I used to finish every book. Good, bad, indifferent, I soldiered on, committed to the words, to the concept of digesting what the author had on offer. Mining for nuggets.
Back then, even the stinkers often provided a hidden gem or two or three. I learned about a place, a time. I found common ground with a character, even if that was in negative space. I learned about worth, relevance, and how to discriminate amongst many character flaws or actions. I learned about consequences.
I learned that I liked certain kinds of writing and why. I read broadly, consuming vast quantities of words. My tastes became catholic and eclectic. My reading list grew, and hopefully so did I… into a more compassionate, understanding, educated and discriminating reader.
My books were all library vintage since buying books was a luxury a working class family could ill afford. Books vetted by traditional publishers. Books meeting a standard of publishing and a level of quality I couldn’t possibly appreciate at the time, but I now recognize as having fulfilled a valuable role before the notions of bestsellers and genres and popular culture took hold.
I attended parochial school where the myths of rulers on palms and scratchy wool jumpers were not myths, but realities. Where we practiced cursive writing in wide-lined notebooks and parsed sentences on the blackboard and learned the vibrancy of language by peeling away its layers and putting them back in new, creative ways. Where we learned 
Latin and an appreciation for the roots of the words, imbuing them with a history and a meaning that created a framework for learning that carried me through adulthood. In short, I learned reading comprehension skills that have stood me in good stead throughout my long career in both academia and corporate America.
Fast forward to today and the digital revolution. I still read voraciously—indie and trad published. My tastes have narrowed a bit—I don’t do horror, no matter how well written. I’ve deserted most science fiction because few authors do hard SciFi anymore, relying more on fantasy elements and nanotech to inform their storylines (I gave up my subscription to Analog for that reason, too much same old-same old). I also don’t do fantasy because I prefer character-driven stories rather than the kind of nitpicky devotion to the ‘Verse and all its particulars—somewhat akin to describing the Big Apple by listing all the building dimensions and neglecting the people who inhabit those spaces.
Not my thing. But if it’s someone else’s thing, go for it. Horses for courses, I always say.
Lately though, I’ve been debating whether or not to redirect my still limited disposable income toward those works which have passed at least a few gatekeepers on the way toward bringing a story into the light of day. And this is not a decision resting on some elitist set of values, nor on a measure of literary snobbery, but rather on the trust built over the years that books coming through the publishing mill still maintain a set of standards for quality I can rely on.
In a word: I am tired, nay… I am sick of buying books with Some Assembly Required—a condition infecting the bulk of indie books I have read over the last five years.
But but but… Yes, it’s a limited sample, even if my yearly consumption runs close to 300 titles (of all lengths: short stories, novellas, novels and epics). But over five years? That’s 1500 books/stories. It’s at the point that when I review a book, it includes a score for the editing or lack thereof. Far too many have rated a grade of “F.” Remember: parochial school education. I know whereof I speak when it comes to punctuation, grammar, verb tenses, POV, and hanging bits that are neither racy nor conducive to conveying meaning in a sentence.
Ahem, I promised you a list. Of the last ten books I read and reviewed, all indie titles, here’s what I found in the Some Assembly Required category, not necessarily in order of deal breakers, aka the point where I throw the book against a wall or click delete:
1) Punctuation/spelling: it’s not rocket science. There are online dictionaries and thesauruses, find them, use them. As for punctuation, there are oodles of websites with fr’instances. There’s also the read it aloud until you need to take a breath strategy. Put a comma there. Is it a single sentence paragraph? Make it two, oh hell, go wild and try for three separate sentences. Vary the length, vary the structure which segues into…
2) Narrative structure: he did this and then he did that and then he did another thing. Linear story telling is perhaps the most boring bit of writing you can produce. Learn what a dialog tag is and, more importantly, what it isn’t [He laughed, “Good one.” – not a dialog tag] Are there only two people in the room? Is there any reason to suppose we need identifiers for every single utterance? Have you read a book that’s so dialog heavy it’s like reading a grocery list? Or how about dialog that attempts to capture every single utterance in a social situation: hi, hi there, good to see you, yeah, you too, can I take your hat, sure… *snooze*
3) Grammar (nazi): I’m not sure when schools stopped teaching how to conjugate a verb (and that has nothing to do with conjugal rights). He had went. He was being taking the time… *cringes, real examples and not the most egregious by any means, nor were these typos as the head-scratching attempts at verb tenses continued throughout the books* Now, I will fess up to splitting infinitives and I do dangle a few participles, but mostly as a reflection of normal speech patterns. You are, of course, familiar with the most common errors: there, their, they’re and that ilk. These have become so commonplace that readers now shrug them off, claiming it’s the story that matters.
