They Actually Paid Somebody To Edit This Book?
Saturday, October 20, 2007Posted in: Genesis Press, Indigo Love Spectrum, The Day The Editor Got High Episode 2001
You know, it’s irritating enough finding typos and grammatical errors within the pages of a book, but to find these errors in the synopsis, on the back cover of said book, is simply unforgiveable.
Every time I ignore my prejudices against Genesis Press, and buy one of their books, the fuckers always manage to piss me off.
Had I seen The Color of Trouble at a traditional book store, rather than at Amazon, I would have left it on the shelf for sure. Wanna see what I mean? Check out the blurb:
For seven years Kari Anderson has lived a lie. Because she’s black, she assumes she can’t be prejudice. She ignores her heart’s reminder that she left Jonathan because he was white.
She also ignores the warning bells that tell her she’s with her fiance, doctor Steven Anderson, because her parents approve of the color of his skin. With him, she can have the babies her parents will love, the babies she couldn’t have with Jonathan.
Jonathan Steele finally has what he wanted, a promising career with a good law firm.
Love is the last thing on his mind. He thought he had it once, but spent seven months of his life in jail, betrayed by the woman who claimed she loved him. Kari’s purchase of a timeshare brings Jonathan and his firm back into Kari’s. Can they dismiss their past or will final judgment sentence them to try again.
Love is the last thing on his mind. He thought he had it once, but spent seven months of his life in jail, betrayed by the woman who claimed she loved him. Kari’s purchase of a timeshare brings Jonathan and his firm back into Kari’s. Can they dismiss their past or will final judgment sentence them to try again.
(By the way, the paragraph breaks above are mine. In actuality, all the paragraphs were squashed together without relief.)
OK, for the people who may have missed the deliberate mistakes, let me talk you through them.
Deliberate Mistake 1 – the heroine wasn’t called Kari Anderson, she was called Kari Thomas. And no, she didn’t marry Steven Anderson.
Deliberate Mistake 2 – It should be prejudiced not ‘prejudice’, which is why the sentence, “Because she’s black, she assumes she can’t be prejudice” didn’t work.
Deliberate Mistake 3 – “Kari’s purchase of a timeshare brings Jonathan and his firm back into Kari’s.” Back into Kari’s what?
Deliberate Crappy Grammar 4 – “Can they dismiss their past or will final judgment sentence them to try again.” I know what the aim here was, but the attempt at cleverness totally fell flat on its face.
Now, if that’s not bad enough, the book itself was littered with shitloads of errors. Errors like: “Mrs Dobis, I’m not in the mood for sparing with you today”.
Sparing? Sparing? SPARING!!?
Good effing grief, the typos in this book made the mess that was Ben’s Wildflower seem like a grammatical masterpiece in comparison.
Luckily for Ms Davis, unlike BW, the book itself was able to hold my interest, and I was able to ignore the shit, and concentrate on the actual story. Having said that, the errors were totally inexcusable, and any editor worth her salt, should have been able to spot them, before the damn book went to print. Sheesh…
Emily Veinglory
October 20
9:40 pm
Bad editing… a cure for boredom?
Sarah McCarty
October 20
9:48 pm
Wow! That is a lot of mistakes.
And Emily- LOL!!!
Anonymous
October 20
10:39 pm
I thought Genesis went out of business about 5 years ago….or perhaps it was another company with the same name. Regardless, that says a lot also…considering that a new press would not do enough research to realize that another pub with the same exact name folded amidst financial scandal. No wonder their back cover blurbs suck the big one…they haven’t a clue!
Emily Veinglory
October 21
12:46 am
I suspect you are thinking of the same Genesis Press, they act like they are about to go under (not paying authors etc) but never actually do fold.
kirsten saell
October 21
2:10 am
I get embarrassed when errors like that pop up in my blog comments, ffs. That back cover copy was awful, but sadly indicative of the kind of crappy language skills people have these days.
Case in point: when that government aid resigned over his use of the word niggardly, because the great unwashed thought he used the N-word. Talk about good grief.
Just the other day I picked up a newspaper with a circulation of something like 1.2 million, that asked me if I “inspire to be a better horse-back rider.”
It’s just sad that I propbably took more care editing this comment than the editor of The Color of Trouble probably spent on the whole book.
Seressia
October 21
2:54 am
Genesis Press is still alive and kicking. Could have been a new editor/new cover copy editor, have no idea.
What does “ffs” mean? I still have a hard time with the shorthand–it took me forever to get “IIRC” to gel as “if I recall correctly”.
Claudia
October 21
4:04 am
Seressia: ffs=for fuck’s sake 😀 FYI, urbandictionary.com is a neat place to look up some of these terms & acronyms.
—
Genesis seems bad as ever. I thought they’d exhibit better business practices after Kensington became their distributor.
We’ll probably never know what’s happening since publisher Colom’s lawusit against two authors has chilled discussion of payment issues.
If Genseis is having to accept lower quality manuscripts, I can only hope that means the better writers have researched the company and decided to submit elsewhere. Genesis shouldn’t be allowed to scam anyone, but if aspiring authors can visit the site for submission guidelines, they can google the company, read about the problems and act accordingly.
