Time for the annual republication of this classic—I’d say “enjoy,” but really I’d rather it make you squirm a little bit. Also, if you find errors in my books, PUH-LEEZE email me at pamela at pamelafaganhutchins dot com. I fix them. And let my beleaguered copyeditor know, so we can both learn from the ones that get through. On the other hand, you don’t pay for my blog posts, so I don’t worry about errors in them. Read on the internet at your own risk. 😉
Stop the madness, people. Hire a damn copyeditor before you publish your books.
Maybe you are one of the eager writers who attends my workshops and presses your book into my hand.
“You’re going to love it. I can’t wait for you to read it,” you say. “I hope you can review it.”
Or you could be a writer who connects with me via social media and is–understandably–asking for a review. Books need reviews. Maybe you give me your book. Maybe I download it free or on sale.
However I get it, I open it and start reading. And one page in, sometimes three, I turn to my husband and say, “Oh no.” Because you sat through my workshop or my Facebook diatribes or my blog posts or my Loser book and know what I think about the necessity of professional copyediting, and that I believe it’s not just about competence, it’s about respect for readers. Yet you slapped that book on me with a smile and a wink believing you will fool me and your readers with a self-edit or one done by your half-hearted critique group or even a cheapo or barter job done by a friend who is an English teacher or who does a little writing/editing on the side.
You won’t. We’re smarter than that. We’ve learned to expect more from writing. We don’t invest our time in crap that’s not ready to see publication.
You didn’t fool me.
My husband sighs. “The editing or writing?”
I count the obvious errors, the errors 95% of their readers will catch: misspellings, missing words, duplicative words, missing periods, incorrect spacing, incorrect capitalization. I count the less obvious ones: verb tense, subject-verb agreement, homonyms. All published books have errors, but good ones have only a few in 100,000 words. Yours has ten in the first ten pages. Not style issues, but errors. Distracting, gross, reader-insulting errors. Close-the-book errors.
Despite that, I keep reading, because you seem nice, and I am determined to find a well-conceived story in here somewhere, maybe even a well-crafted one. I want to like your book. I want to at least be able to give you a three-star review on Amazon, and an encouraging email wherein I refer you to a professional copyeditor. But your story is disjointed, your characters are brittle and their reactions are way off. Your plot bogs down, and your writing is cliche. You need a critique group, one your mother isn’t part of, one comprised of writers better than you. You need to study writing, take some classes, and you need to write hundreds of thousands more words before you publish again, because that’s how you learn to write well: by doing it until you get good at it and develop your voice.
“Both,” I tell him. I shake my head. “Both.”
“I’m sorry. You’ve got to tell them somehow. You’re not helping them if you pretend the emperor is dressed to the nines.”
“I know. But I don’t know how.”
Because I don’t want to hurt your feelings. This isn’t an abstract writer. It’s you, smiling and eager, and looking me in the eye. I like you.
Only I can’t believe you heard me talk about the criticality of professional copyediting (and developmental editing for the sake of your story) and still dumped this on me. Are you really that unaware? You can’t be. It wasn’t edited by a paid professional. You can’t not know that. It’s your book, and you didn’t write a check to anyone for editing. So I can only conclude that you don’t respect me as a reader and want to manipulate me.
And waste my time.
I sound harsh, I know. I mean, who am I to judge? I haven’t won a Pulitzer Prize. I’m not perfect nor is my writing, and I’ll never claim we are. You can still find a few errors in my books, because my (expensive) editor and team of 20+ proofreaders aren’t perfect either. But there is a difference between a well-edited, well-critiqued book by a writer who has put in the years and the work, and what you handed me. You and I both know that.
You are capable of better.
I wish I could tell you there is a short cut. That you are the exception, the writer who should publish every word you queef out from the age of ten, that you don’t need years of practice or editors. I can’t, though, because it’s just not true. You start by sucking. You work to suck less. You attain a level of diminished suckyness eventually redeemed only by the help of other writers and a professional editor(s) and proofreaders. That’s how this works.
And that’s what I’ll pay for. Not with just my money (and my money counts for something), but with my time. With my attention. With my online review under my own name, which is attached to my carefully-guarded reputation as a writer.
Your book? I skimmed through most of it, after I reached the “have to stop” point. I probably made it farther than most of your readers, because I care. And because I care, I can’t review it. I wouldn’t do that to you. If I can’t give you a three, I am not going to hurt you online by posting something lower. You also didn’t pay me to critique it or copyedit it, so I’m not going to send you back a marked-up copy. That’s your job, not mine. Mine was to read.
You can salvage this, though, if you pull the book down, rewrite it WITH HELP until it is truly ready (however many weeks or years that takes), and get it professionally edited before you republish it. {And I don’t want to hear that you don’t have the funds. Hold off on publishing until you do. There’s no need to rush. We don’t deserve you dumping this on us prematurely. Period.} You can save your good name and keep the potential readers who you hadn’t yet lured into this version of your book, who were otherwise destined to run from this book—and you—never to be seen within your pages again.
If you do that and emerge on the other side as a better writer with a book to be proud of, I’ll post that review. I swear I will.
Until then, unless you can be honest with me, and yourself, about what you didn’t do to get this book ready for publication, my silence will be your review. Implicit in it is this suggestion: find a community of writers, in person or virtual, to help you as you develop, through critique and education, and to provide references for great professional editing when your work is ready.
Oh, and in the meantime, I’m using your book as a door stop.
Pamela
Pamela Fagan Hutchins, USA Today bestseller and winner of the 2017 Silver Falchion
Best 
Pamela resides deep in the heart of Nowheresville, Texas and in the frozen north of Snowheresville, Wyoming. She has a passion for great writing and smart authorpreneurship as well as long hikes and trail rides with her hunky husband, giant horses, and pack of rescue dogs, donkeys, and goats. She also leaps medium-tall buildings in a single bound (if she gets a good running start).