Consumer Rant

Just a nice, cute, very concise comment to me from an anonymous Consumer of American publications who pays attention to both quality of content and presentation and doesn’t really see a difference:

“You may not enjoy this next rant about proofreading.  If not, you can skip over and my feelings won’t be hurt. But the next time you’re turned down by some fancy-pants publisher-read on.

I’m reading a mainstream book about four presidents-Ike,JFK,Ford, Bush - and how their combat experience affected their thinking and their presidencies.

After 200 pages I’ve found two factual errors that could have been caught with 30 seconds of checking. I quit reading as a sort of protest, as in if they can’t be bothered to check, why should I be bothered to read?  You check, I read.

I don’t know anything about the publishing business.  Aren’t most unsolicited manuscripts returned unread? But let’s say one gets accepted.   Before that an agent surely looked at it. 
At the publisher, Random House in this case, somebody reads it, maybe an intern of some kind,  and passes it on to somebody who reads it closer. 

Then it somehow gets to a junior editor.  All along they like it enough to keep reading-something you taught me .  Then it probably goes to some kind of review committee or a more senior editor.  Someone decides that  it’s a money maker or great literature or both and the run some copies.

At all those levels every one of those very intelligent people had a red pen or a delete key to fix syntax or typos or comically incorrect data.  Nope.

One of those copies gets to the library here in Soda Pop Valley where Steve the Nerd finds two glaring mistakes.

M point is, it infuriates me, and I’m just little people.  I can’t image how you, someone who takes their work seriously, can put up with it.

I find no such errors in your work, so keep typing, and I’ll keep reading.”