Dyanne
October 21
9:44 am
Karen,
What do you think my thoughts were when I read the back cover? I’m glad you didn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. LOL.
But I can’t let my editor take the hit for that one. Some mistakes may be my missing something and some may be due to a copy editor going in and changing things. Sidney Rickman is one of the best professional editors in the business. If a book was sent to print after the two of us were done with it, bypassing the copy editor and praying the typesetter doesn’t mess anything up, I think a lot of errors would be eliminated. MAYBE. LOL.
My one big pet peeve: Mistake in books.
Dyanne Davis
MERLIN
October 21
1:36 pm
Greetings Sweetie,
Nice to see I’m not the only person who spots typos and grammatical twaddle from 100 yards away.
Infuriating isn’t it ?
Ah well…..looks like the “goal scoring machine” is back in business.
I’ve stopped biting my fingernails a bit.
Love your new garden by the way.
I would be jealous but I hate gardening so I’m content with a small patio and a few things in pots.
Hugs,
M.
Monica
October 21
3:06 pm
I have had shit fits over my copy editing or lack thereof too AND back blurbs that don’t have shit to do with the book–[dang I know I should have caught that, but didn’t they pay somebod(ies) else to catch it too? Whhhhhhhhhhhy meeeeeee? wailing and beating head against monitor]
I always hoped there was equal opportunity–do white authors get edited poorly at intervals and treated like crap too? I wouldn’t know, but I always thought that was a possibility.
Dyanne deserves white romance readers too, she’s a romance author and a decent one!–but so many strikes against us.
kis
October 21
6:44 pm
I wasn’t even aware that Dyanne was black, so I’m not sure race should be an issue with this. And the author can’t really be held accountable for errors in back cover copy, even if they write their own blurb, because there’s at least two other people who are paid to spot these mistakes, dang it!
I know of at least two authors who suffer from dyslexia, and their MSs are riddled with typos and grammatical issues, but that is was the editor is for!
It would really cheese me off if my editor and I got everything perfect and then the typesetter fucked it all up. Grr. These are staffing issues, not author ones. I’m glad Karen didn’t pick up this one in the store. If it held her interest, it couldn’t be half-bad. That said, if I were the author, I’d be researching other pulishers.
kis
October 21
6:49 pm
Stupid blogger won’t let me sign in, and then I forget to sign my post.
-Kirsten Saell
P.S. from my 3:10 AM comment: propbably? Arggghhh!
Anne
October 21
10:28 pm
Monica said…
I always hoped there was equal opportunity–do white authors get edited poorly at intervals and treated like crap too? I wouldn’t know, but I always thought that was a possibility.
Hellllooooooo? Carol Lynne is THE perfect example of poor editing and that’s just one I can immediately recall off the top of my head… I know there are so many more.
Devon
October 21
10:58 pm
It’s unfortunate, b/c I like the title and the cover is quite fetching. (Genesis does nice covers) I would pick it up based on those things, but that blurb…and the blurb is what sells it oftentimes, if I’m otherwise unfamiliar with the book. I can’t blame the author, b/c there had to be someone else who saw it right before it went to press, no?
I don’t think bad editing is limited to race, or small presses for that matter. I remember a Katie MacAlister that had the hero’s name mispelled (looked really weird) on the back cover. I also recently read a Harlequin with appalling continuity errors. The hero’s eyes were blue, then brown. The heroine’s hair was brown then red. The state capital was wrong. The hero also bemoaned getting married and having a child so young. But he was 40 and had a 9 year old. Being a 30 y.o. dad isn’t exactly teenage. And there was more. I felt like I was reading a first draft.
And thank you to Seressia, b/c I never knew what IIRC meant.
Barbara B.
October 22
1:25 am
Karen, if you’d read some of the shit I bought from Ocean’s Mist Press last year you’d be trying to nominate Dyanne Davis for the Booker Prize!
Emily Veinglory
October 22
4:02 am
I hit a harlequin where a cup was coffee and then cocoa within a paragraph, and certainly have my own too-lightly-edited experiences….
roslynholcomb
October 22
4:23 am
Genesis miss-spelled MY name even after I corrected it twice. There were also some changes that I know I made to the manuscript that somehow were mysteriously unchanged in the printed version. I agree with Dyanne, Sidney Rickman is the best, I have no idea what the hell Genesis is doing. BTW, Dyanne is pretty goddamned fabulous as well.
Karen Scott
October 22
8:04 am
Karen, if you’d read some of the shit I bought from Ocean’s Mist Press last year you’d be trying to nominate Dyanne Davis for the Booker Prize!
I always knew there was a reason I avoided Ocean’s Mist Press. I read a couple of Phaze books (freebies of course, cuz you know I wouldn’t actually spend my own money on them) a while ago, and the editing was so bad, I couldn’t bring myself to finish either book.
I can tolerate some errors, but finding mistakes on every other page makes me crazy.
I don’t get why authors accept such sub-standard work from their editors and publishers. Having that many mistakes in a back cover blurb is utterly ridiculous.
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October 30
5:09 am
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