And, following some self-promotional links in a couple of G+ writing communities, I decided to read some of the stuff they were self promoting. It's a book. A YA Book. I've read some pretty darn good YA stuff and have a few YA authors that I really like. Tamora Pierce being one of them. In addition, there are those who we all know who've have made it to Mainstream USA and Movie Deal Land. The cover looks amazing and professionally done... so what have I got to lose?
Here's how it went --
*reads first page* Huh?
*re-reads first page* - Oh. There are two figures here, and this is supposed to be a dream scene... it said so in the first line, so maybe the disjointedness is intentional. Wait, was this sentence referring to Red or the Other One? Two "hes" and "his's" each wearing a cloak... *head hurts.* Oh great, now there is a third un-named, hooded/cloaked figure slipping through the shadows.
*puts down Kindle. Thinks for a bit, then removes book from device.*
Call me a literary snob. Maybe my literary standards have been ingrained in me through my years as an academic who studied writing as an art. Maybe I'm the type of reader that is not the right kind of audience for this novel. Perhaps this will one day be the Jackson Pollock of YA fantasy literature and I am more appreciative of the classics.
My work may be just as bad, and when I revise my work from cover to cover, I will be just as critical.
I felt that this novel (in the first 3 pages, so it may be too much of a snap judgement, but agents and traditional publisher make just this kind of judgement) could use some MAJOR revision. Language needed to be tightened, characters needed to be fleshed out, and more time needs to be spent refining the work.
The initial "feel" that I got from the book's opening was something gothic, akin to Frankenstein or Dracula, but abrupt shifts in the focus within the sentences/paragraphs, the language of the characters' dialog, and the grammatical/punctuational errors all detracted and distracted from the mood the author tried to create. These are things I'd expect a good group of beta readers to catch. These are the things I'd expect a good agent or editor to catch.
So I did some sleuthing and my suspicions were confirmed... this was a self-pub work being distributed by Amazon. There's a reason why it's free. I felt deceived and cheated by the 4-star ratings that it has... until I saw that less than two score of readers have bothered to review it since 2009.
So, here're my questions to the published authors out there, whether you are self-published or traditionally published (and if you choose to answer them, indicate if you were a self-pub or not)-
1) What is your revision process and how many revisions did you end up going through before publishing?
2) Questions on test readers:
How many people did you ask to read your initial work and did any of them offer constructive critiques? Were there any writers in this group of readers?
If you had multiple revisions, did you have separate groups of readers for each revision?
3) Did you have a professional to edit and proof your final revision?
4) And if you are self-pub, did you try the traditional publishing options before going the self-publishing route?
Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for answering!
-JWM
