't need some smarmy over educated author reminding me of my stupidity by writing stuff I can't understand without a copy of the concise English Dictionary in my other hand. Seriously, this is something that you need to consider when writing a book. I would suggest that if you've decided that your main character is an escapee from an orphanage in the back of beyond, his/her vocabulary would be appropriate to that upbringing. There may be times when this is not the case but for me to be able to relate to that you'd need to explain how he/she acquired an Oxford Uni vocabulary and accent. Otherwise it just ain't believable.

Anyway, to point of this blog - oh yes. As Indie/SP Authors it is my belief that the work we put out has got to be of the highest possible standard. It isn't good enough to write a few lines on the back of a cigarette packet and publish them just because you can, there has to be 'professional pride' in what you do. The big publishing houses would enjoy watching this revolution collapse. And a lack of professionalism can do a lot of damage to the world starting to take Indie/SP Authors seriously. To reiterate an earlier post, I was always going to find the money to get Russian Redemption proofread and published. Recognising my own short comings it was something that just had to be done. I owed it to my book, the potential reader and to myself.

But even that isn't enough sometimes.

So, on Saturday I received an email from a reader in the middle of Russian Redemption highlighting a number of 'typos' she'd identified. She was as good as gold about the whole thing and was only pointing them out as she felt I should know. She was right - I (and my proofreader/publisher Judi) want to know of any mistakes or errors, it's really important that readers feel comfortable to be able to do that. Judi and I checked through a paperback copy of the book and the original PDF that was sent to Amazon. Most of the typos that were raised involved a missing space after I'd used italics - the spaces were there on both the PDF and the paperback. The two other typo's that were highlighted were present in the paperback, but not in the PDF. They were misplaced punctuation marks. Two different issues here: One is the Amazon 'crunching' machine, the bit of software that converts your PDF to it's text reading format. And the other is that it seems that some reading devices are not all they are cracked up to be in their ability to download Amazon Kindle format. Be warned. Strangely, whilst checking the errors mentioned in the paperback version, I noticed another error - there is no page 2. It goes from page 1 to page 3 to another page 3, bummer. That is not on the PDF either! I suppose a point I'm trying to make is do the absolute best that YOU can because there's stuff outside of your control that's gonna crap you up anyway. Start from 100% and let the other stuff take you down to 80%, or start at 80% ..............