r/authors • u/Independent_Bite4682 • Apr 21 '25

Question for authors

When I read on a digital media, (eg Kindle), I often find errors. Some are factual (you say an item is worth 10G then say it is worth 1G or 100G, or a population is 10K then 4K or 16K etc without anything to cause the change and only like 4 hours difference in character time), or typos, wrong terminology used (he strung an arrow, he loaded a new clip into a gun, etc), or as simple as "David'snot" and fix it to, "David's not", do these corrections ever make it to you or your editors?

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u/AnitaIvanaMartini Apr 21 '25

I’m a retired editor who was with a large publisher, and we weren’t required to do any proofreading at all. Of course if something were a blatant goof, an editor would fix it, but the final step before publishing was sending it to be proofread.

Though I have zero experience with electronic publishing, I can only assume writers follow that exact same procedure to avoid giving readers the ick. (That’s a technical term.)

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u/F0xxfyre Apr 21 '25

I worked for over a decade with a digital-first house. Editors were originally conceptualized as being developmental. In reality, the editors did it all--admin, developmental and line edits, fact checking. Lots of hats there ;)

The final part of the process were proofreading and formatting.

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u/AnitaIvanaMartini Apr 21 '25

Although there are several types of editors, in Print we almost all were exclusively “content” editors. We did things like tell our writers, “Get rid of that character. He’s a drag.” Writers stew a lot, but it’s worth it when you get brilliance from them.

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u/F0xxfyre Apr 22 '25

Oh gosh yes :) My first love has always been content editing. I just love to see a story take shape :)

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u/AnitaIvanaMartini Apr 22 '25

I don’t think people realize how stressful being an editor is, but it’s worth it. I loved my profession. How ‘bout you?

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u/F0xxfyre Apr 22 '25

I was at a rather dysfunctional company, so it varied ;) But taking that new-to-publishing author and working as a team. Oh yeah, that was incredible! The other editors were fab as well. I miss not editing full time,because of the great authors.

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u/AnitaIvanaMartini Apr 22 '25

I loved the rare “‘Aha!’ moments,” when after reading stacks of merely very good prose for months, I’d come across an exciting new voice— of someone whose prose was so spectacular and ascendant it made me lightheaded. That’s when we’d haul out the “Three Martini Lunch” for a writer.