4) POV: oh, my dear sweet Auntie Mae. How about three characters—and each sentence in the paragraph has a separate POV? What, wait! Or more commonly, a POV shift every paragraph. POV from 1st to 3rd omniscient within the same paragraph. 1st POV knowing everything (oy vey, a god-complex). Above and beyond the fact this is confusing as hell, it also speaks directly to how well the author understands the craft of writing and the craft of storytelling. I’ve often gotten to the end of a book and not known WTF happened because the characters switched identities so often it turned chaotic and incomprehensible. Some authors duck behind the mantle of 1st person to avoid the problem and then you get to read I I I I I I … ad nauseam. Trust me, that’s not an improvement.
5) MIA: missing word, missing phrase, whole damn paragraphs gone walkabout or appearing out of context. Then there are phrases obviously copy-pasted, repetitive phrasing, florid overuse of adjectives and adverbs. I don’ think that means what you think it means.
6) Continuity errors, not doing your research (um, no, the Egyptian Exhibit is not in the Museum of Natural History, that would be the Metropolitan Museum of Art), formulaic writing, lazy writing (cliffies, oh God, not another series cliffie), greedy writing (putting out what amounts to an extended scene or a chapter, calling it an episode, charging beaucoup bucks for it, then producing a “season one” compilation), writing quickies/shorties without a proper beginning/middle/end and calling it a “book”.
*squinty-eyed, hands-on-ample-hips—even the major pubs are taking that slick route to my wallet using this artifice*
Dammit, now my teeth hurt. And I haven’t even dabbled in character development, conflict resolution, the sagging middle, and all the other nuances/elements of craft editors routinely catch and correct.
I have time. What I don’t have is unlimited income to spend on a passion that’s being whittled away by a progressively worsening quality in the entertainment/enlightenment media I most prefer: reading.
I read for pleasure. I read to learn. I read to understand, to expand my horizons, to be taken away from my own narrow existence into a wider world. I *invest* in a book with both my time and my limited resources (money). I put my trust in an author to provide me with at least a minimal level of quality that justifies my investment.
Lately, all too often, those authors have broken faith with this reader. If you publish a book and charge money for it, don’t you owe your reader a finished product that meets (and hopefully exceeds) a minimum standard of quality?
Would you purchase a shirt with half the buttons missing, a hem with uneven edges, colors mismatched, shoes with one heel higher than the other or missing a heel completely?
Of course not!
Then why are we putting up with the Some Assembly Required when it comes to books? And don’t give me the malarkey that it’s about the story. I call bullshit on that argument. You can tell your poorly constructed story over a bottle of wine at a party, or on your blog, or knock yourself out with free fanfic. But if you put it out there as a commodity, available for purchase, then it better have all the buttons and a proper hem, because anything less is disrespectful at best and at worst a rip-off.
Yes, I still have the option of not finishing, and it’s a pathetic fact that I put aside more than I finish nowadays. And that’s sad, because there are certainly worthy books—good books constructed with care, with respect, books I should and would read if the pile of s**t wasn’t so deep, so fragrant and so deliberately self-aggrandizing.
