Lesson 38

Writing Class 101 by Rick Kurtis
 
Lesson 38
Edit, edit, edit
Welcome back; I hope you are having fun with your books, and enjoying my lessons. I have no doubt that you have found typos or mistakes in my other thirty-seven lessons. These were only edited by myself, and my wife, and myself again. Just for fun, send me your thoughts. Let me know what you’re working on. If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know. Meanwhile, I want to relay what I have run into.

. Remember when I told you that I was so proud and disappointed with my very first book? How I wrote the story without chapters, had it edited by a professional, my college professor, then sent it to a vanity publisher along with $3000, had it edited by their professional editor in the Chicago style to which I made all the corrections, and it was placed on the market.
I had no sales, and was told that my price was too high, I had no chapters, the prologue was not a prologue, the back cover was written wrong, and my book was placed in the wrong category on Amazon. This was all handled by the vanity publishing company who never gave me any of those suggestions.
After two years, the contract ran out, and I pulled my book from their control, which made them pull my book from their sites. I only had twenty-six dollars in sales, which amounted to roughly eight books sold. That income sat for two years, because they only pay when it exceeds $100 in commissions.
Now with my newfound knowledge, I am tearing the book apart and redoing it, paging through the book word by word, paragraph by paragraph, and punctuation by punctuation. This became a humongous eye-opener, because I found so many mistakes missed by, or made by the professional editors. I approved their corrections thinking that they were the professionals. Yes, they were small, and minor, like a quotation mark facing the wrong way, or instead of the word whole, it was spelled hole. There instead of their, some other ones that I could not figure out, like a phrase, period, a comma, quotation mark to say something. Two lines later, a phrase, a comma, quotation mark, almost the same action to say something else. It didn’t make sense. I found a comma after the word and in a sentence.
In the Chicago style they wanted a double S for names that ended in S, such as, Dennis’s foot. Reading through the book I noticed they missed about half of them. Dennis’ foot.
All I can convey from this is that my story, or my book was so compelling that they forgot what their job entailed, and they became so engrossed with the story that they too read right through. We are all human, and we all make mistakes and typos.
The more you do, the better you will become. Once again I will say after editing, don’t just take their word for it that they know what they are doing. Also, my vanity publisher didn’t do structure editing, just punctuation and spelling. Some of my sentences made me question, “What did I say?" It worked, but it really did not flow. A suggestion would have been nice once in a while. Especially when you’re paying them to help you publish your book. This brings me to the point, “Buyer beware." You do not always get what you pay for, even by professionals.
Following this class, I think I will try to give some pointers on the Chicago style. Maybe someone in class knows more than I, and can help add, or they may know the European-style for our European friends across the pond. Whichever, I will end for today. So please, check, check, and check again. Enlarge your print, read it out loud, and double space your lines so you can make corrections in red ink. This way you can find the corrections when you rewrite. This should all be done before sending it off to a professional editor. You then make those corrections, and reread, and edit again, yourself. I hope you have enjoyed the time that we have spent together, and until next week,
 
Happy writing, and editing from rickkurtisbooks.com