There's nothing much better than reading a great book.
Unfortunately, even the best books can be cheapened by writing errors. It is demoralizing when
readers return poorly written ebooks for refunds. In the past six months, I
have returned a number of Kindle books for full refunds. The stories were
excellent in most cases; however, the writing was not good enough for a
published work.
Ebooks
are not new; however, the sheer volume of indie ebooks has grown phenomenally
over the past several years. Unfortunately, not all indie authors are
careful about publishing a polished, error-free ebook. People all over
the world have been reading professionally published print and digital books
for years and years. Readers have been exposed to professionally edited
publications their entire lives and this is the main standard of comparison.
When you self-publish, your writing is judged by those commercial publishing
standards.
It is never acceptable for books to exhibit a lack of writing
expertise with errors in grammar, mechanics, or word choice. Incorrect homonym,
homophone, apostrophe, and verb tense usage exhibits a serious lack of
expertise in written language on the part of the writer. Sometimes writers
decide to allow friends and/or family to proofread manuscripts and, frankly,
this never works.
All indie authors should find a professional editor to proofread
final manuscripts prior to publishing an ebook. Even so, editors are not all
created equal. A good editor can correct all types of writing and language
errors during the proofreading process. When an editor is not well-versed in
written language, the result is a self-published book that reflects poorly on
the writer.