Trust once betrayed is not an easy thing to recapture.
*Rant Off* *Dons breastplate* *Waits for retaliation*
Brava.
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Thank you.
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Even more depressing – those of us who DO try to avoid these pitfalls can’t find an audience to save our lives, in large part due to the distrust engendered in most discerning readers as a result of these practices. And yet . . . reading will always be my first and greatest love.
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I know what you mean. It seems as though I am also guilty of painting all indies with the same cruel brush, but the numbers don’t lie. The vast majority of recent titles all suffer from the same affliction: authors not understanding the craft. The mantra, cream rises—or time will sort the wheat from the chaff—can’t possibly pertain (or even be sustainable should it be remotely true) under a deluge of substandard work. I want to find the best (or even the pretty good), but I’m rapidly losing the ability to do so because of the sheer volume of dreck on offer.
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I cringed. I grinned. I flushed (because I’m sure I’m guilty of at LEAST some of those errors). But in no way would I ever retaliate against you for speaking the honest truth. And anyone who would is a fool. You’re one of the best authors I have ever read – right up there with our household favourites, who have been ‘traditionally” publishing for almost thirty years, if not more. You deserve to be able to express your opinion (not least because most of it is steeped in fact) about the slew of CRAP that’s out there now because you take the time to put out well-written, better-edited, continually delightful stories that fuse to our souls.
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Thank you! Love you ladies.
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Gosh. What can I say? I have this imagine of you standing there with fists on ample hips, sucking in oxygen. I don’t blame you. It was a most excellent rant, fully justified. I hope some of the people who *should* read it, do.
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The odds are against, I know. But at least I got it off my chest (if not my ample hips). ;-)
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This post. *tears up and claps slowly* You’re my hero for saying it.
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Thank you – not sure this is being a hero. Just stating the obvious. :-)
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You did state the obvious, and you’ve also addressed what most of us are afraid to post publicly. I love reading, but I can’t tell you how many books I’ve put aside for the reasons you’ve listed. It’s sad because many of them have potential if the author had put the time and energy into finishing their product in a professional manner. Thank you again. :)
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Thanks, Kirsten. I’m still waiting for the proverbial you-know-what to hit the fan because inevitably this will be interpreted as a blanket attack on *all* indies, which it isn’t. There are true gems out there. I’m hopeful subscription services will become the new digital libraries so we can find the books worth reading without breaking our personal piggy banks in the process.
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Well I’ll stand with you if it does hit the fan because I didn’t read it as an attack…more like an observation and a recommendation to all indie authors out there to put the extra effort into polishing their work before putting it on the market. As an author and an avid reader, I can see the value in your advice to all indie authors. Here's to the hidden gems.
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I completely agree with you! I’m an indie author, but I don’t read a lot of indie books. For all the reasons you outlined. The only ones I’ve finished have been ones put out by hybrid authors, who have been through the grinder and know the value of an editor.
I’ve been studying the craft of writing for years, but I still found an editor before I put my book out. And I’m so glad I did! By the time I got done with revisions based on her suggestions my novel was a hundred times better than before. She is worth every penny.
I’m not going to waste my precious little book money on books I’m not going to finish.
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All we can do is vote with our pocketbooks at this point – and do the best we can with our own work.
Thanks for sharing.
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Ego, combined with the lack of education or ability, is a powerful motivator and subterfuge. This poisonous combination has enabled thousands of “wannabe writers” to roll through the marketplace like a plaque, destroying the talented and educated writers chances for progress and success.
You’ve hit the proverbial nail squarely on the head. Unfortunately, those who should read and heed your words, won’t recognize themselves.
P.S. This comment is, in no way, a sob in my beer; merely, as you’ve demonstrated, a statement of fact.
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In a way, Lex, it’s modern culture, the cult of celebrity and the power of the internet itself that has provided motivation and then reinforcement.
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