First stupid problem with KDP people

[shelleyo1]

If it is true that KDP is outsourcing editorial oversight of the use of idiomatic English, contemporary punctuation conventions, and American slang to customer-service personnel in a foreign nation -- any foreign nation -- that ought to give everyone here pause.

That's not an unreasonable assumption, since that's how so many corporations keep more of their money.

Shelley

[Richardcrasta]

I sympathize with the OP and the many genuine concerns raised by this post, and I think most are justified.


But on this (though Robert clarified he meant no ethnic put-down, and I fully believe him, I had written this earlier in a lighthearted mood):

The signer's name was clearly from somewhere in South Asia.

The name couldn't have been Sonny Mehta or David Davidar, could it? Sonny, as the President of Knopf, sometimes gets to decide which Nobel Prizewinners Knopf will publish or won't and, David, ex-President of Penguin Canada, is too rich to need the job (and has a nice new job).

Couldn't have been Ralph Nazareth or David Timothy, both 100% South Asians, whose skin color is somewhere between brown and black? Ralph is a senior Professor of English at Nassau Community College, and writes English prose and poetry that would put Robert Ludlum to shame; I sometimes write to him when I need a grammatical question clarified; he probably earns over $70k a year and doesn't need the job. David works in a Bangalore publishing NGO at a senior level.

Couldn't have been Sonia Gandhi, could it? Though she was born in Italy, she rules India's 1.2 billion people, and couldn't possibly have the time to moonlight for Amazon even if she did need the extra cash.

Couldn't have been Richard Crasta, could it? That's me, and though I am the only amongst this otherwise illustrious South Asian bunch who needs the cash, I doubt I would pass an entrance test for Amazon staff.

And though I do make a few grammatical mistakes (using 92% American English, 5% British English, and 2% Indian English in my writing), I happened to teach the natives of Long Island (not the original ones, who are dead, but the descendants of the Europeans who took their land) English Composition for two semesters. Their English was had many more grammatical mistakes than mine, and it's of course quite possible that a handful of them couldn't get jobs, decided to become Hare Krishnas, and changed their names to South Asian ones.

But I admit my accent is funny. It's because of all that tandoori goat stuck in my teeth and because of all that low-fat camel milk that I drink along with my bourbon.

Richard
(P.S. All in good humor; I am not taking this issue all that seriously any more, though I did in a couple of my books. Or, as we all sing in our funny accents:
But it's all rightu Jacku,
Inna factu itsa gassu!)

[Richardcrasta]

However, to contribute my 2 cents to this important discussion.


In my humble opinion:

Robert's case is of course black and white--his language is impeccable, but speaking of the larger issue:


For "errors" that are matters of interpretation, artistic choice, British/American English: I suggest, let them be.

For blatant errors: For me, it is a matter of context proportionality, one that takes into account our human capacity to err.

For example, an average of one error every two pages is something I would forgive in an original otherwise sparkling work.
Perhaps an average of one blatant error on every page would justify requiring the author to make corrections.
Three to ten errors in an entire book? It wouldn't bother me if I had chosen to read that book--which I probably would have done after reading a 10-page sample which gave me a pretty good idea of the book's quality.

Richard

[Robert Bidinotto]

An error every couple of pages?

Actually, Richard, I'm far more exacting than that, for my own work. I take great pains to edit and proof my stuff, and it just kills me to find errors that I missed. Why? Because that violates the main goal I have as a storyteller:

Do NOTHING to distract the reader from staying in the fantasy world that you have created.

That's what it means when we say a book is "spellbinding." But every error of spelling or grammar or punctuation, every formatting glitch, every factual blooper, breaks the spell of the story. They suddenly call the reader's attention to the fact that he's not a participant IN the story; he's on the outside, READING somebody's else's story. They are interruptions, reminding him that he's sitting in a chair with a book in his hands -- and not immersed and lost in the experience of another, far more interesting world.

This is why I have no sympathy for those quote writers unquote who imagine that simply because they've come up with a story, they can deliver it in a messy, poorly formatted, error-riddled fashion. Craftsmanship matters.

Now, I do NOT say that my book is perfect in this regard; I know that it isn't. But I also know that I strove to keep errors to an absolute minimum.

So, I greatly sympathize with the motive of the Amazon folk in wanting to raise the bar for indie works. My objection is to the ham-handed, foolish way they've gone about this. I love the opportunity that KDP provides to us indies, and I want it to continue to be a thriving platform for cutting-edge writing. I just want them to use some common sense when developing and administering "quality control" policies.

Of course, Richard, I take your prior post with all the good humor you intended.

[Terrence OBrien]

Common sense is a very relative standard.

[genevieveaclark]

Common sense is a very relative standard.

This is pretty much a summary of the woes of philosophers, moralists, and engineers through the ages. In seven words. Not bad!

[Richardcrasta]

An error every couple of pages?

Actually, Richard, I'm far more exacting than that, for my own work. I take great pains to edit and proof my stuff, and it just kills me to find errors that I missed. Why? Because that violates the main goal I have as a storyteller:

Do NOTHING to distract the reader from staying in the fantasy world that you have created.

Oh, me too. Every time I find a mistake that I missed, I am mortified. In a hurry, I let a previously published IMPRESSING THE WHITE online without realizing some errors had crept in while "improving" the book (a dangerous pursuit!), so I am grateful for every mistake I discover.

However, I am less judgmental of another person's work if it grips me otherwise with humor, originality, or passion. So one mistake in every 2 pages is a loose and compassionate standard, and I can see that you are a far more demanding writer--in fact, the "errors" were not even errors.

Besides, what if the error was intentional: satirical, for example? Even the most sophisticated readers have sometimes missed these. My novel THE REVISED KAMA SUTRA has quite a bit of wordplay that depends on misspelling.

[Tim Greaton]

We just received a very similar letter early this morning about our "The Santa Shop" title. My book, however, was not removed from the market nor put in draft mode. A number of the errors pointed out were carryover hyphens from the original hardcopy release, and the other few seemed to be legit editing misses. We're correcting the issues now. I, like others, wonder what prompts something like this, but I'm thinking it is probably because we've had 50,000 free downloads in the last three weeks. More chance to rack up complaints or notice, I guess.

Thanks for exploring the issue, everyone