[Fredster]

Just happened across this thread over on the Amazon boards and thought I'd share it. The readers care about these things, enough to discuss it. Indie books get mentioned quite a bit.

poor spelling, bad grammar, and weird punctuation in kindle book content

It took all my willpower not to make the subject "The importence of grammer punctuation: and speeling!!!"

 

[jackz4000]

No matter what someone pays for a book they do expect a high quality read.  It seems.

 

[Gregory Ashe]

I agree these things are important, but I think people are overly sensitive to spelling errors in indie works. Granted, there are some indie books that are riddled with problems, but I read regularly published books all the time that have lots of spelling and punctuation errors, and no one says boo about those.

 

[Kathleen Valentine]

HA! I've been reading on the back porch today. This book was published by Knopf and I'm stunned by the number of typos in it -- "he spun out of control like a car without breaks." Good grief.

 

[Fredster]

Maybe that car was just unbroken, Kathleen.

I must admit that I had a horrific typo in the first upload of my novel -- it wasn't even a word! I changed one sentence, and managed to use the word "hance" instead of "hands".

Mortified doesn't begin to cover what I felt when I discovered it a week later.

 

[Kathelm]

I agree these things are important, but I think people are overly sensitive to spelling errors in indie works. Granted, there are some indie books that are riddled with problems, but I read regularly published books all the time that have lots of spelling and punctuation errors, and no one says boo about those.

Agreed, but regularly published books don't start off with a stigma attached. After all, if you see a regularly published book on the shelf, you know that at least one person other than the author thought it was worth the asking price. These are readers who start reading an indie book expecting it to be terrible, and from them "pleasantly surprised" is about the highest praise an indie author can hope for.

In my opinion, indie authors need to try twice as hard to be taken seriously. Amazing and atrocious are more memorable than average.

 

[Coral Moore]

I'm actually rather encouraged about the new button to complain about quality and formatting, I hadn't noticed that before. I assume that after a certain number of complaints titles will be removed. Hopefully this will get rid of some of the chaff and better quality books will be easier to find. I don't think they came off hostile about indies in that thread at all.

Edited because I should check my own speeling <sic> before posting.

 

[Kathleen Valentine]

In my opinion, indie authors need to try twice as hard to be taken seriously.

I agree. I've found a few typos in my printed books -- mostly just punctuation -- but a few typos. In a book of over 130K words I'll forgive myself 5 minor mistakes but no more.

 

[Kathleen Valentine]

Maybe that car was just unbroken, Kathleen.

Fair point.

 

[Patty Jansen]

Totally, on the spelling errors.

On the other hand, I really hate it when people scream typos and the 'typos' in question are words with non-US spelling, which happened to me recently.

 

[jackz4000]

I agree these things are important, but I think people are overly sensitive to spelling errors in indie works. Granted, there are some indie books that are riddled with problems, but I read regularly published books all the time that have lots of spelling and punctuation errors, and no one says boo about those.

I'm sorry to disagree but the spelling should be the correct spelling. That is just a minimum. If the draft has been read many times and editied and proofed the spelling should be correct.

I encounter quite a few errors, typos and bad spelling in Traditional pubbed books no reason for Indies to have that bad habit too. Punctuation? Hhhmmm, that too but we are becoming a nation of texters.

 

[Lynn McNamee]

I must admit that I had a horrific typo in the first upload of my novel -- it wasn't even a word! I changed one sentence, and managed to use the word "hance" instead of "hands".

Mortified doesn't begin to cover what I felt when I discovered it a week later.

Actually, "hance" is a word. It's a variant of "haunch." Therefore, whatever you thought they were doing with their hands, they were actually doing with their hip.

 

[BTackitt]

Spelling errors DO matter even in tradpub books. They irk many readers to NO END.. Trad pubs just don't give a fatflyingmonkeypoo about it, if THEY deem it acceptable, what choice does the book buyer have. I used to regularly send snail mail, then later e-mails, to publishers and authors alike.

I still do, difference being, indies care and make changes.

 

[jtplayer]

Granted, there are some indie books that are riddled with problems, but I read regularly published books all the time that have lots of spelling and punctuation errors, and no one says boo about those.

You know, I gotta call b.s. on this. Name the specific books please. I see this "claim" all the time, and I just cannot relate. I am a voracious reader, mostly big 6 published books, but lately a lot more indie published ebooks. I rarely, if ever, find errors in the traditionally published books. Certainly not "lots" of spelling errors.

In my mind, many independent writers throw this up as an excuse for their poor work.

Edit:

I'm not saying mistakes don't happen in traditionally published books, just that they do not occur with the frequency of indie ebooks.

 

[Ryne Billings]

You know, I gotta call b.s. on this. Name the specific books please. I see this "claim" all the time, and I just cannot relate. I am a voracious reader, mostly big 6 published books, but lately a lot more indie published ebooks. I rarely, if ever, find errors in the traditionally published books. Certainly not "lots" of spelling errors.

In my mind, many independent writers throw this up as an excuse for their poor work.

I actually do see published books with errors quite frequently. It seems most common with Penguin books, Wizard of the Coast books, and Tor books. That's what I've seen, personally, though. There are others, but I manage to put it out of mind whenever I'm done with the books. I just remember coming across quite a few typos in the Dresden Files, various Forgotten Realms books, and in The Sword of Truth.

Again, I manage to put the errors out of mind, so I am normally incapable of remembering what books I find typos in, unless that are a fairly large number.

With all that in the open, let me make it clear that I find the use of that excuse disturbing.

 

[jtplayer]

Spelling errors DO matter even in tradpub books. They irk many readers to NO END.. Trad pubs just don't give a fatflyingmonkeypoo about it, if THEY deem it acceptable, what choice does the book buyer have. I used to regularly send snail mail, then later e-mails, to publishers and authors alike.

I still do, difference being, indies care and make changes.

Correction, some independent writers care. Many others don't. Or worse yet, they have no awareness whatsoever of how bad their work is, both with the work itself, and the quality of the presentation.

 

[jtplayer]

I actually do see published books with errors quite frequently. It seems most common with Penguin books, Wizard of the Coast books, and Tor books. That's what I've seen, personally, though. There are others, but I manage to put it out of mind whenever I'm done with the books. I just remember coming across quite a few typos in the Dresden Files, various Forgotten Realms books, and in The Sword of Truth.

Again, I manage to put the errors out of mind, so I am normally incapable of remembering what books I find typos in, unless that are a fairly large number.

With all that in the open, let me make it clear that I find the use of that excuse disturbing.

Like you, I also gloss over the errors. Although it shouldn't be that way. In my mind, writers should take pride in their work, and making sure it is as error free as possible is part of that. And as independents, the burden is all on you for making it right.

Back to the traditionally published books, I guess I must be lucky, as I rarely find mistakes in the stuff I read. I read mysteries and thrillers and literary fiction mostly. Some of my favorites are James Lee Burke, Robert Crais, Michael Connelly, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, etc.

 

[Kathelm]

You know, I gotta call b.s. on this. Name the specific books please. I see this "claim" all the time, and I just cannot relate.

I find that ebook conversions are the worst. One example: the nook version of "The Sum of All Men" by David Farland. It looks like the ebook was created by scanning a dirty hard copy. There are stray commas and apostrophes galore. Likewise, just about anything converted by google books.

 

[MegHarris]

The problem is that some indie books are filled with egregious errors. There are certainly traditionally published books with typos, but the worst trad pubbed books don't begin to rival the worst indie books. Hence (not hance ), we all start with a stigma we have to overcome by producing the cleanest manuscript possible.

I find that ebook conversions are the worst. One example: the nook version of "The Sum of All Men" by David Farland. It looks like the ebook was created by scanning a dirty hard copy. There are stray commas and apostrophes galore. Likewise, just about anything converted by google books.

A couple of months ago, I wrote a blog entry about the worst example of this I've seen, on an old Albert Payson Terhune book One of the quotes I gave from the book as an example:

To clear upj in a handful of words, the mystery of Nina^s breeding, her diaai was Shawe's long-pedigreed and r^stered aad prize-winnki^ tricolour colKe, Shawemere Queen. Her sire was Upstreet Butcherboy, the fiercest and gamest and strongest and most murderous pit-terrier ever loosed ufxm a doomed oppo^iefit.

However, I think this is from one of those pubs that reissues out-of-print stuff, not a traditional publisher. I've seen some fairly bad stuff from traditional publishers (the Nancy Drew books have quite a few scanning errors), but nothing that rivals this one. And even this kind of thing doesn't approach the very worst of indie books, I'm sorry to say. Scanning errors are one thing, and a total inability to handle the English language is another.

 

[jtplayer]

I find that ebook conversions are the worst. One example: the nook version of "The Sum of All Men" by David Farland. It looks like the ebook was created by scanning a dirty hard copy. There are stray commas and apostrophes galore. Likewise, just about anything converted by google books.

I'm assuming that when folks claim traditionally published books are filled with errors, they're talking about the print version. Maybe I'm wrong, and what you're describing is actually the case